Friday, June 24, 2011
Reflections from Behind the Wall Anatomy of a Frame Up - Chapter 1 A Lifetime of Service A Luta Continua By Chuck Turner BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Note: BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Chuck Turner is writing this column from the U.S. Federal Prison in Hazelton, West Virginia where he is serving a three year term for a bribery conviction.
This is the first of eight chapters in which I discuss my two and a half year experience with the Justice Department that has led to my being a convicted felon at the work camp at USP Hazelton, Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.
My first reaction was that I was dreaming; no, I was having a nightmare but I couldn't wake up. After a lifetime of fighting for justice, I was in handcuffs being led out of City Hall. I didn't even know what I was being accused of. Later, it became all too clear, not only from the prosecutor describing me as a corrupt politician but also from the newspaper headlines the next morning screaming that I had been indicted for conspiracy to extort money from a local community business man and lying about it to the FBI.
How could this happen? I knew I hadn't done what they said but there were the camera trucks in front of our house. Reporters knocking at the door, urging me to talk to them as if it was my responsibility to answer their questions. Sure, they were just doing their job but they were part of an establishment that I had been fighting for decades. Yet, here they were ridiculing me, mocking me, gloating over my alleged hypocrisy. I felt like Alice in Wonderful and I had no idea how to get out of the rabbit hole.
The situation was totally absurd. Just eighteen months earlier I had declared my intention to launch a Peace and Prosperity Campaign. I had said to my constituents that after eight years in office, I was convinced that we needed to revise our strategy. It was not enough to organize and fight against the external forces of oppression, those who believed they had the right to abuse us. It was not enough to use the City Council process to establish new laws and regulations. We had to recognize that we had to do for self. We had to be the source of our strength and development.
We had to recognize, I said, that through our own individual and collective actions we had to create the foundation for the future that we needed and desired not only for ourselves but also for our children and their children's children. I argued that we needed to recognize that the prosperity that we hungered for as a community and individually could only be realized by establishing peace in our community and dedicating ourselves to using our talents and resources to regenerate ourselves. I said we needed a Campaign for Peace and Prosperity. We needed to put into action a pledge to constantly work to develop ourselves and our community. There was even a motto, "Do No Harm".
I wondered what would be the questions in the minds of people who had heard and remembered my call. What would be the thoughts of those who had slowly begun to get involved in the strategy I was urging? While I was trusted in the community that I had lived and worked in for over forty years, how would they withstand the media bombardment. How would they resist the accusations that their Councilor was an extortionist, conspiring with our first female black state senator to extort money from a local businessman, attempting to get a liquor license for a club that he planned to open in the community's new and first hotel.
What could I say to my constituents that could allay their fears and doubts? How could I convince them that I was not a hypocrite? I knew I was innocent but I also knew that the constant barrage of convicting information would make even those close to me wonder what had happened. At least, I knew that eventually the truth would come out and I would be able to laugh at what a horrible mistake had been made. I hadn't done what they said so how could I be convicted. Even the FBI's affidavit was full of holes that would allow my lawyer to quickly end the nightmare.
Yet, today 31 months after my arrest, I am an inmate at the Hazelton Federal Prison work camp in the mountains of West Virginia. I am ending the third month of my 36 month sentence. Despite my optimism that the truth would come out; despite the fact that the U.S. Attorney's Cooperating Witness said in the Boston Globe 6 months after my arrest that as far as he was concerned I was innocent, naive but innocent; despite the constant display of support from friends, constituents and allies before, during, and after the trial; and despite over 700 letters to the judge saying that I should be put on probation, here I sit a convicted felon.
However, I have learned during my 71 years that the art of living is not demonstrated by how you celebrate your victories but by your ability to turn seeming defeats into victories. Yes, I feel battered but certainly not broken. The struggle for justice is a continuing one and my commitment to devote my life as a warrior to that struggle still burns bright. The question as always is what to do and as usual the answer is clear. Even before I entered USP Hazelton, I knew I needed a plan to guide my actions. My plan would have to focus on preparing myself to reenter the struggle stronger on every level than when I left. It would have to enable me to continue to share my thinking with my community, and finally it would need to enable me to fulfill a commitment made to my community at a rally in front of my community office six days after my arrest on the day before Thanksgiving, 2008.
At the rally, energized by having survived a plot initiated by the City Council President (and others I assume) to drive me from office on the day after my arrest, I decided to focus on the opportunities that the situation presented us. I urged my supporters to build a communications network among friends, coworkers, and colleagues. I talked about talking points that they should raise to counter the media's incessant attacks on my character. It was an opportunity, I declared, to stimulate critical thinking and increase our community's capacity to see through the smoke screens put out by the establishment's mouthpieces.
I emphasized that while I was fighting for my survival, the struggle is more important than anyone one individual. I stressed that those of us who commit ourselves to struggle for justice have to be prepared to use the attacks to strengthen our community despite the casualties that will inevitably take place. From that perspective, I knew that regardless of what happened to me, i had a responsibility to turn this attack into a learning experience through which we all could learn and grow.
Since it was obvious that US Attorney Sullivan and his police force, the FBI, were conspiring to frame me for a crime that I didn't commit, I pointed out the golden opportunity we were presented to examine up close and personal how they operate. They continuously study us to assess our strengths and weaknesses. We should do no less if we are serious in our pursuit of justice. Through such a rigorous analysis and examination of their tactics, we could help our brothers and sisters in the struggle become wiser in evading the "criminal justice system's" continuous attempts to thwart justice and use prison to turn us into a permanent underclass and thus re enslave us.
With this focus on education, I will share with you each week over the next seven weeks an installment exploring the twists and turns of the Frame Up that led to my incarceration. As with all initial attempts to deepen the understanding of our experiences, I know that there will be gaps and issues that others will see the need to explore. The objective of this exercise is to stimulate our thinking and sharpen our ability to critically analyze the stratagems that are used against us. It is clear to me that if we are to be successful in ending the use of the "criminal justice system" to perpetuate injustice, we have to sharpen our thinking so that we can act more effectively.
In 1975, there were 500,000 people of all races in jail in this country. Today, there are 2.3 million and the numbers are growing. Over a million are of African-American descent. The correction officers union, I've been told, is the fastest growing union in this country. It is clear that if we are to lay the foundation for justice for future generations we have to stop the prosecutorial terrorism that is plaguing us all. In that spirit, please view this as an initial attempt to use my personal experience to broaden the needed national dialogue on how to end this terrorism.
In the remainder of this installment, I am going to share my background and the life of activism and service that it inspired. I have always believed that a fundamental principle of organizing is that the organizer should not be the focus. Campaigns are successful when the focus is on the goals to be achieved, the plan to achieve them, and the process of analyzing successes and failures. Too much attention on the organizer is distracting and dims the organization's focus. However, since one of the objectives of former US Attorney Sullivan's plot was to create the image that I was a fraud, hypocrite, and fundamentally corrupt, I think it is important that I begin by helping people better understand who I am.
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. I was blessed to have been born into a family that had two predominant passions - a thirst for knowledge and a desire to serve. Education was the "family business" on both my mother's and my father's side of the family. My mother's mother was a teacher who became an elementary school principal. My mother was a school teacher and my brother became a college professor and dean. My father's father was a high school biology teacher by day and a scientist by night having earned a PHD in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1907. Upon his death in 1923, he was honored by the St. Louis Science Society for his work on animal behavioral psychology. Later the City of St. Louis named a school after him.
While education was viewed as a service, other members of the family found other ways to serve. My mother's sister was a social worker, focusing her work on children. Her brother, my uncle, was a landscaper. My father was a pharmacist and owned with his brother, my uncle, a drug store that had the unique feature of having a pharmacy on one side managed by my father and a bar on the other, managed by his brother. Other members of the family sorted themselves out along the same lines of education and business with service to our people as the link. One of my grandmother's brother was at Niagara Falls in 1909 as a participant in the founding of the NAACP.
My father and mother divorced when I was young and I grew up in Cincinnati with my mother and her family while my father lived in Chicago where he operated his business. Given Cincinnati's location on the Ohio River, I remember as a child hearing stories of my grandmother going with friends and her children down to the landing where the river boats would bring new arrivals from the South. My grandmother's purpose was to welcome the new families into Cincinnati and help them establish a new life as part of the community. I remember going with my family to Ms. Stewart's Home for Young Women which was a boarding house for young "colored" women coming to Cincinnati. Outings to Ms. Stewart's where we would have dinner with the young women were a delight not only because of the food but also because of the beautiful young women and delightful conversations.
While I grew up with a sense of community, sharing, and service, there also was the other side of life for the African-American community. The time was the 40s, so segregation was the way of life once you crossed the river and it had a strong influence on life in Cincinnati despite the strong and wealthy Jewish community that flourished in the city. The local amusement park was not integrated until I was 10 years old and I grew up hearing stories of the times when you couldn't try on clothes in a store or had to sit upstairs in the movie theatre. Black children living in a public housing development in a white neighborhood were bussed to a black school miles away.
By the time I was a teenager, overt discrimination was not legal in the city; yet that didn't prevent the manager of a coffee shop in downtown Cincinnati refusing me service when I was 13 and looking for a job in the market area. When she asked me to leave because they didn't "serve Negroes", I said that the law said I didn't have to leave so she called the police. Upon arriving, the policeman apologized to her that there was nothing he could do. She then closed the coffee shop. By that time, I was enjoying the game and waited until she opened and again entered. At this point, she decided I think that business was more important than showing me who was in control and served me.
So I grew up in two worlds: one warm, supportive, and nurturing; the other cold and hostile. That is not to say that there were no shades of gray. I went to an integrated high school where I had friends of all races. I participated in organizations designed to bring people of all races together to understand our differences and to work collectively on the problems confronting us. Yet, the sense of living in two worlds was always there. Even more disturbing was the fact that there were constant reminders that as African-Americans, we had to understand that we were inferior. It was even said that the Bible documented the sin that had led to our eternal inferiority. Yet, my mother was the youngest graduate of the University of Cincinnati, graduating at 18 in 1928 until my brother graduated from U.C. in 1947 at 16. It all seemed like a bad dream - a nightmare in fact.
With an ingrained two world perspective, I headed off to Harvard at 18 with a full scholarship in my pocket. My years there resulted in a Harvard BA in government and a thorough exposure to the glories of the Anglo-Saxon culture and its contributions to the world. In addition, it further ingrained the fact that I lived in two worlds that did not mesh. Probably, the most frustrating part was that with a Harvard degree, I was viewed as having a excellent education. However, given the constant emphasis on the inferiority of my people, I gained no knowledge that helped me understand why this Christian nation behaved in such a devilish way. I was looking for answers to the questions: Where do we come from; why are we here; and where do we go after our spirits leave our bodies. They were questions that I thought were reasonable for an educated man but Harvard had no answers.
So off into the world I went. Harvard degree at the bottom of a box of books. My family's warning imprinted on my mind. Despite the impressive individual accomplishments that family members had achieved, there was a constant reminder that what we had accomplished had only been possible because of the sacrifices and struggles of countless unknown others who had laid a foundation upon which we could build. In other words, no matter how much individual success and how many accomplishments I might achieve, they would have no meaning if the accomplishments didn't create a base that future generations could use in the continuous struggle for justice. "To whom much is given, much is expected."
I didn't know what I was to do but at least I had a standard to measure my success. Having majored in government and thinking that law might provide the framework for the service I was seeking, I headed to D.C., ironically arriving on August 23, 1963. Thus, I had the opportunity to stand with hundreds of thousands and hear Dr. King and others give the call to action. A few days later, I was able to get a job as a reporter on the Washington Afro-American newspaper that granted me access to downtown and uptown life.
It was a fascinating opportunity to be in what seemed to be the hub of the universe, chronicling the change happening around us. However, I soon bored of writing about what others were doing. As if life felt my need, in November I ran into a college classmate and Alpha brother, Bill Strickland, at a SNCC convention I was covering who asked if i was interested in joining him in New York as editor of the newsletter of the organization he was heading, the Northern Student Movement (NSM). NSM had begun as a northern group of students providing support for the movement in the South. However, Bill and others had changed the focus to organizing in black communities of New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Hartford, Conn.
Again, while editing was interesting, when the opportunity to join a rent strike organizing project in Harlem came, I went. I joined with a group of young organizers who were apprenticing with Jesse Gray who had been using the rent strike tactic to challenge landlords for decades. In 1964, the courts had declared the strategy legal as long as certain guidelines were followed. So into the streets of Harlem we went ready to organize all those who previously had been afraid but needed change.
After a few weeks, the romance wore off. Despite deplorable conditions and the new law, we encountered people's internal resistance to change. Hearing our frustrations, Jesse would patiently say to us, "People know when they are ready. You don't. Your job is to test their readiness. If they aren't ready, move on". As my experience grew over the years, I began to understand how that philosophy had enabled Jesse and others to maintain their energy and optimism despite the frustrations and slowness of the process.
From Harlem, I went to Hartford to replace the director at the NSM project in Connecticut's capital city. The challenge of building and maintaining a multifaceted organization was fascinating and frustrating. We organized around a variety of issues from slum landlords to job discrimination, raising money to pay ourselves when national funds ran scarce. Challenging people to stand up was exciting as well as grueling work. However, it came to a screeching halt when a demonstration we organized to confront police brutality led to confrontations between the police and community, resulting in my arrest and the arrest of others in the organization and community.
We were charged with sedition and a variety of other charges that hadn't been used since the Sacco and Venzentti days. In view of the media focus around outside organizers, the national organization suggested that those of us who were not from Hartford should leave until the trial to allow for the situation to cool down. Given that there was an NSM project in Boston's black community I went there. By the time the cases were heard and I received probation, I had obtained a job as an organizer with a local poverty program and was ready to plant my roots in Roxbury, the heart of Boston's black community.
During the three years between my leaving Cambridge in 1963 and returning to Boston in 1966, I gave up the idea of becoming a lawyer. While organizing was tough, demanding work, I was convinced that organizing people always needed to be at the core of my work. I had come to realize that through organizing I would be able to meet my family commitment to have my life's work have benefit and meaning for the African-American struggle for justice. It was also beginning to become clear that organizing could be a means to bring together the two worlds that I lived in. Perhaps, most important, it satisfied my growing appreciation for our human ability to create new realities as we come together to focus our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy on a common purpose.
During the last forty five years, I have been driven by a desire to both fight back against oppression and to demonstrate the power of organized action to bring justice. My motto could have been, "Have a need, let's organize". Organizing the burning of trash as a community worker in Lower Roxbury in the late 60s led to an agreement with my boss to leave the organization but pushed the City to clean an area, ignored for years.
The need for unity in the late sixties in the Black and Latino community led to the formation of the Boston Black United Front which became the voice of the progressive community of color in Boston. A highway threatening our community spurred the development of Operation Stop, the joining of a regional transportation alliance against the highway, and the formation of the Southwest Corridor Land Development Coalition which produced a plan that guided the development of the land once the Governor rerouted the highway around Boston.
The need for a greater share of the construction jobs in Roxbury stimulated the development of a state wide black, Latino, and Asian alliance, The Third World Jobs Clearing House with offices in Boston, Cambridge, Worcester, and Springfield that operated for five years until the Reagan administration eliminated the funding base.
At the same time the need for a multiracial political alliance in Boston to protect affirmative action in the construction industry led to the formation of the Boston Jobs Coalition, an alliance of black, white, Latino, and Asian community groups, that led the fight for a local jobs policy, guaranteeing a share of all City financed and aided projects to Boston workers of all races, people of color, and women. This policy, linking affirmative action to residency, became a national model that is used today in cities across the country under the name, the First Source Program.
My need to see workers develop economic power by pooling their talents led to my becoming education director of the Industrial Cooperative Association, a nonprofit consulting firm, focused on aiding workers in the formation of businesses that they could own cooperatively. I then spent the next five years helping workers throughout the country develop the capacity to be owners as well as workers.
Organizing around the need for a community voice in the land use decisions in Roxbury led in 1983 to Mayor Flynn granting the Roxbury Neighborhood Council a guaranteed role in all land use decisions and granting five other communities the right to establish such Councils with similar powers.
The need to assure that community workers would get jobs as part of the Boston Jobs Policy led to the formation of the Greater Roxbury Workers' Association which became a major force in securing construction jobs for community workers for the next fifteen years.
Frustration with the level of violence in the community and the need to develop strategies to change the thinking of the perpetrators led me to take a job as a counselor and eventually a manager at Emerge, the nation's first organization to provide counseling services to men, convicted of domestic violence. My objective was to develop an understanding of the psychological dynamics that lead to violence in order to develop behavior modification strategies.
The need to educate the community on the devastating effects and extent of domestic violence in the community, led to the development of the Community Task Force on Domestic Violence, as a vehicle through which education and organizing could be initiated.
After 35 years of fighting against injustice from outside of government, a need to strengthen organizing in the community led me to attempt to use elective office as an organizing tool. In 1999, I ran for and won a Boston City Council seat representing the community in which I had lived and worked for decades.
Once in office, the need for a vehicle through which to link my political representation to community organizing led to the development of the District 7 Roundtable, a monthly forum bringing residents and activists together to discuss issues, exchange ideas, and develop policy initiatives that could lead to political organizing and legislative action.
The 2000 Census showing that people of color were now the majority population in the City put a spotlight on the need for more political operational unity. To strengthen the unity between groups and people of color, the institutes at U Mass Boston focused on the black, Latino, and Asian communities sponsored a conference which led to organization of the New Majority Coalition.
The need to end the discrimination against those with criminal records led to the formation of the Boston Workers' Alliance (BWA) which played a leadership role in the development and passage of a state law combating such discrimination as well as removing the question of criminal conviction from the state job application.
Knowing that political victories alone are not enough, the BWA in its six year history has also established a worker staffing agency to provide income to the organization and jobs for its members. In addition it has helped its members establish businesses based on the philosophy that a job is not enough.
The recognition of an opportunity for additional community resources in an era of shrinking dollars led to my advocacy for the City to lease rather than sell City owned land in Roxbury designated for economic development. Eventually the City agreed to the policy on the city owned parcels in the Dudley Square area and to share the lease fees with the community. Negotiations are now taking place regarding the size of the community's share and the vehicle for the determination of use and distribution of the funds.
Obviously, those of us who seek to institutionalize the practice of justice in this country are far from our goal. Therefore, the struggle for justice and a civilized society must continue through the development of new forms of organization and strategies. As Maulana Ron Karenga said in the January 11, 2011 issue of the Final Call, "...to be organized is to be in ongoing structures that harness our energies and house and advance our interests and aspirations and unite us into an aware and active social force for African and human good in the world". Former Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan has temporarily succeeded in removing me from the front lines of the Boston struggle for justice. However, while I rest and prepare myself my return to the battle, others are continuing relentlessly to struggle to make Boston and this country a beacon for the practice of justice throughout the world.
As I look back over my 48 years of activism and service, I realize that I have been walking in the footsteps of my grandfather, Charles Henry Turner*, for whom I was named. His passion focused on studying the behavior of mice, roaches, insects of all kinds, and particularly bees and ants with their highly organized group behavior. He focused his life on understanding the behavior of life forms that many consider as "pests", unwanted intrusions into their space rather than seeing them as my grandfather saw them, as an essential aspect of God's creation.
My passion has been and continues to be the study of the innate ability of human beings to create new realities through organized action. Because of my African-American ancestry, I have focused on the demonstration of those capabilities by those human beings considered by many in this country as inferior life forms, an unwanted intrusion into their space. Hopefully, we will soon learn to recognize all human beings as beings created "in the image of God", each possessing a divine creative spirit.
A Luta Continua--The Struggle Continues,
Chuck
* The following books have more information on my grandfather's scientific work:
1) Bug Watching With Charles Henry Turner (Naturalist's Apprentice Biographies), Michael Elsohn Ross, 1997 (A children's book)
2) Selected Papers and Biography of Charles Henry Turner 1867-1923: Pioneer of Comparative Animal Behavior Studies (Black Studies), Professor Charles Abramson, The Edward Mellon Press, 2003 (An academic study of his life and work including a history of the Troy-Knight-Turner Family that I wrote at the author's request)
Next Week: Chapter Two: The Keystone Cops Strike Again
Click here to read any part in this BC series.
Monsanto’s Narrative of Warfare in a Kill Culture Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
With heart and soul they went about their business, and the name of it was power, domination over spirit and flesh, orgy of unchecked self-expression.
-Jean Amery, At the Mind's Limits
Our survival demands that we make a transition from vicious cycles of violence to virtuous cycles of nonviolence; from negative economies of death and destruction to living economies that sustain life on earth and our lives; from negative politics of corruption and fascism to living democracies which include concern for and participation of all life; and from negative cultures that are leading to mutual annihilation to positive and living cultures based on caring, compassion, and conservation.
-Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
It the same story: “occupiers” hallucinate and see intruders everywhere. Intruders are a threat to the existence of the occupiers; intruders must be killed. The narrative legitimizing this practice has proven to be lucrative. Killing is big business. A kill culture makes for a profitable enterprise.
Kill, kill, kill…for the good of the invaded species. Kill!
While the U.S. government spends trillions to kill humans and other species in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya, it also funnels billions to Monsanto, a police-like force that, in turn, hires troops of scientists and workers to deploy its chemical weaponry, glyphosate and imazapyr (weed killers) around the world.
Monsanto’s “aggressive marketing” and sometimes-illegal maneuvering (Haiti Grassroots Watch, May 2011) includes “creating a potential worldwide monopoly by buying up all competitors, bribes, infiltration of farmers' associations through the use of mercenaries and ‘ruthless legal battles’ including lawsuits against farmers.”
But did I mention how profitable it is to kill in a kill culture? What do peasant farmers, activists, lawyers, and even independent scientists know? Monsanto, says Monsanto, is a successful business. As the world’s largest seed company and one of the largest pesticide companies, Monsanto, “dominates [the world’s] proprietary seed market, a market worth almost $32 billion in 2010, up 10 percent from the previous year” (Haiti Grassroots Watch).
Monsanto is a god-sent! Who eradicates species that invade other species better than Monsanto? Its weed killer targets terrorizing species, violent species, invaders - in the same way the president of the U.S. can order a hit on any citizen or “terrorist” anywhere around the world.
Monsanto is powerful!
It is Homeland Security for it SAVES and PROTECTS occupiers from intruders. This is the narrative it offered the residents of Willapa Bay, Washington, who, whether or not they knew it or not, were being invaded by a terrorizing species! This dangerous, life-threatening, anti-Earth - breed of grass - caught the attention of the U.S. government. Spartina or alterniflora, grass - must be killed! Go for it, Monsanto! And yes, according to Truthout Fellow, Mike Ludwig, the weed killing corporation sent boats and helicopters to spray “thousands of gallons of herbicides into the bay’s shallow waters” to kill - that is, to save Willapa Bay (“Special Investigation: The Pesticide and Politics of America’s Eco-War,” Truthout, June 9, 2011).
It is the American Way! (Ain’t no new thing, as poet Gil Scott-Heron would say).
(Willapa Bay is polluted now….shhh…). The U.S. government’s effort to save and protect communities around the world from invading species is known as “species eradication” (“Special Investigation”). (Ain’t no new thing - species eradication!). Only in the margins of the world is there talk of another more life-threatening danger: Monsanto’s chemical weaponry is not only toxic to oysters while polluting the bay, it is also harmful to humans as well. Independent scientists, Ludwig writes, “have discovered potential links among the widespread use of glyphosate-based herbicides and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, birth defects and even attention deficit disorder.”
Collateral damage! The incidental death of neighboring species, including humans from cancer or other illnesses can’t be avoided!
“Research also shows that additives like surfactants in glyphosate in herbicides like Roundup are more toxic than glyphosate itself and can increase the toxicity of glyphosate.”
“Every time you hear the term 'invasive species,' think Monsanto,” biologist David Theodoropoulos said at an environmentalist conference in Oregon (“Special Investigation”). Ludwig summarizes Theodoropoulos’ position: “the idea that a wild plant or animal can be invasive is a myth. Species have moved, adapted and changed in different ecosystems for millions of years. ‘Change and movement are natural.’”
But Monsanto cannot become part of the military-industrial-complex by arguing that “change and movement are natural.” Ludwig’s report continues:
The war on invasive species is a war on a fact of life. Humans have caused or exacerbated these species ‘invasions’ by changing habitats and introducing species to new areas, and now we are trying to turn back the clock in an attempt to prevent nature from taking its new course. As long as people attempt to dominate the land, extract its resources and shape it to their liking, there will be money to be made and dramatic consequences for other livings things.
But Monsanto wants the world to ignore this non-knowledge and to remember that it is a giver of gifts to living things!
Monsanto sent the Earthquake ravished nation a “gift” of “hybrid maize and vegetable seeds,” some “505 tons of seed” (Haiti Grassroots Watch) to help in the reconstruction of that country. But how will Monsanto’s genetically modified weeds reconstruct Haiti’s food economy? Who really benefits from converting “peasant agriculture to corporate agriculture,” to use environmental activists Vandana Shiva’s words (Earth Democracy), with these hybrid seeds - the Haitians or the giant corporation, Monsanto?
(Hush, dissent is not welcomed!).
Monsanto democratizes poverty! Our weed killer or modified seeds will make you rich! Peasant farmers left with high levels of debt, writes Vandana Shiva, find themselves “deeper in poverty” (Earth Democracy). “Poverty is revealing itself in farmer suicides and the emergence of hunger for the first time in independent India.”
But the killing and suffering is all legal because “there will be money, and since there will be money, scientific data, Shiva writes, is given to scientists by Monsanto “and they publish it.” Monsanto does not lie - the caring corporation simply tinkers with the statistics - a little, because “informed citizens make free choices” and making free choices - well - that is too much like that other version of democracy.
That is not the American Way!
Monsanto’s story (operating as it does on the bodies of the poor, displaced, and dead) is that its uncompromising stance ensures “better things for better living.” It can and it will continue its good deeds because it is closely aligned with that privileged narrative - the one that promotes killing.
Monsanto’s narrative is a narrative of violence, a narrative, of warfare!
When you are a kill culture, warfare is big business!
-Jean Amery, At the Mind's Limits
Our survival demands that we make a transition from vicious cycles of violence to virtuous cycles of nonviolence; from negative economies of death and destruction to living economies that sustain life on earth and our lives; from negative politics of corruption and fascism to living democracies which include concern for and participation of all life; and from negative cultures that are leading to mutual annihilation to positive and living cultures based on caring, compassion, and conservation.
-Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
It the same story: “occupiers” hallucinate and see intruders everywhere. Intruders are a threat to the existence of the occupiers; intruders must be killed. The narrative legitimizing this practice has proven to be lucrative. Killing is big business. A kill culture makes for a profitable enterprise.
Kill, kill, kill…for the good of the invaded species. Kill!
While the U.S. government spends trillions to kill humans and other species in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya, it also funnels billions to Monsanto, a police-like force that, in turn, hires troops of scientists and workers to deploy its chemical weaponry, glyphosate and imazapyr (weed killers) around the world.
Monsanto’s “aggressive marketing” and sometimes-illegal maneuvering (Haiti Grassroots Watch, May 2011) includes “creating a potential worldwide monopoly by buying up all competitors, bribes, infiltration of farmers' associations through the use of mercenaries and ‘ruthless legal battles’ including lawsuits against farmers.”
But did I mention how profitable it is to kill in a kill culture? What do peasant farmers, activists, lawyers, and even independent scientists know? Monsanto, says Monsanto, is a successful business. As the world’s largest seed company and one of the largest pesticide companies, Monsanto, “dominates [the world’s] proprietary seed market, a market worth almost $32 billion in 2010, up 10 percent from the previous year” (Haiti Grassroots Watch).
Monsanto is a god-sent! Who eradicates species that invade other species better than Monsanto? Its weed killer targets terrorizing species, violent species, invaders - in the same way the president of the U.S. can order a hit on any citizen or “terrorist” anywhere around the world.
Monsanto is powerful!
It is Homeland Security for it SAVES and PROTECTS occupiers from intruders. This is the narrative it offered the residents of Willapa Bay, Washington, who, whether or not they knew it or not, were being invaded by a terrorizing species! This dangerous, life-threatening, anti-Earth - breed of grass - caught the attention of the U.S. government. Spartina or alterniflora, grass - must be killed! Go for it, Monsanto! And yes, according to Truthout Fellow, Mike Ludwig, the weed killing corporation sent boats and helicopters to spray “thousands of gallons of herbicides into the bay’s shallow waters” to kill - that is, to save Willapa Bay (“Special Investigation: The Pesticide and Politics of America’s Eco-War,” Truthout, June 9, 2011).
It is the American Way! (Ain’t no new thing, as poet Gil Scott-Heron would say).
(Willapa Bay is polluted now….shhh…). The U.S. government’s effort to save and protect communities around the world from invading species is known as “species eradication” (“Special Investigation”). (Ain’t no new thing - species eradication!). Only in the margins of the world is there talk of another more life-threatening danger: Monsanto’s chemical weaponry is not only toxic to oysters while polluting the bay, it is also harmful to humans as well. Independent scientists, Ludwig writes, “have discovered potential links among the widespread use of glyphosate-based herbicides and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, birth defects and even attention deficit disorder.”
Collateral damage! The incidental death of neighboring species, including humans from cancer or other illnesses can’t be avoided!
“Research also shows that additives like surfactants in glyphosate in herbicides like Roundup are more toxic than glyphosate itself and can increase the toxicity of glyphosate.”
“Every time you hear the term 'invasive species,' think Monsanto,” biologist David Theodoropoulos said at an environmentalist conference in Oregon (“Special Investigation”). Ludwig summarizes Theodoropoulos’ position: “the idea that a wild plant or animal can be invasive is a myth. Species have moved, adapted and changed in different ecosystems for millions of years. ‘Change and movement are natural.’”
But Monsanto cannot become part of the military-industrial-complex by arguing that “change and movement are natural.” Ludwig’s report continues:
The war on invasive species is a war on a fact of life. Humans have caused or exacerbated these species ‘invasions’ by changing habitats and introducing species to new areas, and now we are trying to turn back the clock in an attempt to prevent nature from taking its new course. As long as people attempt to dominate the land, extract its resources and shape it to their liking, there will be money to be made and dramatic consequences for other livings things.
But Monsanto wants the world to ignore this non-knowledge and to remember that it is a giver of gifts to living things!
Monsanto sent the Earthquake ravished nation a “gift” of “hybrid maize and vegetable seeds,” some “505 tons of seed” (Haiti Grassroots Watch) to help in the reconstruction of that country. But how will Monsanto’s genetically modified weeds reconstruct Haiti’s food economy? Who really benefits from converting “peasant agriculture to corporate agriculture,” to use environmental activists Vandana Shiva’s words (Earth Democracy), with these hybrid seeds - the Haitians or the giant corporation, Monsanto?
(Hush, dissent is not welcomed!).
Monsanto democratizes poverty! Our weed killer or modified seeds will make you rich! Peasant farmers left with high levels of debt, writes Vandana Shiva, find themselves “deeper in poverty” (Earth Democracy). “Poverty is revealing itself in farmer suicides and the emergence of hunger for the first time in independent India.”
But the killing and suffering is all legal because “there will be money, and since there will be money, scientific data, Shiva writes, is given to scientists by Monsanto “and they publish it.” Monsanto does not lie - the caring corporation simply tinkers with the statistics - a little, because “informed citizens make free choices” and making free choices - well - that is too much like that other version of democracy.
That is not the American Way!
Monsanto’s story (operating as it does on the bodies of the poor, displaced, and dead) is that its uncompromising stance ensures “better things for better living.” It can and it will continue its good deeds because it is closely aligned with that privileged narrative - the one that promotes killing.
Monsanto’s narrative is a narrative of violence, a narrative, of warfare!
When you are a kill culture, warfare is big business!
NATO: What is it good for? Left Margin By Carl Bloice BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
When General George Joulwan appeared on BBC America the other day, he danced around the question of the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe did have a couple of interesting things to say about the war in Libya.
It is true, Joulwan said, that the allied forces fighting there to overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi are running out of weapons and ammunition; in fact, they are short of the kinds of precision weaponry that limits collateral damage to civilian non-combatants. They just might end up having to “buy them from the United States,” said Joulwan, a director at General Dynamics. (The company makes fighter-bombers and radar disablers) When asked directly about NATO’s future he cautioned, “it’s not Club Med” and said the problem the alliance has is an absence of U.S. leadership and lack of “mission clarity.” But he evaded the question of why NATO continues to exist at all.
These days, politicians and establishment pundits alike are widely commenting on the question: NATO, what is it good for?
If you accept the notion that in the years following World War II, Western Europe faced a threat of a Soviet invasion, then the military alliance had a raison d’être. Actually, that idea was as a problematic as the “dominos” that were supposedly going to fall in Asia. The concern about a Soviet invasion was widely accepted and the division on the continent between the “East” and the “West” was real. With the fall of Soviet communism and the end of the Cold War, political support for NATO began to decline - as naturally it would.
The alliance did get involved in a European military conflict, a messy one that resulted in the dismemberment of the Republic of Yugoslavia and leading to various simmering ethnic conflicts that have yet to be resolved. When the U.S. decided to invade Iraq it proved impossible to bring NATO along and the U.S. was forced to rely on a “coalition of the willing.” Following 911, the Western Europeans did commit forces to Afghanistan but the NATO involvement was not whole-hearted, and is now on the wane.
Back in December 2009, when President Obama announced that he was sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and that the U.S. would begin winding down its military operation there sometime this year, General Joulwan said he expected other countries to respond to an appeal from Washington. "I truly believe, if approached right, you're going to see several NATO nations, more than just Great Britain, join us. What has been missing here is a decision. There is now a decision. And once the president makes a decision, in my experience, the military turns to. They will generate this force and get it there as quickly as they can to meet the mission on the ground and I hope our NATO allies act with equal decisiveness to get there because it's extremely important, because this cannot drag on forever."
Now, 18 months later, the NATO member governments involved are, one after the other, pulling their countries out of combat roles in Afghanistan, and the U.S. finds itself in the position of pleading with them not use the anticipated drawn down of some U.S. forces as an excuse speed up their own withdrawals. Meanwhile, here at home, military chiefs are speaking out on Afghan policy with a candor that probably would have earned them censure or dismissal in the time of President Harry Truman, arguing against any substantial withdrawal this summer as promised.
“With the Cold War and the Soviet threat a distant memory, there is little political willingness, on a country-by-country basis, to provide adequate public funds to the military. (Britain and France, which each spend more than 2 percent of their gross domestic products on defense, are two of the exceptions here.),” Richard N. Haass president of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in the Washington Post June 17. “Even where a willingness to intervene with military force exists, such as in Afghanistan, where upward of 35,000 European troops are deployed, there are severe constraints. Some governments, such as Germany, have historically limited their participation in combat operations, while the cultural acceptance of casualties is fading in many European nations.”
Haass wrote that “it would be wrong, not to mention fruitless, to blame the Europeans and their choices alone. There are larger historical forces contributing to the continent’s increasing irrelevance to world affairs.”
Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates used his recent final policy speech to blast NATO and the Europeans for not adequately sharing responsibility for policing the world. He warned of “the real possibility for a dim if not dismal future for the transatlantic alliance.” Haass commented that Gates “may not have been pessimistic enough.”
“The U.S.-European partnership that proved so central to managing and winning the Cold War will inevitably play a far diminished role in the years to come,” wrote Haass. “To some extent, we’re already there: If NATO didn’t exist today, would anyone feel compelled to create it? The honest, if awkward, answer is no.”
Haass’ commentary was titled, “Why Europe no longer matters.” However, Europe does matter – a great deal. It’s just that in the absence of a perceived common threat and with the rapidly changing pattern of global economic and political power, the glue that held the individual nations together in military alliance no longer holds.
“Last month, this column noted that NATO was created in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Soviet army; it could long ago have unfurled the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner; it has now become an instrument of mischief, and when the Libyan misadventure is finished, America should debate whether NATO also should be finished,” wrote conservative columnist George Will in the Post June 17. He went on to speak of NATO as “a Potemkin alliance whose primary use these days is perverse: It provides a patina of multilateralism to U.S. military interventions on which Europe is essentially a free rider.”
Will’s comment points to the crux of the matter. While Washington now views the alliance as an instrument for action in parts of the world away from the European continent, the Europeans are reluctant to go along with that mission statement. A good example is the r efusal of Germany’s conservative government to join in the attack on Libya. Reflected here is the question of Europe’s place in the world.
Geographically, NATO has been defined as Western Europe, plus the UK’s two former English-speaking colonies in North America, and with the U.S. as the linchpin. Today, it is an alliance of 28 nations made up primarily of white people who are being drawn into conflicts within countries of the “third world,” primarily in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. However, in the wake of the end of the Cold war and the rise of China, India and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, tectonic shifts are underway in international relations. Axiomatically, the movement flows from changes in economic relations. Germany, for instance, is expanding its relations with Russia, and China is Germany's second largest trading partner outside of the European Union, after the United States.
With regard to the conflict in Libya, mention is frequently made of the Europeans’ “special interest” in what happens in that country, interests that the U.S. does not share. (You thought the war is being fought to protect Libyans from attack by the undemocratic and brutal Gaddafi regime?) Actually, in this case, it is the special interest of the UK and France. They have “special interests” in what happens in their former colonies, dependencies and with their client governments in North Africa. And they are hardly humanitarian.
The Fourth International Libyan Oil and Gas exhibition was scheduled for Tripoli this October. In announcing the event, the organizers reported, “Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa with 42 billion barrels of oil and over 1.3 trillion cubic metres of gas. With only 25 percent of Libya’s surface territory explored to date there is every chance that actual reserves could see this figure dwarfed in coming years.”
“As Europe’s single largest oil supplier, the second largest oil producer in Africa and the continent’s fourth largest gas supplier, Libya dominates the petroleum sector in the Southern Mediterranean area and has ambitious plans for the future.”
London and Paris initiated the Libyan war and lured Washington into the conflict with appeals to NATO “solidarity.” The Obama Administration took the bait and when it sought to transfer responsibility for the war onto the Europeans, it found that in addition to the European public’s aversion to such missions, the European governments interested in the fighting lacked the wherewithal for a sustain engagement. Thus, Gates’ lament about the Europeans not doing their part.
Actually, the only surprising aspect of this situation is that all involved so badly miscalculated the cost of the aggression. Europe is in crisis. With Greece nearing an economic meltdown and Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy waiting in the wings, the governments on the continent are in no position to bear any significant additional military expenditures and it’s unlikely the European public would put up with it.
Likewise, in the U.S., public opinion is increasingly opposed to such foreign military campaigns, especially in a place like Libya where there is no Al-Qaida and where we are told the U.S. has “no national interest.”
The White House cannot argue that we are in Libya to meet any international treaty obligations. This most likely explains President Obama’s bonehead decision to ignore the U.S, Constitution and argue that the Administration doesn’t need Congressional approval for engaging in war in Libya. The U.S. is currently involved in military conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and now regularly launches drone attacks on areas of Yemen from a base in Djibouti. The latter “secret” operation is also being conducted without authorization from Congress, and will no doubt be defended on the ridiculous grounds that no ground troops are involved.
Once again last week, General Joulwan complained about the supposed absence of “mission clarity,” this time around Libya. He made it clear he believes that if it becomes clear that the aim of the war is to bring about regime change and the Obama Administration just says so, the rest of NATO will turn to. He’s whistling in the dark. An alliance that has lost its relevancy and faces economic calamities on both sides of the Atlantic can’t, and won’t, turn things around. What we should hope for is that White House leadership will be employed to unite the governments involved in giving full support to the efforts of the African Union to find a negotiated path out of the deepening and costly quagmire.
It is true, Joulwan said, that the allied forces fighting there to overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi are running out of weapons and ammunition; in fact, they are short of the kinds of precision weaponry that limits collateral damage to civilian non-combatants. They just might end up having to “buy them from the United States,” said Joulwan, a director at General Dynamics. (The company makes fighter-bombers and radar disablers) When asked directly about NATO’s future he cautioned, “it’s not Club Med” and said the problem the alliance has is an absence of U.S. leadership and lack of “mission clarity.” But he evaded the question of why NATO continues to exist at all.
These days, politicians and establishment pundits alike are widely commenting on the question: NATO, what is it good for?
If you accept the notion that in the years following World War II, Western Europe faced a threat of a Soviet invasion, then the military alliance had a raison d’être. Actually, that idea was as a problematic as the “dominos” that were supposedly going to fall in Asia. The concern about a Soviet invasion was widely accepted and the division on the continent between the “East” and the “West” was real. With the fall of Soviet communism and the end of the Cold War, political support for NATO began to decline - as naturally it would.
The alliance did get involved in a European military conflict, a messy one that resulted in the dismemberment of the Republic of Yugoslavia and leading to various simmering ethnic conflicts that have yet to be resolved. When the U.S. decided to invade Iraq it proved impossible to bring NATO along and the U.S. was forced to rely on a “coalition of the willing.” Following 911, the Western Europeans did commit forces to Afghanistan but the NATO involvement was not whole-hearted, and is now on the wane.
Back in December 2009, when President Obama announced that he was sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and that the U.S. would begin winding down its military operation there sometime this year, General Joulwan said he expected other countries to respond to an appeal from Washington. "I truly believe, if approached right, you're going to see several NATO nations, more than just Great Britain, join us. What has been missing here is a decision. There is now a decision. And once the president makes a decision, in my experience, the military turns to. They will generate this force and get it there as quickly as they can to meet the mission on the ground and I hope our NATO allies act with equal decisiveness to get there because it's extremely important, because this cannot drag on forever."
Now, 18 months later, the NATO member governments involved are, one after the other, pulling their countries out of combat roles in Afghanistan, and the U.S. finds itself in the position of pleading with them not use the anticipated drawn down of some U.S. forces as an excuse speed up their own withdrawals. Meanwhile, here at home, military chiefs are speaking out on Afghan policy with a candor that probably would have earned them censure or dismissal in the time of President Harry Truman, arguing against any substantial withdrawal this summer as promised.
“With the Cold War and the Soviet threat a distant memory, there is little political willingness, on a country-by-country basis, to provide adequate public funds to the military. (Britain and France, which each spend more than 2 percent of their gross domestic products on defense, are two of the exceptions here.),” Richard N. Haass president of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in the Washington Post June 17. “Even where a willingness to intervene with military force exists, such as in Afghanistan, where upward of 35,000 European troops are deployed, there are severe constraints. Some governments, such as Germany, have historically limited their participation in combat operations, while the cultural acceptance of casualties is fading in many European nations.”
Haass wrote that “it would be wrong, not to mention fruitless, to blame the Europeans and their choices alone. There are larger historical forces contributing to the continent’s increasing irrelevance to world affairs.”
Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates used his recent final policy speech to blast NATO and the Europeans for not adequately sharing responsibility for policing the world. He warned of “the real possibility for a dim if not dismal future for the transatlantic alliance.” Haass commented that Gates “may not have been pessimistic enough.”
“The U.S.-European partnership that proved so central to managing and winning the Cold War will inevitably play a far diminished role in the years to come,” wrote Haass. “To some extent, we’re already there: If NATO didn’t exist today, would anyone feel compelled to create it? The honest, if awkward, answer is no.”
Haass’ commentary was titled, “Why Europe no longer matters.” However, Europe does matter – a great deal. It’s just that in the absence of a perceived common threat and with the rapidly changing pattern of global economic and political power, the glue that held the individual nations together in military alliance no longer holds.
“Last month, this column noted that NATO was created in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Soviet army; it could long ago have unfurled the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner; it has now become an instrument of mischief, and when the Libyan misadventure is finished, America should debate whether NATO also should be finished,” wrote conservative columnist George Will in the Post June 17. He went on to speak of NATO as “a Potemkin alliance whose primary use these days is perverse: It provides a patina of multilateralism to U.S. military interventions on which Europe is essentially a free rider.”
Will’s comment points to the crux of the matter. While Washington now views the alliance as an instrument for action in parts of the world away from the European continent, the Europeans are reluctant to go along with that mission statement. A good example is the r efusal of Germany’s conservative government to join in the attack on Libya. Reflected here is the question of Europe’s place in the world.
Geographically, NATO has been defined as Western Europe, plus the UK’s two former English-speaking colonies in North America, and with the U.S. as the linchpin. Today, it is an alliance of 28 nations made up primarily of white people who are being drawn into conflicts within countries of the “third world,” primarily in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. However, in the wake of the end of the Cold war and the rise of China, India and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, tectonic shifts are underway in international relations. Axiomatically, the movement flows from changes in economic relations. Germany, for instance, is expanding its relations with Russia, and China is Germany's second largest trading partner outside of the European Union, after the United States.
With regard to the conflict in Libya, mention is frequently made of the Europeans’ “special interest” in what happens in that country, interests that the U.S. does not share. (You thought the war is being fought to protect Libyans from attack by the undemocratic and brutal Gaddafi regime?) Actually, in this case, it is the special interest of the UK and France. They have “special interests” in what happens in their former colonies, dependencies and with their client governments in North Africa. And they are hardly humanitarian.
The Fourth International Libyan Oil and Gas exhibition was scheduled for Tripoli this October. In announcing the event, the organizers reported, “Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa with 42 billion barrels of oil and over 1.3 trillion cubic metres of gas. With only 25 percent of Libya’s surface territory explored to date there is every chance that actual reserves could see this figure dwarfed in coming years.”
“As Europe’s single largest oil supplier, the second largest oil producer in Africa and the continent’s fourth largest gas supplier, Libya dominates the petroleum sector in the Southern Mediterranean area and has ambitious plans for the future.”
London and Paris initiated the Libyan war and lured Washington into the conflict with appeals to NATO “solidarity.” The Obama Administration took the bait and when it sought to transfer responsibility for the war onto the Europeans, it found that in addition to the European public’s aversion to such missions, the European governments interested in the fighting lacked the wherewithal for a sustain engagement. Thus, Gates’ lament about the Europeans not doing their part.
Actually, the only surprising aspect of this situation is that all involved so badly miscalculated the cost of the aggression. Europe is in crisis. With Greece nearing an economic meltdown and Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy waiting in the wings, the governments on the continent are in no position to bear any significant additional military expenditures and it’s unlikely the European public would put up with it.
Likewise, in the U.S., public opinion is increasingly opposed to such foreign military campaigns, especially in a place like Libya where there is no Al-Qaida and where we are told the U.S. has “no national interest.”
The White House cannot argue that we are in Libya to meet any international treaty obligations. This most likely explains President Obama’s bonehead decision to ignore the U.S, Constitution and argue that the Administration doesn’t need Congressional approval for engaging in war in Libya. The U.S. is currently involved in military conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and now regularly launches drone attacks on areas of Yemen from a base in Djibouti. The latter “secret” operation is also being conducted without authorization from Congress, and will no doubt be defended on the ridiculous grounds that no ground troops are involved.
Once again last week, General Joulwan complained about the supposed absence of “mission clarity,” this time around Libya. He made it clear he believes that if it becomes clear that the aim of the war is to bring about regime change and the Obama Administration just says so, the rest of NATO will turn to. He’s whistling in the dark. An alliance that has lost its relevancy and faces economic calamities on both sides of the Atlantic can’t, and won’t, turn things around. What we should hope for is that White House leadership will be employed to unite the governments involved in giving full support to the efforts of the African Union to find a negotiated path out of the deepening and costly quagmire.
Will Americans Ever Become Sane? Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
"Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories ...Our experience has shown us that in the general framework of daily struggle, this battle against ourselves, this struggle against our own weaknesses...is the most difficult of all."
- Amilcar Cabral
"Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity."
- Frantz Fanon
Will 'Americans' collectively ever become sane? In a word, no - not as long as the corporate-stream media, 'educational' institutions, and corporate-government of this nation are allowed to succeed in indoctrinating and controlling the past and present narrative [i.e. stories] of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people.
This control comes in the form of mythology, distortions, omissions, and outright lies; versus recognizing the utter insanity of supporting prevaricating systemic politicians, perpetual war, and political, economic, and social hypocrisy & injustices at home and abroad.
The American Heritage College Dictionary defines the word sane as being 1) "Of sound mind; mentally healthy." and 2) "Having or showing sound judgment; reasonable." On the other hand, the word pathology is defined, in relevant part, as the "anatomic or functioning manifestations of a disease." Unfortunately, it is the latter definition that demonstratively applies to the body politic, including institutions, of the United States of America. Until this is recognized and changed, this nation will not be collectively sane.
The following words of Frederick Douglass address the ongoing pathological [i.e. sick or diseased] and hypocritical reality which afflicts this nation, when he said, "The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe." This nation's systemic misleaders of all colors [from both major political parties] are a manifestation of pathology.
In this year of 2011, in the 21st century, there is no sane rationale for spending trillions of dollars on corporate give-aways and waging wars abroad, while simultaneously having joblessness, homelessness, home foreclosures, no single-payer (universal health care), and the largest prison incarceration rate in the world. There is no sane rationale for the endless exploitation by the few of the many. There is no sane rationale for government secrecy, corporate hegemony, and the devastation of this planet--Mother Earth. There is however, the ever-present sickness of greed, which is constantly reinforced by a distorted and disfigured narrative of the everyday people's past and present history and reality-- propagated by this nation's pathological systemic institutions and corporate-stream media.
The United States, led by its misleaders (instead of by its everyday people) is now, more than ever, steeped in a pathology of mythology and madness which, if not recognized, corrected and reversed; threatens to further environmentally denigrate this planet and ultimately destroy humanity. The time is here for the everyday people to collectively and uncompromisingly say, NO MORE! Not only for our sanity, but also for the sake of our very existence!
For a certainty, this predator drone missile U.S. president, Barack Obama (who is currently the black face of U.S. corporate/military hegemony abroad; and secrecy, subterfuge, and de facto political repression at home) will no doubt have made some bogus rhetorical, double-speak media statement pertaining to some kind of withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (which will of course essentially entail his renaming them and their "mission"), which will be meant to once again bamboozle everyday people - just as he did in the case of the ongoing U.S. occupation of, and fighting in, Iraq. Moreover, just as with the NATO [i.e. U.S.] led war of aggression has devastated the ordinary people of the oil rich African nation of Libya, so it is, that to a lesser but no less obscene degree, the economic life-lines and infrastructure for just plain ordinary, everyday people right here in this nation are being steadily emaciated. To allow this to continue at home and abroad would be pathological and the height of insanity.
There comes a time when the everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people of this nation must collectively prescribe a cure for ourselves and break free from this pathology; and that time is NOW. In order to do this, we need encouragement, strength, and determination gleaned from one another collectively. There is no time better than the present, and frankly we do not have much time left if we are to reverse being made extinct by the corporate-induced nuclear, military, and environmental nightmare that surely awaits not only this nation but the entire planet.
These are challenging and perilous times. Time for systemic change! Will we "fulfill our [collective] mission" as human beings, or will we "betray it?" Betrayal is unthinkable.
Onward then my sisters and brothers! Onward!
- Amilcar Cabral
"Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity."
- Frantz Fanon
Will 'Americans' collectively ever become sane? In a word, no - not as long as the corporate-stream media, 'educational' institutions, and corporate-government of this nation are allowed to succeed in indoctrinating and controlling the past and present narrative [i.e. stories] of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people.
This control comes in the form of mythology, distortions, omissions, and outright lies; versus recognizing the utter insanity of supporting prevaricating systemic politicians, perpetual war, and political, economic, and social hypocrisy & injustices at home and abroad.
The American Heritage College Dictionary defines the word sane as being 1) "Of sound mind; mentally healthy." and 2) "Having or showing sound judgment; reasonable." On the other hand, the word pathology is defined, in relevant part, as the "anatomic or functioning manifestations of a disease." Unfortunately, it is the latter definition that demonstratively applies to the body politic, including institutions, of the United States of America. Until this is recognized and changed, this nation will not be collectively sane.
The following words of Frederick Douglass address the ongoing pathological [i.e. sick or diseased] and hypocritical reality which afflicts this nation, when he said, "The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe." This nation's systemic misleaders of all colors [from both major political parties] are a manifestation of pathology.
In this year of 2011, in the 21st century, there is no sane rationale for spending trillions of dollars on corporate give-aways and waging wars abroad, while simultaneously having joblessness, homelessness, home foreclosures, no single-payer (universal health care), and the largest prison incarceration rate in the world. There is no sane rationale for the endless exploitation by the few of the many. There is no sane rationale for government secrecy, corporate hegemony, and the devastation of this planet--Mother Earth. There is however, the ever-present sickness of greed, which is constantly reinforced by a distorted and disfigured narrative of the everyday people's past and present history and reality-- propagated by this nation's pathological systemic institutions and corporate-stream media.
The United States, led by its misleaders (instead of by its everyday people) is now, more than ever, steeped in a pathology of mythology and madness which, if not recognized, corrected and reversed; threatens to further environmentally denigrate this planet and ultimately destroy humanity. The time is here for the everyday people to collectively and uncompromisingly say, NO MORE! Not only for our sanity, but also for the sake of our very existence!
For a certainty, this predator drone missile U.S. president, Barack Obama (who is currently the black face of U.S. corporate/military hegemony abroad; and secrecy, subterfuge, and de facto political repression at home) will no doubt have made some bogus rhetorical, double-speak media statement pertaining to some kind of withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (which will of course essentially entail his renaming them and their "mission"), which will be meant to once again bamboozle everyday people - just as he did in the case of the ongoing U.S. occupation of, and fighting in, Iraq. Moreover, just as with the NATO [i.e. U.S.] led war of aggression has devastated the ordinary people of the oil rich African nation of Libya, so it is, that to a lesser but no less obscene degree, the economic life-lines and infrastructure for just plain ordinary, everyday people right here in this nation are being steadily emaciated. To allow this to continue at home and abroad would be pathological and the height of insanity.
There comes a time when the everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people of this nation must collectively prescribe a cure for ourselves and break free from this pathology; and that time is NOW. In order to do this, we need encouragement, strength, and determination gleaned from one another collectively. There is no time better than the present, and frankly we do not have much time left if we are to reverse being made extinct by the corporate-induced nuclear, military, and environmental nightmare that surely awaits not only this nation but the entire planet.
These are challenging and perilous times. Time for systemic change! Will we "fulfill our [collective] mission" as human beings, or will we "betray it?" Betrayal is unthinkable.
Onward then my sisters and brothers! Onward!
What Will It Take to Bring Obama Home? Consider the Power Of Write-In Voting For 2012 Moving Left – Part 13 By Suzanne Brooks BlackCommentator.com Columnist
Note: This commentary is in place of Ms. Brooks “Women of Color” column.
Having worked in support Barack Obama’s election to the presidency, I have, since his election, followed his written commitments to implement several constructive programs, services and actions to leverage the efforts of women of color. I’ve looked for constructive programs, services and actions to leverage the efforts of women of color to rise from the bottom of US society, where we have been in every year of this country’s existence, but found women of color again thrown under the proverbial bus. Therefore, I have been searching for new strategies which can be implemented, concurrently, to give the maximum voice and power to the grassroots and working class, along with those now in our ranks (or homeless, jobless and hopeless) who used to be the middle class.
As the primary and general elections of 2012 draw closer, the Democrats and Obama administration have resumed the age-old strategy of sort of associating themselves, with smiles on their faces and pats on our heads, with the millions of poor, foreclosed, language and religious minorities, LGBT communities, unemployed and underemployed, uneducated and undereducated, and all the others who are outside the 13,000 richest families and their corporate agents. The wealthy continue to amass unprecedented power and wealth, while millions will receive death sentences by degree with the coming cuts in food, shelter, healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid), medicine, jobs, unemployment compensation, education (pre-school to doctoral levels), libraries, arts of all kinds, childcare, senior care, and all the other needs we have to survive physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.
It is time we faced the truth once and for all. The savagely greedy who are now living carnivorously off the majority of the people of the country, who have more houses than they can live in, more cars than they can drive and more money than they can spend in a lifetime, do not view the majority of us as worthy of anything - including life. So they can live in luxury, spending more than a million dollars on a meal to entertain visiting “heads of state”. In the streets outside the banquet hall, people are foraging in garbage cans and sleeping in the streets, all the while in fear, as much from those who are supposed to be “representing” us and/or “protecting” us, as from any so-called criminals.
Those who steal food to live are jailed as criminals. Those who steal homes from millions are, for the most part, allowed to continue their activities with ever-increasing monetary rewards. What is the definition of the word criminal today?
With these thoughts in mind, the changing US demographics are increasing in importance. By 2013, whites/European Americans will no longer be a national majority, but they may retain the majority of the country’s wealth and political power unless something stops the momentum.
To those who are not in denial, patterns employed to institute apartheid in South Africa after the so-called World War II can be seen underway in the US. Large numbers of schools serving people of color, the poor, grassroots and working class are being closed. The remaining public schools are being turned over to white corporate control. An overseer class of people of color is being established. These “privileged” children will attend “private” schools where they will be indoctrinated to believe they are better than the majority of people of color whom they will help to oppress.
The turning over of public housing to white corporate control will be implemented soon. Food, education, housing, jobs and prisons will become systems of social management. This will enable a small white power elite and their overseers to control the unarmed, uneducated, unhealthy grassroots, working class groups and eliminate a real middle class by subjecting them to extreme social pressures that demean and debilitate them to preclude any thoughts of rebellion by keeping them in a constant basic survival mode from day to day.
In this way, as was the case in South Africa, in a short time, a small white minority can be empowered to control the people of color of the country who will make up the majority of the population. If the people allow this to happen, there will be a very long period of suffering and dying. As can be seen in South Africa today, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to overcome the consequences of such experiences. So what are we to do?
Surely, it will not be enough to have another rousing Sunday sermon nor another march, be it on Washington or any other place in this country. While those actions had impacts in the past, they were not lasting impacts or we would not be faced with unprecedented powerlessness, real or believed, based on current propaganda.
Increasingly, the news as it was once reported has been replaced by endless stories of local and regional weather, lots of sports, stories of outlandish celebrity behavior and occasional tales of gross immorality by politicians who, for the most part, do little more than apologize.
The important news, current or historical, goes largely unreported. There is no mention of truth. Instead, news is reported as always having 2 sides, even if one side is a fabrication. This is an age-old strategy. In the days of legal chattel slavery, slave owners mutually agreed not to publicize slave escapes so those still in captivity would not learn that many were escaping. Many did, but it was kept quiet. So too, the historical intervention of 5 million US citizens who sent telegrams to Washington, DC when President Nixon fired Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox, in a massive, collective, impromptu order that the Watergate investigation continue, forced Nixon to appoint Leon Jaworski to the post from which he had fired Cox. Ultimately, it was in large measure these 5 million voices that made it clear nothing else would be accepted. The ultimate outcome was Nixon’s resignation. One lesson in this is that the masses of people have the power, if they act - whether organized or as individuals, in planned or spontaneous acts to take control.
There is a second lesson, however. It is that one spontaneous action is not enough but must be followed by planned actions and organization. We are seeing this today in Egypt where the young people succeeded in ousting President Mubarak but lack needed, long term, organizational experience to keep control. These are the lessons before our eyes right now.
What does this have to do with the upcoming primary and general elections? Several issues are already clear. If all that is done is a repetition of actions and strategies in 2008 that made it possible for Barack Obama to become president, then the masses will get the usual hugs and meaningless promises from the primary to general election season and be forgotten after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
President Obama was elected in November 2008. Two and a half years later, he met with the Congressional Black Caucus for the first time. After neglecting Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rico for the same period, his recent visit there flopped. He is attempting to cull the favor of Africans by sending his wife and children there, without him. During his administration, massive numbers of Mexicans and other Latinos have been deported, though it has been kept out of “mainstream” news.
The Obama administration, in clear support of past kidnappings of President Aristide of Haiti, tried to prevent Aristide from returning to Haiti before the most recent Haitian elections. Similarly, he maintains hostility to Venezuelan President Chavez and is not supporting Bolivia’s President, the only indigenous person ever to achieve a presidency in the Americas. The rest of the Americas are working toward international cooperation as the European Union members once did.
Just as the Romans could not see the impending fall of their empire, neither can the power elite of the US. The world has changed. Rather than holding on to the English-only-US-in-control-of-the-world mentality, the US would do better to lead in promoting justice, multiculturalism, multilingualism, and other diversity related concepts, but to do this would require ending racism and racism plus sexism for women of color inside this country. Nothing can be reformed here without these changes occurring. This cannot be left to the whims of those in power, prepared to self-destruct before embracing equity and justice.
It is up to the rest of us who intend to survive and to be a part of a new world order that includes us all. This means getting involved in many ways. We need not conform to a single course of action but can embark on many which can work collaboratively and concurrently.
This essay advocates the study of the process of write-in voting as a mechanism to draft candidates, rather than through a party process. The suggestion here is to draft Barbara Lee, Member of Congress from Oakland, California for President and Dennis Kucinich, Member of Congress from Ohio, for Vice President in the 2012 Democratic primaries.
In some states, if 100 to 200 people write-in the same candidate in the primary, then that person’s name will be printed on the ballot of the general election. It is critically important that everyone who will cast a write-in ballot contact the local, state and federal offices governing their write-in ballots in any way to insure that their ballot is counted and not thrown out in the precincts or during the vote counting. This cannot be left to others to insure. Thereafter, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party should be notified of the intention of writing in votes during the primary, with the additional information that unless promises made by Obama, his team, and the Democratic Party are kept and made irreversible in laws before the General Election, that Lee and Kucinich will also receive the same write-in votes at the General Election.
No doubt, Obama will win nomination again by the Democratic Party Primary, but if a significant number of grassroots, working class, disabled, religious minorities, people of color, poor, homeless, LGBT and others write in Lee and Kucinich, shock waves will be sent through the Democratic Party. If, as happened less than a month ago, Obama can announce giving billions of dollars to the Egyptian people to forgive debts and to provide social services and help for small businesses there, then people in this country, whose tax dollars are being given by Obama to the Egyptians, should also be entitled to the same helping, caring treatment.
When are the millions of homeless people going to be taken care of? When are those who lost their homes to foreclosures going to be helped into other homes? When are the death sentences on those who have no medical care or inadequate medical care going to be lifted? When are the insurance companies, which are making millions, going to be ended and a national health plan, which is the same for all, installed? When are racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination going to be treated as the crimes they are? When are the corporations and the wealthy going to pay really fair tax shares? Almost half the corporations pay nothing. We do not need to allow any more time for these promises to be kept.
There is money available for all the wars, secret and public, and for handouts to other rich people around the world. We know that sending money to Egypt, like the money promised to Haiti, or New Orleans, it will never reach the masses there. How long will we go along to get along because we are afraid to take a stand? Our people are already dying and more will die unless we insist that promises made to get our votes must be kept this time and every time. It will not matter what party is in office if people continue to close their eyes to the enslavement already in progress in the “privatized” prisons, which include youth facilities, continues uninterrupted.
To those who think the write-in voting process cannot succeed, look to the past. Do your own homework. The information below is to get this process started. There will still be the need to think of other strategies that can complement or supplement the suggestions here. Serious, innovative, old strategies used in new ways and completely new ideas are all needed. We can all do something.
The information below is from Wikipedia {with bracketed comments from this article’s author} because it is written in a manner understandable by people at many reading levels. Only information about presidential primaries is included. Every voter needs to check their own location and not depend on others to do the work for them. Really free people act in their own interests. Those who are curious should research information on write-in campaigns for other political offices.
Wikipedia: A write-in candidate is a candidate in an election whose name does not appear on the ballot, but for whom voters may vote nonetheless by writing in the person's name. Some states and local jurisdictions allow a voter to affix a sticker with a write-in candidate's name on it to the ballot in lieu of actually writing in the candidate's name. Write-in candidacies are sometimes a result of a candidate being legally or procedurally ineligible to run under his or her own name or party. In some cases, write-in campaigns have been organized to support a candidate who is not personally involved in running; this may be a form of draft campaign.
Write-in candidates rarely win, and votes are often cast for ineligible people or fictional characters. {Note: This does not mean they can never win.} Some jurisdictions require write-in candidates be registered as official candidates before the election.F This is standard in elections with a large pool of potential candidates, as there may be multiple candidates with the same name that could be written in.
Many states and municipalities allow for write-in votes in a partisan primary where no candidate is listed on the ballot to have the same functional effect as nominating petitions: for example, if there are no Reform Party members on the ballot for state general assembly and a candidate receives more than 200 write-in votes when the primary election is held (or the other number of signatures that were required for ballot access), the candidate will be placed on the ballot on that ballot line for the general election. In most places, this provision is in place for non-partisan elections as well.
In the United States, write-in candidates have a very small chance of winning, but there have been some notable write-in candidates in the past.
Presidential primaries
In 1928, Herbert Hoover won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary on write-ins, polling 100,279.
In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the Democratic New Jersey presidential primary with 34,278 write-ins.
In 1944, Thomas Dewey won the Republican Pennsylvania presidential primary with 146,706 write-ins. He also won the Oregon Republican presidential primary with 50,001 write-ins.
In 1948, Harold Stassen won the Republican Pennsylvania presidential primary with 81,242 write-ins.
In 1952, Robert Taft won the Republican Nebraska presidential primary with 79,357 write-ins.
Also in 1952, Estes Kefauver won the Democratic Pennsylvania presidential primary with 93,160 write-ins.
Also in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary with 254,898 write-ins.
In 1956, Dwight Eisenhower won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary with 51,951 write-ins.
In 1960, Richard Nixon won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary with 53,164 write-ins.
Also in 1960, John F. Kennedy won the Democratic Pennsylvania presidential primary with 183,073 write-ins, and he won the Democratic Massachusetts presidential primary with 91,607 write-ins.
In 1964, a write-in campaign organized by supporters of former U.S. Senator and vice presidential nominee Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. won Republican primaries for President in New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, defeating declared candidates Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, and Margaret Chase Smith.
In 1968 in the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, incumbent President Lyndon Johnson did not file, but received write-ins totaling 50% of all Democratic votes cast. Senator Eugene McCarthy, who campaigned actively against Johnson’s Vietnam war policies, was on the ballot. He received an impressive 41% of the vote and gained more delegates than the President. Johnson was so stunned that he did not run for reelection.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader ran a write-in campaign in 1992 during the New Hampshire primary for the presidential nomination of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Declaring himself the "none of the above candidate" and using the Concord Principles as his platform, Nader received 3,054 votes from Democrats and 3,258 votes from Republicans.
Having worked in support Barack Obama’s election to the presidency, I have, since his election, followed his written commitments to implement several constructive programs, services and actions to leverage the efforts of women of color. I’ve looked for constructive programs, services and actions to leverage the efforts of women of color to rise from the bottom of US society, where we have been in every year of this country’s existence, but found women of color again thrown under the proverbial bus. Therefore, I have been searching for new strategies which can be implemented, concurrently, to give the maximum voice and power to the grassroots and working class, along with those now in our ranks (or homeless, jobless and hopeless) who used to be the middle class.
As the primary and general elections of 2012 draw closer, the Democrats and Obama administration have resumed the age-old strategy of sort of associating themselves, with smiles on their faces and pats on our heads, with the millions of poor, foreclosed, language and religious minorities, LGBT communities, unemployed and underemployed, uneducated and undereducated, and all the others who are outside the 13,000 richest families and their corporate agents. The wealthy continue to amass unprecedented power and wealth, while millions will receive death sentences by degree with the coming cuts in food, shelter, healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid), medicine, jobs, unemployment compensation, education (pre-school to doctoral levels), libraries, arts of all kinds, childcare, senior care, and all the other needs we have to survive physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.
It is time we faced the truth once and for all. The savagely greedy who are now living carnivorously off the majority of the people of the country, who have more houses than they can live in, more cars than they can drive and more money than they can spend in a lifetime, do not view the majority of us as worthy of anything - including life. So they can live in luxury, spending more than a million dollars on a meal to entertain visiting “heads of state”. In the streets outside the banquet hall, people are foraging in garbage cans and sleeping in the streets, all the while in fear, as much from those who are supposed to be “representing” us and/or “protecting” us, as from any so-called criminals.
Those who steal food to live are jailed as criminals. Those who steal homes from millions are, for the most part, allowed to continue their activities with ever-increasing monetary rewards. What is the definition of the word criminal today?
With these thoughts in mind, the changing US demographics are increasing in importance. By 2013, whites/European Americans will no longer be a national majority, but they may retain the majority of the country’s wealth and political power unless something stops the momentum.
To those who are not in denial, patterns employed to institute apartheid in South Africa after the so-called World War II can be seen underway in the US. Large numbers of schools serving people of color, the poor, grassroots and working class are being closed. The remaining public schools are being turned over to white corporate control. An overseer class of people of color is being established. These “privileged” children will attend “private” schools where they will be indoctrinated to believe they are better than the majority of people of color whom they will help to oppress.
The turning over of public housing to white corporate control will be implemented soon. Food, education, housing, jobs and prisons will become systems of social management. This will enable a small white power elite and their overseers to control the unarmed, uneducated, unhealthy grassroots, working class groups and eliminate a real middle class by subjecting them to extreme social pressures that demean and debilitate them to preclude any thoughts of rebellion by keeping them in a constant basic survival mode from day to day.
In this way, as was the case in South Africa, in a short time, a small white minority can be empowered to control the people of color of the country who will make up the majority of the population. If the people allow this to happen, there will be a very long period of suffering and dying. As can be seen in South Africa today, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to overcome the consequences of such experiences. So what are we to do?
Surely, it will not be enough to have another rousing Sunday sermon nor another march, be it on Washington or any other place in this country. While those actions had impacts in the past, they were not lasting impacts or we would not be faced with unprecedented powerlessness, real or believed, based on current propaganda.
Increasingly, the news as it was once reported has been replaced by endless stories of local and regional weather, lots of sports, stories of outlandish celebrity behavior and occasional tales of gross immorality by politicians who, for the most part, do little more than apologize.
The important news, current or historical, goes largely unreported. There is no mention of truth. Instead, news is reported as always having 2 sides, even if one side is a fabrication. This is an age-old strategy. In the days of legal chattel slavery, slave owners mutually agreed not to publicize slave escapes so those still in captivity would not learn that many were escaping. Many did, but it was kept quiet. So too, the historical intervention of 5 million US citizens who sent telegrams to Washington, DC when President Nixon fired Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox, in a massive, collective, impromptu order that the Watergate investigation continue, forced Nixon to appoint Leon Jaworski to the post from which he had fired Cox. Ultimately, it was in large measure these 5 million voices that made it clear nothing else would be accepted. The ultimate outcome was Nixon’s resignation. One lesson in this is that the masses of people have the power, if they act - whether organized or as individuals, in planned or spontaneous acts to take control.
There is a second lesson, however. It is that one spontaneous action is not enough but must be followed by planned actions and organization. We are seeing this today in Egypt where the young people succeeded in ousting President Mubarak but lack needed, long term, organizational experience to keep control. These are the lessons before our eyes right now.
What does this have to do with the upcoming primary and general elections? Several issues are already clear. If all that is done is a repetition of actions and strategies in 2008 that made it possible for Barack Obama to become president, then the masses will get the usual hugs and meaningless promises from the primary to general election season and be forgotten after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
President Obama was elected in November 2008. Two and a half years later, he met with the Congressional Black Caucus for the first time. After neglecting Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rico for the same period, his recent visit there flopped. He is attempting to cull the favor of Africans by sending his wife and children there, without him. During his administration, massive numbers of Mexicans and other Latinos have been deported, though it has been kept out of “mainstream” news.
The Obama administration, in clear support of past kidnappings of President Aristide of Haiti, tried to prevent Aristide from returning to Haiti before the most recent Haitian elections. Similarly, he maintains hostility to Venezuelan President Chavez and is not supporting Bolivia’s President, the only indigenous person ever to achieve a presidency in the Americas. The rest of the Americas are working toward international cooperation as the European Union members once did.
Just as the Romans could not see the impending fall of their empire, neither can the power elite of the US. The world has changed. Rather than holding on to the English-only-US-in-control-of-the-world mentality, the US would do better to lead in promoting justice, multiculturalism, multilingualism, and other diversity related concepts, but to do this would require ending racism and racism plus sexism for women of color inside this country. Nothing can be reformed here without these changes occurring. This cannot be left to the whims of those in power, prepared to self-destruct before embracing equity and justice.
It is up to the rest of us who intend to survive and to be a part of a new world order that includes us all. This means getting involved in many ways. We need not conform to a single course of action but can embark on many which can work collaboratively and concurrently.
This essay advocates the study of the process of write-in voting as a mechanism to draft candidates, rather than through a party process. The suggestion here is to draft Barbara Lee, Member of Congress from Oakland, California for President and Dennis Kucinich, Member of Congress from Ohio, for Vice President in the 2012 Democratic primaries.
In some states, if 100 to 200 people write-in the same candidate in the primary, then that person’s name will be printed on the ballot of the general election. It is critically important that everyone who will cast a write-in ballot contact the local, state and federal offices governing their write-in ballots in any way to insure that their ballot is counted and not thrown out in the precincts or during the vote counting. This cannot be left to others to insure. Thereafter, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party should be notified of the intention of writing in votes during the primary, with the additional information that unless promises made by Obama, his team, and the Democratic Party are kept and made irreversible in laws before the General Election, that Lee and Kucinich will also receive the same write-in votes at the General Election.
No doubt, Obama will win nomination again by the Democratic Party Primary, but if a significant number of grassroots, working class, disabled, religious minorities, people of color, poor, homeless, LGBT and others write in Lee and Kucinich, shock waves will be sent through the Democratic Party. If, as happened less than a month ago, Obama can announce giving billions of dollars to the Egyptian people to forgive debts and to provide social services and help for small businesses there, then people in this country, whose tax dollars are being given by Obama to the Egyptians, should also be entitled to the same helping, caring treatment.
When are the millions of homeless people going to be taken care of? When are those who lost their homes to foreclosures going to be helped into other homes? When are the death sentences on those who have no medical care or inadequate medical care going to be lifted? When are the insurance companies, which are making millions, going to be ended and a national health plan, which is the same for all, installed? When are racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination going to be treated as the crimes they are? When are the corporations and the wealthy going to pay really fair tax shares? Almost half the corporations pay nothing. We do not need to allow any more time for these promises to be kept.
There is money available for all the wars, secret and public, and for handouts to other rich people around the world. We know that sending money to Egypt, like the money promised to Haiti, or New Orleans, it will never reach the masses there. How long will we go along to get along because we are afraid to take a stand? Our people are already dying and more will die unless we insist that promises made to get our votes must be kept this time and every time. It will not matter what party is in office if people continue to close their eyes to the enslavement already in progress in the “privatized” prisons, which include youth facilities, continues uninterrupted.
To those who think the write-in voting process cannot succeed, look to the past. Do your own homework. The information below is to get this process started. There will still be the need to think of other strategies that can complement or supplement the suggestions here. Serious, innovative, old strategies used in new ways and completely new ideas are all needed. We can all do something.
The information below is from Wikipedia {with bracketed comments from this article’s author} because it is written in a manner understandable by people at many reading levels. Only information about presidential primaries is included. Every voter needs to check their own location and not depend on others to do the work for them. Really free people act in their own interests. Those who are curious should research information on write-in campaigns for other political offices.
Wikipedia: A write-in candidate is a candidate in an election whose name does not appear on the ballot, but for whom voters may vote nonetheless by writing in the person's name. Some states and local jurisdictions allow a voter to affix a sticker with a write-in candidate's name on it to the ballot in lieu of actually writing in the candidate's name. Write-in candidacies are sometimes a result of a candidate being legally or procedurally ineligible to run under his or her own name or party. In some cases, write-in campaigns have been organized to support a candidate who is not personally involved in running; this may be a form of draft campaign.
Write-in candidates rarely win, and votes are often cast for ineligible people or fictional characters. {Note: This does not mean they can never win.} Some jurisdictions require write-in candidates be registered as official candidates before the election.F This is standard in elections with a large pool of potential candidates, as there may be multiple candidates with the same name that could be written in.
Many states and municipalities allow for write-in votes in a partisan primary where no candidate is listed on the ballot to have the same functional effect as nominating petitions: for example, if there are no Reform Party members on the ballot for state general assembly and a candidate receives more than 200 write-in votes when the primary election is held (or the other number of signatures that were required for ballot access), the candidate will be placed on the ballot on that ballot line for the general election. In most places, this provision is in place for non-partisan elections as well.
In the United States, write-in candidates have a very small chance of winning, but there have been some notable write-in candidates in the past.
Presidential primaries
In 1928, Herbert Hoover won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary on write-ins, polling 100,279.
In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt won the Democratic New Jersey presidential primary with 34,278 write-ins.
In 1944, Thomas Dewey won the Republican Pennsylvania presidential primary with 146,706 write-ins. He also won the Oregon Republican presidential primary with 50,001 write-ins.
In 1948, Harold Stassen won the Republican Pennsylvania presidential primary with 81,242 write-ins.
In 1952, Robert Taft won the Republican Nebraska presidential primary with 79,357 write-ins.
Also in 1952, Estes Kefauver won the Democratic Pennsylvania presidential primary with 93,160 write-ins.
Also in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary with 254,898 write-ins.
In 1956, Dwight Eisenhower won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary with 51,951 write-ins.
In 1960, Richard Nixon won the Republican Massachusetts presidential primary with 53,164 write-ins.
Also in 1960, John F. Kennedy won the Democratic Pennsylvania presidential primary with 183,073 write-ins, and he won the Democratic Massachusetts presidential primary with 91,607 write-ins.
In 1964, a write-in campaign organized by supporters of former U.S. Senator and vice presidential nominee Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. won Republican primaries for President in New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, defeating declared candidates Barry Goldwater, Nelson Rockefeller, and Margaret Chase Smith.
In 1968 in the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, incumbent President Lyndon Johnson did not file, but received write-ins totaling 50% of all Democratic votes cast. Senator Eugene McCarthy, who campaigned actively against Johnson’s Vietnam war policies, was on the ballot. He received an impressive 41% of the vote and gained more delegates than the President. Johnson was so stunned that he did not run for reelection.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader ran a write-in campaign in 1992 during the New Hampshire primary for the presidential nomination of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Declaring himself the "none of the above candidate" and using the Concord Principles as his platform, Nader received 3,054 votes from Democrats and 3,258 votes from Republicans.
Friday, June 17, 2011
POET'S BASEMENT - COUNTERPUNCH, Weekend Edition June 17 - 19, 201
Gil Scot-Heron (April 1, 1949-May 27, 2011)
by MAT CALLAHAN
The poet is dead
Now he lives forever
He delivered the word
Did we hear it?
Did we hear the word of Spartacus?
Did we hear the word of the Zanj?
Did we hear the word of Queen Nanny of the Maroons?
Did we hear the word of Toussaint L'Overture?
Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Old John Brown?
Did we hear the word of Fred Hampton-
"You can murder a revolutionary,
But you can't murder revolution."
Gil Scot-Heron, the poet, is dead
But he is not silent.
Death cannot silence him.
Words flung back into the crack of the whip, the rattle of the chain, the slam of the prison door,
cannot be buried with their speaker, they resound across the universe:
"You can shackle my body but never my mind"
And once they have been uttered,
They belong to everyone
The poet is dead
But never alone, always in good company
With Hughes and Neruda, Dubois and Garcia-Lorca, Baldwin and Brecht,
Shakespeare and Malcolm, Milton and Robeson, Lady Day and John Coltrane
-No Jump Jim Crows, no Minstrel Shows, no coon songs, Toms or showbiz niggerism to ghettoize the ghetto's eyes, to trap the light you shed upon the world
-No "colored only" comparisons to pop tart rhymsters and great white fathers to keep you from sharing a seat with Rosa Parks or Aimé Césaire
No and no again.
The poet is dead
we are living
given a task, a duty to perform
Divide: the mortal lie from the immortal truth
Divine: the future from rhythms, blue hues and sunrise
Decide: never fear forever here
Gil Scot won't let you down
If you stand up!
Mat Callahan can be reached at http://www.matcallahan.com.
1996
by H. WECHSLER
we were buried in snow,
poetically,
one weekend
a poem a week
a word an hour
when you’re 23
& hungry
& the rest of the world is a motel
with weekly rates
& cheap excitement
& the Tragically Hip sang “words cannot touch beauty”
& Kathy Change wrote “break out of the ranks of evil, do a dance for freedom”
& burned to death
in West Philadelphia
burned the way the Ozone Disco Club
burned in Quezon seven months before
the way MOVE burned on Osage Avenue
eleven years before
the way Watts burned
& Detroit burned
& Miami burned
ten thousand years before
& Liz Phair sang “I’m like a wild flame that catches on whatever’s near”
& Kathy Change wrote “call me a flaming radical burning for attention”
& burned to death
in West Philadelphia
where IF MUMIA BURNS,
PHILLY BURNS
was written on a wall on 40th Street
two years before
& WHO HAD SIX ACES,
BID SEVEN ACES, & LOST?
JIMMY!!!
and WHAT IF TODD WAS ONE OF US
were written on the wall at Frank Clement’s,
an even dirtier bar than
Dirty Frank’s on 13th Street,
where I would one day
order meatballs on New Year’s Eve
in the old, weird Philadelphia
a Philadelphia of ill repute
we heard Bob Mould at the Troc
Warren Zevon at the TLA on Valentine’s Day
before it became the Fillmore
poetry at the Quarry
where someone once referred to Los Angeles as “Omaha with a beach”
& in the Penn Review
where someone once wrote a poem called “Sometimes Death Wears a Party Hat”
I wrote a poem called “A Bomb Is A Metaphor That Won’t”
& one called “Satan” with the word “detritus”
the monkey house at the Philadelphia Zoo burned down on Christmas Eve
the year before
& I wrote a poem called “Do You Want To Burn the Monkey House Down”
& someone told me an ex broke up with me because
“he’s too hyper and he talks too much about Kafka”
& the Trappist monks of Tibhirine were executed
& the Tamil Tigers won Mullaitivu
& Bob Mould sang “now the myth disintegrates, nothing else is permanent”
& Kathy Change wrote “I’m terrified of entering those eerie shadows”
& burned to death
in West Philadelphia
& became a poem
& became a name
& became a number
one more John Africa
one more Holly Maddux
one more Moez Alimohamed
one more number
one more name
one more moth
one more flame
I would walk past
& never know
I went home with you
one weekend
before the snow fell
before winter came
& buried us
poetically, when you’re 23
& the rest of the world is a moment
we can never outrun
& Warren Defever sang “this world is not my home, I’m just passing through”
& Kathy Change wrote “I have crashed this party, I don’t belong here”
I went home with you
one weekend
& never went back
H. Wechsler is a writer/editor/researcher/proofreader/L.A. exile from Oaklyn, New Jersey. His work has appeared in RIBOT, Voyage Out, The Poet’s Attic, Poets’ Basement, The Pennsylvania Review, The Philadelphia Daily News, and HiNgE as well as THE HUMAN MUSEUM (with Al Ferber, Xlibris 2002). He can be reached at dejesus54@comcast.net. The Transformation Party honors the memory of Kathy Change at www.kathychange.org.
We Will See
by FAIZ AHMED FAIZ
translated from the Urdu by RAFIQ KATHWARI
That promised day
Written into tablets of pre eternity
It’s inevitable
We, too, will see
Colossal mountains of tyranny
Floating like wisps of cotton
The earth shaking and rattling
Beneath our stomping feet
Swords of lightning clashing
Over the heads of despots
Idols flung out
From sacred monuments
Crowns tossed into the air
Thrones demolished
And we the pure and the rejected
Seated on cushions.
Only the name of God will remain
Who is both absent and present
The witness, the witnessed
A cry will rend the sky
“I am Truth”
Which is you as well as I
And the beloved of God will reign
You I We Us
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911–1984) “was a renowned Pakistani intellectual, poet, and one of the most famous poets of the Urdu language. He was a member of the Anjuman Tarraqi Pasand Mussanafin-e-Hind (All India Progressive Writers' Movement) and an avowed Marxist. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union” (Wikipedia). His official website is http://www.faiz.com.
Rafiq Kathwari, a rebel poet and social entrepreneur, divides his time between his adopted home New York and his native Kashmir, where he empowers artisans. Poke him on Facebook or email rmk28@columbia.edu.
Editorial Note: (Please Read Closely Before Submitting)
To submit to Poets’ Basement, send an e-mail to CounterPunch’s poetry editor, Marc Beaudin at counterpunchpoetry@gmail.com with your name, the titles being submitted, and your website url or e-mail address (if you’d like this to appear with your work). Also indicate whether or not your poems have been previously published and where. Attach up to 5 poems and a short bio, written in 3rd person, as a single Word Document (.doc or .rtf attachments only; no .docx). Expect a response within one month (occasionally longer during periods of heavy submissions).
Poems accepted for online publication will be considered for possible inclusion of an upcoming print anthology.
For more details, tips and suggestions, visit CrowVoiceJournal.blogspot.com and check the links on the top right. Thanks!
by MAT CALLAHAN
The poet is dead
Now he lives forever
He delivered the word
Did we hear it?
Did we hear the word of Spartacus?
Did we hear the word of the Zanj?
Did we hear the word of Queen Nanny of the Maroons?
Did we hear the word of Toussaint L'Overture?
Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Old John Brown?
Did we hear the word of Fred Hampton-
"You can murder a revolutionary,
But you can't murder revolution."
Gil Scot-Heron, the poet, is dead
But he is not silent.
Death cannot silence him.
Words flung back into the crack of the whip, the rattle of the chain, the slam of the prison door,
cannot be buried with their speaker, they resound across the universe:
"You can shackle my body but never my mind"
And once they have been uttered,
They belong to everyone
The poet is dead
But never alone, always in good company
With Hughes and Neruda, Dubois and Garcia-Lorca, Baldwin and Brecht,
Shakespeare and Malcolm, Milton and Robeson, Lady Day and John Coltrane
-No Jump Jim Crows, no Minstrel Shows, no coon songs, Toms or showbiz niggerism to ghettoize the ghetto's eyes, to trap the light you shed upon the world
-No "colored only" comparisons to pop tart rhymsters and great white fathers to keep you from sharing a seat with Rosa Parks or Aimé Césaire
No and no again.
The poet is dead
we are living
given a task, a duty to perform
Divide: the mortal lie from the immortal truth
Divine: the future from rhythms, blue hues and sunrise
Decide: never fear forever here
Gil Scot won't let you down
If you stand up!
Mat Callahan can be reached at http://www.matcallahan.com.
1996
by H. WECHSLER
we were buried in snow,
poetically,
one weekend
a poem a week
a word an hour
when you’re 23
& hungry
& the rest of the world is a motel
with weekly rates
& cheap excitement
& the Tragically Hip sang “words cannot touch beauty”
& Kathy Change wrote “break out of the ranks of evil, do a dance for freedom”
& burned to death
in West Philadelphia
burned the way the Ozone Disco Club
burned in Quezon seven months before
the way MOVE burned on Osage Avenue
eleven years before
the way Watts burned
& Detroit burned
& Miami burned
ten thousand years before
& Liz Phair sang “I’m like a wild flame that catches on whatever’s near”
& Kathy Change wrote “call me a flaming radical burning for attention”
& burned to death
in West Philadelphia
where IF MUMIA BURNS,
PHILLY BURNS
was written on a wall on 40th Street
two years before
& WHO HAD SIX ACES,
BID SEVEN ACES, & LOST?
JIMMY!!!
and WHAT IF TODD WAS ONE OF US
were written on the wall at Frank Clement’s,
an even dirtier bar than
Dirty Frank’s on 13th Street,
where I would one day
order meatballs on New Year’s Eve
in the old, weird Philadelphia
a Philadelphia of ill repute
we heard Bob Mould at the Troc
Warren Zevon at the TLA on Valentine’s Day
before it became the Fillmore
poetry at the Quarry
where someone once referred to Los Angeles as “Omaha with a beach”
& in the Penn Review
where someone once wrote a poem called “Sometimes Death Wears a Party Hat”
I wrote a poem called “A Bomb Is A Metaphor That Won’t”
& one called “Satan” with the word “detritus”
the monkey house at the Philadelphia Zoo burned down on Christmas Eve
the year before
& I wrote a poem called “Do You Want To Burn the Monkey House Down”
& someone told me an ex broke up with me because
“he’s too hyper and he talks too much about Kafka”
& the Trappist monks of Tibhirine were executed
& the Tamil Tigers won Mullaitivu
& Bob Mould sang “now the myth disintegrates, nothing else is permanent”
& Kathy Change wrote “I’m terrified of entering those eerie shadows”
& burned to death
in West Philadelphia
& became a poem
& became a name
& became a number
one more John Africa
one more Holly Maddux
one more Moez Alimohamed
one more number
one more name
one more moth
one more flame
I would walk past
& never know
I went home with you
one weekend
before the snow fell
before winter came
& buried us
poetically, when you’re 23
& the rest of the world is a moment
we can never outrun
& Warren Defever sang “this world is not my home, I’m just passing through”
& Kathy Change wrote “I have crashed this party, I don’t belong here”
I went home with you
one weekend
& never went back
H. Wechsler is a writer/editor/researcher/proofreader/L.A. exile from Oaklyn, New Jersey. His work has appeared in RIBOT, Voyage Out, The Poet’s Attic, Poets’ Basement, The Pennsylvania Review, The Philadelphia Daily News, and HiNgE as well as THE HUMAN MUSEUM (with Al Ferber, Xlibris 2002). He can be reached at dejesus54@comcast.net. The Transformation Party honors the memory of Kathy Change at www.kathychange.org.
We Will See
by FAIZ AHMED FAIZ
translated from the Urdu by RAFIQ KATHWARI
That promised day
Written into tablets of pre eternity
It’s inevitable
We, too, will see
Colossal mountains of tyranny
Floating like wisps of cotton
The earth shaking and rattling
Beneath our stomping feet
Swords of lightning clashing
Over the heads of despots
Idols flung out
From sacred monuments
Crowns tossed into the air
Thrones demolished
And we the pure and the rejected
Seated on cushions.
Only the name of God will remain
Who is both absent and present
The witness, the witnessed
A cry will rend the sky
“I am Truth”
Which is you as well as I
And the beloved of God will reign
You I We Us
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911–1984) “was a renowned Pakistani intellectual, poet, and one of the most famous poets of the Urdu language. He was a member of the Anjuman Tarraqi Pasand Mussanafin-e-Hind (All India Progressive Writers' Movement) and an avowed Marxist. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union” (Wikipedia). His official website is http://www.faiz.com.
Rafiq Kathwari, a rebel poet and social entrepreneur, divides his time between his adopted home New York and his native Kashmir, where he empowers artisans. Poke him on Facebook or email rmk28@columbia.edu.
Editorial Note: (Please Read Closely Before Submitting)
To submit to Poets’ Basement, send an e-mail to CounterPunch’s poetry editor, Marc Beaudin at counterpunchpoetry@gmail.com with your name, the titles being submitted, and your website url or e-mail address (if you’d like this to appear with your work). Also indicate whether or not your poems have been previously published and where. Attach up to 5 poems and a short bio, written in 3rd person, as a single Word Document (.doc or .rtf attachments only; no .docx). Expect a response within one month (occasionally longer during periods of heavy submissions).
Poems accepted for online publication will be considered for possible inclusion of an upcoming print anthology.
For more details, tips and suggestions, visit CrowVoiceJournal.blogspot.com and check the links on the top right. Thanks!
Over to Panetta What Gates Didn't Fix By WINSLOW T. WHEELER
Rachel Simon's "The Story of Beautiful Girl" and Rahul Bhattacharya "The Sly Company of People Who Care"
Two Summer Reads
By CHARLES R. LARSON
Here are two widely different summer reads—for a lounge in your back yard, at the beach, or in bed late at night—The Story of Beautiful Girl, by American novelist Rachel Simon, and The Sly Company of People Who Care, by Indian writer Rahul Bhattacharya. They could hardly be more different in form and content, though both share a sense of humanity and concern for others.
Simon has an agenda which sometimes intrudes into her story but more often is kept under control. In a note at the end, she mentions a sister with an intellectual disability and that when she was growing up family discussions often centered on parents who "put away" such children in institutions—mostly because they don't want to deal with them. Her highly-charged and complex narrative begins in 1968, when late one night a widow, named Martha, who lives on a farm in Pennsylvania, hears a commotion outside in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm. When she opens the door, she sees two people huddled there, drenched and wrapped in wet blankets: a young woman and an older black man.
Quickly, she understands that the two figures have fled from a near-by mental institution (the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded), though it doesn't take long to realize that neither fugitive really fits the category. The black man is a deaf mute; the woman almost equally silent but showing no evidence of being challenged. The widow helps them get cleaned up, provides them with warm clothing, and feeds them. Then, not much later, the authorities knock on the widow's door, having tracked down the two escapees. In the disruption that follows, the black man escapes and the white woman is apprehended, but she manages to whisper to Martha as she is taken away, "Hide her." Upstairs, Martha discovers a baby girl a few hours old.
A rather spectacular opening to a fast-paced novel that continues its narration down through the years, ending in 2000. Homan, the black man, is smart and talented at fixing things, but he was given no education in the institution after he was taken there. Ditto, the young girl, named Lynnie, who is a young woman by the time the story begins. Both have endured unspeakable treatment at the institution and no education, although the institution is charged with providing its inmates not only with their well-being but their schooling. The deep passion that Homan and Lynnie share for one another is profound, capable of sustaining them until they are finally reunited decades later, after which time the institution's policies have been exposed and the place has been shut down.
There are loose ends to Simon's story, plus a tendency to be both talky and cutsie, but you will find yourself turning pages as the narration shifts its focus to the characters already mentioned and a couple of others, including the child left in Martha's care. Homan is skillfully drawn, Lynnie (the "beautiful girl" in Homan's eyes) less so, no doubt because Homan survives in a world outside the institution while Lynnie is kept imprisoned for years. Above all, The Story of Beautiful Girl is well plotted and engaging.
Bhattacharya's The Sly Company of People Who Care is plot less but equally addictive, demonstrating that there is no single way to present a story. The unnamed narrator in his mid-twenties is an Indian from Bombay returning to Guyana for a second time because of a brief trip when he fell in love with the country. This time he's come for a year. What he relates is not so much a story about himself but a travel narrative describing what he loves about the country. For example, "Guyana had the feel of an accidental place. Partly it was the epic indolence. Partly it was the ethnic composition. In the slang of the street there was chinee, putagee, buck, coolie, blackman, and the combinations emanating from these, a separate and larger lexicon. On the ramble in such a land you could encounter a story every day." Later, he adds, "Guyana was elemental, water and earth, mud and fruit, race and crime, innocent and full of scoundrels."
The narrator meets plenty of those scoundrels on the streets and during his travels around the country. On the highway, he states, "We passed mandirs tiered like pagodas, and the sickly new cricket stadium the government of Indian nationals was constructing. Car shells grew out of mud, shot through with razor grass. We whizzed by a dozen dead kokers—sluice gates, fallen sentries. Run-over dogs were ground into the asphalt." His companion named Baby (an adult male) explains to him, "Guyana having hardtime. Worlprice of bauxite low, worlprice of sugar low, worlprice of timber low. Is only diamond and gold which could do the job." Increasingly, the language of the narrative slips into street Guyanese, the patois of the people.
Baby tries to offer an explanation for people's names: "Amsterdam [someone they have encountered] had a little shop here, supplying the dredges in the area, run by a girl people seemed to be calling Fatgirl. A thing was what it was in Guyana. As a coolieman was a coolieman, as a man with one arm was Onehand, as the elephantiasis-afflicted was Bigfoot, so a thin man was Fineman and a fat girl was Fatgirl." The country is an incredible melting pot. The narrator's observations, his astute eye, become the source of energy of the story, culminating in a several-month relationship with a young Guyanese woman, with whom he continues his travels around the country.
Bhattacharya's title tells it all. It's the people—their decency (even of the supposed scoundrels)—who keep the story moving, people with a rich ethnicity and curiosity about others.
The Story of Beautiful Girl.
By Rachel Simon.
Grand Central, 346 pp., $24.99
The Sly Company of People Who Care.
Rahul Bhattacharya
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 278 pp., $26
Two Summer Reads
By CHARLES R. LARSON
Here are two widely different summer reads—for a lounge in your back yard, at the beach, or in bed late at night—The Story of Beautiful Girl, by American novelist Rachel Simon, and The Sly Company of People Who Care, by Indian writer Rahul Bhattacharya. They could hardly be more different in form and content, though both share a sense of humanity and concern for others.
Simon has an agenda which sometimes intrudes into her story but more often is kept under control. In a note at the end, she mentions a sister with an intellectual disability and that when she was growing up family discussions often centered on parents who "put away" such children in institutions—mostly because they don't want to deal with them. Her highly-charged and complex narrative begins in 1968, when late one night a widow, named Martha, who lives on a farm in Pennsylvania, hears a commotion outside in the middle of a heavy thunderstorm. When she opens the door, she sees two people huddled there, drenched and wrapped in wet blankets: a young woman and an older black man.
Quickly, she understands that the two figures have fled from a near-by mental institution (the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded), though it doesn't take long to realize that neither fugitive really fits the category. The black man is a deaf mute; the woman almost equally silent but showing no evidence of being challenged. The widow helps them get cleaned up, provides them with warm clothing, and feeds them. Then, not much later, the authorities knock on the widow's door, having tracked down the two escapees. In the disruption that follows, the black man escapes and the white woman is apprehended, but she manages to whisper to Martha as she is taken away, "Hide her." Upstairs, Martha discovers a baby girl a few hours old.
A rather spectacular opening to a fast-paced novel that continues its narration down through the years, ending in 2000. Homan, the black man, is smart and talented at fixing things, but he was given no education in the institution after he was taken there. Ditto, the young girl, named Lynnie, who is a young woman by the time the story begins. Both have endured unspeakable treatment at the institution and no education, although the institution is charged with providing its inmates not only with their well-being but their schooling. The deep passion that Homan and Lynnie share for one another is profound, capable of sustaining them until they are finally reunited decades later, after which time the institution's policies have been exposed and the place has been shut down.
There are loose ends to Simon's story, plus a tendency to be both talky and cutsie, but you will find yourself turning pages as the narration shifts its focus to the characters already mentioned and a couple of others, including the child left in Martha's care. Homan is skillfully drawn, Lynnie (the "beautiful girl" in Homan's eyes) less so, no doubt because Homan survives in a world outside the institution while Lynnie is kept imprisoned for years. Above all, The Story of Beautiful Girl is well plotted and engaging.
Bhattacharya's The Sly Company of People Who Care is plot less but equally addictive, demonstrating that there is no single way to present a story. The unnamed narrator in his mid-twenties is an Indian from Bombay returning to Guyana for a second time because of a brief trip when he fell in love with the country. This time he's come for a year. What he relates is not so much a story about himself but a travel narrative describing what he loves about the country. For example, "Guyana had the feel of an accidental place. Partly it was the epic indolence. Partly it was the ethnic composition. In the slang of the street there was chinee, putagee, buck, coolie, blackman, and the combinations emanating from these, a separate and larger lexicon. On the ramble in such a land you could encounter a story every day." Later, he adds, "Guyana was elemental, water and earth, mud and fruit, race and crime, innocent and full of scoundrels."
The narrator meets plenty of those scoundrels on the streets and during his travels around the country. On the highway, he states, "We passed mandirs tiered like pagodas, and the sickly new cricket stadium the government of Indian nationals was constructing. Car shells grew out of mud, shot through with razor grass. We whizzed by a dozen dead kokers—sluice gates, fallen sentries. Run-over dogs were ground into the asphalt." His companion named Baby (an adult male) explains to him, "Guyana having hardtime. Worlprice of bauxite low, worlprice of sugar low, worlprice of timber low. Is only diamond and gold which could do the job." Increasingly, the language of the narrative slips into street Guyanese, the patois of the people.
Baby tries to offer an explanation for people's names: "Amsterdam [someone they have encountered] had a little shop here, supplying the dredges in the area, run by a girl people seemed to be calling Fatgirl. A thing was what it was in Guyana. As a coolieman was a coolieman, as a man with one arm was Onehand, as the elephantiasis-afflicted was Bigfoot, so a thin man was Fineman and a fat girl was Fatgirl." The country is an incredible melting pot. The narrator's observations, his astute eye, become the source of energy of the story, culminating in a several-month relationship with a young Guyanese woman, with whom he continues his travels around the country.
Bhattacharya's title tells it all. It's the people—their decency (even of the supposed scoundrels)—who keep the story moving, people with a rich ethnicity and curiosity about others.
The Story of Beautiful Girl.
By Rachel Simon.
Grand Central, 346 pp., $24.99
The Sly Company of People Who Care.
Rahul Bhattacharya
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 278 pp., $26
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)