A long overdue update.
Some may remember the late-March posts on this blog, recounting my interactions with an anonymous hate-slinger, whose emails appeared in my inbox over the course of the past year. The messages promised to report me to “the proper authorities” for an alleged love of terrorists (advocating divestment from military companies that aid Israeli colonialism in Palestine).
After some digging, I posted new findings on March 18: the emails came from the Farmington, MI law firm of Kaufman Payton and Chapa, and their author was also the founder of the (now-defunct) website called Anti-Racist Blog, which cross-lists its posts on the notorious Daniel Pipes project called Campus Watch.
Nearly minutes after the post went up, connecting these dots, I received an email from the anonymous messenger, bartering for my silence:
“I request that you remove all references to the law firm from your blog, and refrain from writing such things about the law firm elsewhere in the future. To be fair, if you agree to this request I will remove ALL blog postings related to you and your brother from Anti-Racist Blog, and I will refrain from writing about you both on Anti-Racist Blog in the future.”
And minutes later, another email:
“I will take down the Anti-Racist Blog completely now and forever. I will do all of this as soon as you agree to these terms, and begin by taking down your two most recent blog posts.”
“In essence, I will permanently retire from the area and arena of advocacy. I hope you seriously consider this offer, which I believe is more than fair, and mutually beneficial.”
I never agreed to these terms, failing to see the benefits of keeping quiet about the underlying issues- the vilification of anti-zionist academics as unpatriotic, racist and anti-semitic.
Though I refused to enter into any such pact, the founder of Anti-Racist Blog revealed his name to me after nearly a year of anonymous correspondence and harassment. And a few days later, the Wayne State law grad, and attorney at Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa, shut down his blog anyway. His final blog post on March 22 apologized for “initiating or responding with anger” to opponents, but framed the shutdown of his blog as a result of “threatening emails, phone calls…headaches and harassment” instead of what it was: an attempt to cover his ass.
The blog remains inactive to this day, but some of Schwartz’s blog posts remain archived at Pipes’ “media” outlet. It is refreshing to see this tool for intimidation and harassment voluntarily dismantle. Schwartz’s ARB, and his anonymous emails written on office time are unwelcome not because I happen to disagree with his politics, but precisely because his site offered very little political substance.
The ongoing colonial project in Palestine continues to force an ideology of ethnic and religious hierarchy on irrevocably interconnected (however segregated) communities of people. Because the Zionist project has created such violent and inequitable realities through its basic hostility to difference, its defenders have little more than accusations of anti-Semitism to fend off a growing anti-Zionist movement that sees no sustainable future in Israeli apartheid.
With the Anti-Racist Blog around or not, the forces in this country that want to normalize and defend this discourse remain worthy targets for our heartiest critical energies and commitment.
to be continued…
May 30, 2008
May 18, 2008
The American Nakba
1860-1869 Native American land "cessions" in black
1870-1879 land cessions
1880-1889 land cessions
Reservations and other Native American communities as of 1987
1870-1879 land cessions
1880-1889 land cessions
Reservations and other Native American communities as of 1987
May 15, 2008
Expressions of Nakba
The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation's art exhibit opened this week in DC, showcasing artists of various mediums interpreting the experience of Palestinian exile and displacement that has burned for sixty years.
Detroit artist Invincible's song "People Not Places" won best recorded audio entry; from the chorus:
"my Ima misses people not places
has she seen the towns with names in Arabic the Hebrew replaces?
The policies are evil and racist, deceitful and heinous
You’ll never be a peaceful state with legal displacement"
Listen to the song and the other finalists for recorded audio including Dearborn's Big A and ZHAO-SKI.
The Visual Arts exhibit includes photos by San Francisco's Umayyah Cable; this one entitled "Forbidden Jersualem".
Detroit artist Invincible's song "People Not Places" won best recorded audio entry; from the chorus:
"my Ima misses people not places
has she seen the towns with names in Arabic the Hebrew replaces?
The policies are evil and racist, deceitful and heinous
You’ll never be a peaceful state with legal displacement"
Listen to the song and the other finalists for recorded audio including Dearborn's Big A and ZHAO-SKI.
The Visual Arts exhibit includes photos by San Francisco's Umayyah Cable; this one entitled "Forbidden Jersualem".May 14, 2008
60 Years
I found the May 14th, 1948 declaration of Israel's first prime minister on the eve of national independence. I didn't expect David Ben Gurion’s words to fit the occasion of Palestine's catastrophe six decades on:
“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.”
As he spoke these words, the forcible exile of Palestinian refugees, now numbering 4.5 million, commenced. Today, celebrants honor Ben Gurion’s longing for return as it pertains to Israel’s settlement of a biblical homeland, but actively deny the orphan of Palestinian exile, to which Israel gave birth on its day of national “liberation."
Rashid Khalidi argues that this liberation not only destroyed the national aspirations of another people, but that this crime presents a fundamental crisis of Israeli nationalism, despite all denials:
"The apparent triumph of Zionism stilled doubts and drowned out the protests of those who argued that what purported to be the solution to one problem had created an entirely different one."
Now, and for sixty years, Palestinians have shared Ben Gurion’s “hope for their return” to their homes, and the “restoration in it of their political freedom.” A dream deferred, but not dissolved.
Photo-op attempts at “peace,” divorce the narrative of Israeli liberation from the experience of Palestinian dispossession. Only when these two "separate" stories are acknowledged as one, can these two “sides” begin to repair a relatively short history of colonial conflict and undertake a new national project based on co-existence in a bi-national democratic state. This would entail a vast Palestinian civil rights movement for equality and fundamental reform in the Jewish state. Whether or not this strategy is undertaken by the splintered Palestinian resistance, Saree Makdisi notes that the Palestinians won't be leaving:
“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.”
Rashid Khalidi argues that this liberation not only destroyed the national aspirations of another people, but that this crime presents a fundamental crisis of Israeli nationalism, despite all denials:
"The apparent triumph of Zionism stilled doubts and drowned out the protests of those who argued that what purported to be the solution to one problem had created an entirely different one."
Now, and for sixty years, Palestinians have shared Ben Gurion’s “hope for their return” to their homes, and the “restoration in it of their political freedom.” A dream deferred, but not dissolved.
Photo-op attempts at “peace,” divorce the narrative of Israeli liberation from the experience of Palestinian dispossession. Only when these two "separate" stories are acknowledged as one, can these two “sides” begin to repair a relatively short history of colonial conflict and undertake a new national project based on co-existence in a bi-national democratic state. This would entail a vast Palestinian civil rights movement for equality and fundamental reform in the Jewish state. Whether or not this strategy is undertaken by the splintered Palestinian resistance, Saree Makdisi notes that the Palestinians won't be leaving:
May 05, 2008
Another Sneaky Supplemental
On the heels of the ILWU’s May Day work stoppage to protest the war, which closed ports up and down the West coast, there are rumblings of another supplemental bill sneaking its way through the halls of Congress. Jeff Leys from Chicago-based Voices for Creative Nonviolence is on point as usual.
According to Leys:
Details of the supplemental are being closely guarded by the Democratic party leadership. However, the supplemental is based upon President Bush’s request for an additional $108 billion in supplemental funding for the Iraq – Afghanistan war for the current fiscal year (FY 2008, which ends on September 30, 2008). Of this amount, $102 billion will be for the military.
It looks like the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are working together to give Bush what he wants, and keeping the date of the vote secret to suppress public opposition:
It is quite possible—indeed probable—that the House version will not be publicly available until the morning of the vote. It is also quite possible that the date the vote takes place on Iraq – Afghanistan war spending won’t be known until the night before the vote is scheduled to occur. This means that it will be next to impossible to mobilize significant opposition to the Iraq – Afghanistan war spending bill.
A rush vote is being designed to sidestep debate in committee, and is expected this week.
Read Leys' full analysis of war funding, build on labor's May Day anti-war action, and get on the horn to your representative through the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. Find direct contact information for your representative here.
According to Leys:
Details of the supplemental are being closely guarded by the Democratic party leadership. However, the supplemental is based upon President Bush’s request for an additional $108 billion in supplemental funding for the Iraq – Afghanistan war for the current fiscal year (FY 2008, which ends on September 30, 2008). Of this amount, $102 billion will be for the military.
It looks like the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are working together to give Bush what he wants, and keeping the date of the vote secret to suppress public opposition:
It is quite possible—indeed probable—that the House version will not be publicly available until the morning of the vote. It is also quite possible that the date the vote takes place on Iraq – Afghanistan war spending won’t be known until the night before the vote is scheduled to occur. This means that it will be next to impossible to mobilize significant opposition to the Iraq – Afghanistan war spending bill.
A rush vote is being designed to sidestep debate in committee, and is expected this week.
Read Leys' full analysis of war funding, build on labor's May Day anti-war action, and get on the horn to your representative through the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. Find direct contact information for your representative here.
April 19, 2008
Mass Transit in the Motor City: Railroaded Again?
From Issue 27 of Critical Moment
Cranes fill the southwest Detroit sky while highway crews work a $230 million road renovation on I-75 at the Ambassador Bridge. A block away the Michigan Central train station sits hollowed out, a monument to the city’s rail heyday. Further east, a new casino, named Motor City, stares through the train terminal, blinking its neon reminders that Detroit remains auto country.
Over a century ago, Southeast Michigan operated the most miles of passenger rail in America, with a streetcar network and interurban links to Flint, Ann Arbor, Toledo, Pontiac and Port Huron. The Detroit Street Railways system even endured the early decades of auto’s rise until 1956, when it was dismantled and replaced by General Motors buses.
As the rails got paved over, Mike Paradise came to Rochester, Michigan, outside the city. He was twelve, he said, when his dad came to take an engineering job with General Motors. “The absence of a real link to the suburbs stuck out, especially for someone without a driver’s license.” Decades after his driver’s test, however, Paradise is still mystified by Detroit’s betrayal of rail. At Cranbrook Art Academy, where he has worked for 14 years as technology coordinator, Paradise invites young innovators to work on the mass transit problem. Without a car, its not an easy trip from Detroit to the suburban Bloomfield Hills school.
“There’s a big hole in the Woodward corridor,” says Paradise. “If Gramma wants to take the kids to Cranbrook’s science center, the SMART bus won’t stop here.” The Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation, or SMART, operates the buses between the city and the suburbs. The system is supported by suburban tax levies, but townships like Bloomfield Hills, Livonia, and Novi have opted-out of service. Only 26 of 61 Oakland county municipalities have chosen to participate in Detroit’s only major system of mass transit connecting the city to the suburbs. For a three-mile stretch along Woodward through Bloomfield Hills, the bus runs non-stop past Cranbrook Academy and the country club.
Paradise spent boyhood days biking to Rochester parks and searching for signs of a massive interurban rail network that now scatters its remains in fits and starts throughout Southeast Michigan. The last commuter train route to run on these lines closed in 1982 when the city ceased operations from Pontiac to downtown Detroit. “A few lines still exist from the old system, up Woodward, Michigan, and Jefferson. We could bring trains back there.”
The return of rail might not be so far-fetched. It was a fifteen-minute drive to Dearborn’s Ford Community Center for a public meeting in March of the Detroit Transit Options for Growth Study (DTOGS). The perimeter of the room was lined with tables, high school science fair-style, with photographs and charts laying out a vision for mass transit in the city. A three-minute dvd simulation projected a sunny Detroit onto the room’s remaining empty wall. Computer-generated foot traffickers strolled past new light rail passenger cars zooming into new stations growing from the middle of Woodward, along a route that would begin near Grand Circus Park and Fox Theater.
City and state transportation departments and a handful of regional transit organizations formed DTOGS eighteen months ago to analyze traffic patterns as a first step in the application process for federal money. Now they’ve moved on to preliminary engineering in the hopes of winning a federal New Starts grant to fund about half of the proposed $370 million construction cost. Though Michigan Avenue and Gratiot Avenue are also being considered for eventual light rail or bus rapid transit, Woodward would be the first route. If all goes well, construction on the line could break ground by 2010.
The initial line along Woodward, between Grand Circus Park and the city’s northern limit at 8 Mile, would only be the beginning. Look elsewhere, said Tim Roseboom of the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT): “Of 28 similar projects nationwide, only one did not continue to expand after its initial construction.” The DART light rail system has brought new life to Dallas, Texas, since its inception in 1996. A 2007 University of North Texas study credits the rail system with attracting $4.26 billion of new investment to the city since 1999. Northeast of downtown Dallas, the blue and red lines run to Mockingbird station, a modern day oil-boom town. Just east of Southern Methodist University, the terminal has become a destination unto itself, sporting new lofts, shops, an office park, and an independent film theater steps from the platform.
The people at DTOGS claim that a similar future awaits Detroit once light rail comes on line. The investment and ridership will provide an essential boost for local and state tax revenues to fund expansion to routes along the other major spokes from the city, and importantly, into the suburbs. Add to the mix the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments’ (SEMCOG) proposal for interurban rail transit, and Southeast Michigan has the beginning of a regional rail system.
Picture this: SEMCOG creates commuter routes along existing Amtrak lines from Ann Arbor to Detroit. This would link with the DTOGS light-rail stop at the Amtrak station at the New Center, proposed for renovation, which would take Detroiters to a proposed station at the Detroit International Airport before heading on to Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor.
Light rail would take a lot of strain off the high-traffic Detroit bus routes up and down Woodward. Yet there is reason to be skeptical of so much future tense, as state and regional governments predict a funding crisis for transportation allocations. The Michigan Department of Transit outlines a steady decline in road conditions after 2007, right as SEMCOG speaks of a 4% rise in the cost of asphalt and cement each year for a decade. Add to this a drop in the federal transit trust fund after 2008, and a drop in MDOT’s proposed allocations in their Five-Year Plan until 2011, and the rosy promises becomes complicated.
Without a doubt, new forms of public transit can attract investment. Longtime public transit advocate and state representative Marie Donigan agrees. “This will make money and create jobs. We just need to sell the idea of this investment in transportation, even when it seems like the wrong time to spend any money at all.” Mass transit doesn’t thrive on functionality alone, but also on cultural appeal. A light-rail project, however limited at first, could foster excitement enough to weather the stigma that plagues Detroit’s bus system. There are ways, according to Donigan, to access the suburban tax base for a regionally funded system. “One option is a local option sales tax that would funnel money into transit, but our constitution would have to change to allow it.”
But could a DTOGS project become a new version of the People Mover, without its once proposed spokes? The initial Woodward line is exciting, but its initial costs might not bring the expected return if it doesn’t create connections to the suburbs, where two-thirds of the city office space resides. “It would serve a purpose if it’s expanded and gets people downtown from, say Pontiac,” says Paradise. While any massive new project like this will undoubtedly bring development to the central corridor of the city, it could well create another self-referencing exclusive space dislocated from the neighborhoods. Paradise is skeptical too: “If it remains as proposed it sounds more like entertainment than efficiency.”
Megan Owens, of the citizen advocacy group Transportation Riders United, defends DTOGS as a solid start, citing Denver and St. Louis as success stories. “No transit system is built all at once. Most new rapid transit systems start with an initial line of 3 to 10 miles.” Given the funding constraints, Owens argues that Detroit needs something now in order to get more later on. “While the slow progress may be frustrating,” she says, “it’s a necessary process, not a band-aid.”
Both Owens and Paradise can agree that the auto industry destroyed a gem of a rail system. “They were pro-bus because they could get people to see it’s no fun to ride one,” said Paradise. “They didn’t put enough behind the bus system, and it re-affirmed that you need a car in this city.” But the Big Three automakers are now an essential ingredient for any new mass transit system. According to Owens, the auto companies aren’t opposed to mass transit reform, but not actively engaged either. “They’re a little busy trying to survive to actively work on transit, but they are supportive politically at least.”
People will ride mass transit, if it gets them somewhere. The American Public Transportation Association’s recent study shows that Americans took 10.3 billion trips on mass transit systems nationwide in 2007, the highest volume in 50 years. Since 1995, the use of public transit has risen 32% nationally. But if the public interest doesn’t motivate the auto companies, transit projects could well salvage their bottom line.
By transforming themselves into transit companies, the auto sector could find their way to sustainability, an idea that’s been in the hopper for a while. “I remember going to these GM open houses with my father, and seeing the concept cars,” Paradise reminisces. “And, inevitably there would be a mass transit display. Some engineers in there might dust off those old concepts.”
You can see the General Motors downtown headquarters from GM’s technical center in Warren, Michigan at Mound Road and 12 Mile. With this sight line, Paradise envisions the beginnings of a new era in the auto industry: investment in mass transit. “Why don’t they connect the two? Then Ford could construct something from the Airport, and Chrysler could go from Auburn Hills south. It could be friendly competition.”
To overcome the historic gridlock between the suburbs and the city that has created so many false starts in Detroit’s plans for mass transit, the state government needs to form a regional transit authority to raise funds from the entire metropolitan area for a system that serves the region fully and seamlessly. The Detroit Area Regional Transit Authority came closest, though it had limited tax-levying authority and allowed oppositional suburban governments to opt-out of any regional transit plan it proposed.
Bills are back in the Michigan Senate after the initial formation of DARTA was vetoed by Governor Engler in 2003 and then struck down in the courts after Governor Granholm attempted to revive it in 2005. “You can expect to see some DARTA-like proposal in the next year or two,” says Ms. Owens, and Donigan agrees. “We are working hard on a bi-partisan plan for a transit authority that can ask people for tax dollars and coordinate services. Nothing else is set up to handle this right now.”
An egalitarian mass transportation system is the vital step needed to connect the five million Detroiters in the city and in the suburbs, who form the tenth largest metropolitan space in the country. This re-connection of fundamentally intertwined space and people can best begin with a transit plan that envisions the city limits not as gates but gateways. Now, the forces that destroyed Detroit’s once-touted public network of mobility are the same forces needed to help resurrect it.
April 07, 2008
Labor Notes Conference, April 11-13th
Less than a week until the Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, Michigan! Register here.
Here are the keynote speakers who will be at "Rebuilding Labor's Power" 2008.
The conference brings labor organizers from around the world, including a track devoted to Chinese labor struggles this year. But also figuring prominently will be the efforts just down the street at Hamtramck's American Axle plant, where auto workers have been on strike for nearly two months fighting the company's proposed %50 wage cuts.
March 18, 2008
A New McCarthyism, Part II: Roget Attacks!
The messages kept coming, from the same email. Now he called himself "Michael Jones," and took to looking through the thesaurus for insults:
3/21/07
If you want to insult my intelligence, you might want to use correct grammar. Did you transfer from U of M Dearborn?
Although I think terrorist is such an apt term to describe you, in the future I will also refer to you using the following words: agitator, insurgent, insurrectionist, malcontent, mutineer, nihilist, rebel, revolter.
…………..
The messages increasingly failed to resemble ideas.
I decided to track the source of these emails by their IP address. The messages had all been coming from Wayne State University computers and from a Farmington Hills, MI law firm by the name of Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa.
....
Several months later I tried to post a comment on a Detroit-area site known as "Anti-Racist Blog", an ugly outgrowth of the Horowitz Campus Watch phenomenon that polices what professors and students say about Israel and Palestine. They repeatedly level charges of antisemitism and racism at critics of zionism.
When my comment did not appear on the “anti-racist” blog, I got in contact with the blog administrator, asking why. I received an anonymous response:
11/20/07
"Anti-Racist Blog reserves the right to reject or remove any comments that are racist, offensive, untrue, annoying, or disrespectful.”
... "Anti-Racist Blog stands by the argument that anti-Zionism is racism."
…………
This time when I tracked the anonymous blog administrator, I was taken back to a familiar place: the same law office in Farmington Hills where the earlier attack emails came from; Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa.
Which makes a July posting on the “anti-racist blog” especially strange. The blog posted my original letter to the Michigan Daily (the one which elicited attacks by the anonymous harasser last March).
At the bottom of the post, Anti-Racist Blog claims that someone wrote in to them complaining about an email exchange they had with me:
7/12/07
"However, Mr. Abowd's views are very troubling. One Anti-Racist reader wrote in to say that he corresponded with Mr. Abowd about his article. Besides being completely unapologetic, Mr. Abowd allegedly included the following statement in one of his e-mails: "Long Live Nasrallah!"
…………..
Out there on the fringes of Zionism, the (not so?) sparse ranks of anonymous hate-peddlers multiply their identities and befriend themselves.
Why are people from Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa sending attack emails from their law office? Will they stop launching smear campaigns on committed teachers, students and organizers? Or at least emerge from anonymity and claim their ideas and actions?
3/21/07
If you want to insult my intelligence, you might want to use correct grammar. Did you transfer from U of M Dearborn?
Although I think terrorist is such an apt term to describe you, in the future I will also refer to you using the following words: agitator, insurgent, insurrectionist, malcontent, mutineer, nihilist, rebel, revolter.
…………..
The messages increasingly failed to resemble ideas.
I decided to track the source of these emails by their IP address. The messages had all been coming from Wayne State University computers and from a Farmington Hills, MI law firm by the name of Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa.
....
Several months later I tried to post a comment on a Detroit-area site known as "Anti-Racist Blog", an ugly outgrowth of the Horowitz Campus Watch phenomenon that polices what professors and students say about Israel and Palestine. They repeatedly level charges of antisemitism and racism at critics of zionism.
When my comment did not appear on the “anti-racist” blog, I got in contact with the blog administrator, asking why. I received an anonymous response:
11/20/07
"Anti-Racist Blog reserves the right to reject or remove any comments that are racist, offensive, untrue, annoying, or disrespectful.”
... "Anti-Racist Blog stands by the argument that anti-Zionism is racism."
…………
This time when I tracked the anonymous blog administrator, I was taken back to a familiar place: the same law office in Farmington Hills where the earlier attack emails came from; Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa.
Which makes a July posting on the “anti-racist blog” especially strange. The blog posted my original letter to the Michigan Daily (the one which elicited attacks by the anonymous harasser last March).
At the bottom of the post, Anti-Racist Blog claims that someone wrote in to them complaining about an email exchange they had with me:
7/12/07
"However, Mr. Abowd's views are very troubling. One Anti-Racist reader wrote in to say that he corresponded with Mr. Abowd about his article. Besides being completely unapologetic, Mr. Abowd allegedly included the following statement in one of his e-mails: "Long Live Nasrallah!"
…………..
Out there on the fringes of Zionism, the (not so?) sparse ranks of anonymous hate-peddlers multiply their identities and befriend themselves.
Why are people from Kaufman, Payton, and Chapa sending attack emails from their law office? Will they stop launching smear campaigns on committed teachers, students and organizers? Or at least emerge from anonymity and claim their ideas and actions?
March 16, 2008
A New McCarthyism
It began nearly a year ago, when I wrote a letter to the Michigan Daily calling for my school, the University of Michigan, to divest from military companies that arm the Israeli military.
3/19/07 I receive an email from "noneofyourbusiness@yahoo.com," who quickly employed a familiar tactic: call any critic a terrorist:
Does it bother you that you advocate and support terrorism?... Thanks for identifying yourself as a lover of jihad, and a friend of terrorists.
Yours truly, Divestmentisracism
And on it went for a week or so, me and the anonymous. Selections from his/her emails ranged from the hateful and absurd, to a childish playground blather.
3/20/07
Your future employers will also love to read your hate speech. You can forget about ever running for political office outside of Dearborn.
Oh, when I called you a terrorist...I meant it. You support terrorists, and that is obvious.
Sincerely,
Michael Jones
My email exchange became a disturbing glimpse into the world of crazed Zionists. I began to enjoy hitting back, fascinated but saddened by the magnitude of hatred that returned with each message.
What to say in response?:
3/21/07
"Be aware that by justifying the occupation of Palestinian land, you shirk the precedents of international law set forth by the United Nations after WWII to stop reckless nations like NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan from conquering their neighbors. This framework was designed to protect innocent life and to end wars of conquest. By justifying US unilateral invasion of Iraq and Israel's subsidized war on and conquest of Palestinian land, your opinions fly in the face of these human rights laws and international precedents which, had they been created earlier, may have prevented the holocaust in Europe or the Rape of Nanking by Japanese forces.
Long Live Nasrallah!
Best, Paul
My mistake was the playful "Long Live Nasrallah," which became the new rallying cry accusation of my anonymous friend:
3/21/07
"You ended your e-mail by saying "Long Live Nasrallah!"
This shows your true terrorist-supporting colors. Thanks for admitting your true allegiance. I am forwarding your e-mail to the relevant law enforcement authorities, given that Hezbollah is a designated terrorist group. "
But in the response, which threatened me with state action, I saw the implications of our exchange more clearly. It was not merely about two private citizens squabbling over distant politics. This exchange was about discursive power, and the normalization of racist ideas and policies in media, academia, and government. Symbiotic relationships form to govern and police the ideological boundaries of the mainstream, and to criminalize the critics of colonial projects.
to be continued...
3/19/07 I receive an email from "noneofyourbusiness@yahoo.com," who quickly employed a familiar tactic: call any critic a terrorist:
Does it bother you that you advocate and support terrorism?... Thanks for identifying yourself as a lover of jihad, and a friend of terrorists.
Yours truly, Divestmentisracism
And on it went for a week or so, me and the anonymous. Selections from his/her emails ranged from the hateful and absurd, to a childish playground blather.
3/20/07
Your future employers will also love to read your hate speech. You can forget about ever running for political office outside of Dearborn.
Oh, when I called you a terrorist...I meant it. You support terrorists, and that is obvious.
Sincerely,
Michael Jones
My email exchange became a disturbing glimpse into the world of crazed Zionists. I began to enjoy hitting back, fascinated but saddened by the magnitude of hatred that returned with each message.
What to say in response?:
3/21/07
"Be aware that by justifying the occupation of Palestinian land, you shirk the precedents of international law set forth by the United Nations after WWII to stop reckless nations like NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan from conquering their neighbors. This framework was designed to protect innocent life and to end wars of conquest. By justifying US unilateral invasion of Iraq and Israel's subsidized war on and conquest of Palestinian land, your opinions fly in the face of these human rights laws and international precedents which, had they been created earlier, may have prevented the holocaust in Europe or the Rape of Nanking by Japanese forces.
Long Live Nasrallah!
Best, Paul
My mistake was the playful "Long Live Nasrallah," which became the new rallying cry accusation of my anonymous friend:
3/21/07
"You ended your e-mail by saying "Long Live Nasrallah!"
This shows your true terrorist-supporting colors. Thanks for admitting your true allegiance. I am forwarding your e-mail to the relevant law enforcement authorities, given that Hezbollah is a designated terrorist group. "
But in the response, which threatened me with state action, I saw the implications of our exchange more clearly. It was not merely about two private citizens squabbling over distant politics. This exchange was about discursive power, and the normalization of racist ideas and policies in media, academia, and government. Symbiotic relationships form to govern and police the ideological boundaries of the mainstream, and to criminalize the critics of colonial projects.
to be continued...
March 10, 2008
Islam...uh, Obama?
As the status of Obama’s religious and ethnic background come forth in all distorted forms, he continually fights off claims that he swore into office on the Koran, or that he attended a Muslim terrorist training school. But Naomi Klein points out that rebuffing these charges is not enough. And seeing it as slander perpetuates the depictions of Muslims here and abroad as a national security threat. Its not slander, she says, but racist propoganda.
Klein argues that Obama needs to take an extra step, not merely remind people that he is in fact "safely" Christian. He has a chance to lead the way in disabusing Americans of their negative associations with Islam. Until then, merely “setting the record straight” might help save Obama, but it doesn’t address the deeper problem of the consistent criminalization of entire religious and ethnic communities that often runs through these candidates' statements and policy proposals.
The transformation of American consciousness about the Islamic world, and a re-conception of what constitutes terrorism is key to any foreign policy shifts proposed by the Democratic candidates.
Yet, look at Obama’s stances on Israel as a case in point to the absurd forms of racism that continue to come out of the mouths of liberal politicians… and which are explained away consistently as the requisite lip-service for winning office. Take Obama’s AIPAC speech a year ago, his pro-Israel reversals at debates, or his letter to the US ambassador to the UN, defending Israel’s economic and military seige on Gaza. All these actions hollow out his hopeful calls for progressive changes in American foreign policy, let alone his more profound call for a new-born political culture.
His transparent pandering to the pro-Israel right is doubly tragic, as it un-does his early support for Palestinian rights organizations in Chicago. The Zionists he seeks to bring into his coalition are some of the very purveyors of the insistently racist attacks on him and his association with Islam.
Even these outright lies and "accusations" of his Islamic heritage have not dissuaded Obama of his desire to win favor with American Zionists, many of whom look upon him with suspicion or disdain. In trying to cozy up to AIPAC, a group that actively pushed for war in Iraq and has been beating the drums for an attack on Iran, Obama undermines his strongest claims to foresight and principle as the only remaining “anti-war” candidate.
I like Obama, but its sad to see him pulled down into the dirty system he claims to transcend. The more he panders, the less moral high ground he retains, and the weaker his claims to change appear. The anti-Islamic attacks on him are not only racist and wrong, but have the potential to drive an increasingly calculating candidate Obama to more hawkish stances on foreign policy. This a vain compensation for the popular depictions of his connection to a religion of "the terrorists"—a discourse that some of his policies tacitly uphold and perpetuate.
By the end of this, we could see a candidate like Kerry, so obsessed with appearing tough on terrorism that it became unclear to us and to himself, what exactly he stood for.
What will it take for a Democratic candidate to take a stand? Ironically, its the brand of transformative leadership to which Mr. Obama lays claim.
Klein argues that Obama needs to take an extra step, not merely remind people that he is in fact "safely" Christian. He has a chance to lead the way in disabusing Americans of their negative associations with Islam. Until then, merely “setting the record straight” might help save Obama, but it doesn’t address the deeper problem of the consistent criminalization of entire religious and ethnic communities that often runs through these candidates' statements and policy proposals.
The transformation of American consciousness about the Islamic world, and a re-conception of what constitutes terrorism is key to any foreign policy shifts proposed by the Democratic candidates.
Yet, look at Obama’s stances on Israel as a case in point to the absurd forms of racism that continue to come out of the mouths of liberal politicians… and which are explained away consistently as the requisite lip-service for winning office. Take Obama’s AIPAC speech a year ago, his pro-Israel reversals at debates, or his letter to the US ambassador to the UN, defending Israel’s economic and military seige on Gaza. All these actions hollow out his hopeful calls for progressive changes in American foreign policy, let alone his more profound call for a new-born political culture.
His transparent pandering to the pro-Israel right is doubly tragic, as it un-does his early support for Palestinian rights organizations in Chicago. The Zionists he seeks to bring into his coalition are some of the very purveyors of the insistently racist attacks on him and his association with Islam.
Even these outright lies and "accusations" of his Islamic heritage have not dissuaded Obama of his desire to win favor with American Zionists, many of whom look upon him with suspicion or disdain. In trying to cozy up to AIPAC, a group that actively pushed for war in Iraq and has been beating the drums for an attack on Iran, Obama undermines his strongest claims to foresight and principle as the only remaining “anti-war” candidate.
I like Obama, but its sad to see him pulled down into the dirty system he claims to transcend. The more he panders, the less moral high ground he retains, and the weaker his claims to change appear. The anti-Islamic attacks on him are not only racist and wrong, but have the potential to drive an increasingly calculating candidate Obama to more hawkish stances on foreign policy. This a vain compensation for the popular depictions of his connection to a religion of "the terrorists"—a discourse that some of his policies tacitly uphold and perpetuate.
By the end of this, we could see a candidate like Kerry, so obsessed with appearing tough on terrorism that it became unclear to us and to himself, what exactly he stood for.
What will it take for a Democratic candidate to take a stand? Ironically, its the brand of transformative leadership to which Mr. Obama lays claim.
Bringing Christ to Campus
Campus Evangelicals: their mission, motivation, and why it’s cool to be saved
from The Michigan Independent
Nate Ardle looks more like a normal guy working on his laptop in the Union than a spiritual leader. He enjoys the hit series “24,” the occasional computer game, and time with the family. And he’s really into Jesus. As Pastor for Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru), Ardle leads a ministry aimed at the common college student. “We feel like every person needs to have a relationship with Christ,” he says. At the University of Michigan, Cru works alongside evangelical churches like New Life to infuse the good news with mass appeal. Less reliant on fear-mongering, campus evangelism is guided by ‘Christian rock’ strategies of planting the faith into the mainstream. It seems to be working. New Life’s community has outgrown its worship space in the Modern Language Building and is finishing construction of a new chapel for its 900 congregants. Until then, Sunday services get fired up fashionably late at 10:01 and 12:01 and hundreds pack into MLB Auditorium 3 seeking the promised “relevant, guilt-free, rockin’ good time.” This ain’t your grandma’s church. It’s an interactive concert, God’s Woodstock, and for evangelicals, it’s cool to be “saved.”
But these groups don’t thrive on the campaign of cool alone. The church community attracts students seeking personal guidance or a way to put their faith into action. Members of both New Life and Cru sign up for service trips aimed at quelling AIDS in Africa, hunger in Haiti, and hurricane destruction in New Orleans. These voyages don’t escape the complex history of missionary work and usually retain some strain of self-righteous zeal. Even with positive by-products, missions are part of the proselytization work for believers who see sin and depravity in the ‘underdeveloped’ world.
Pastor Ardle’s Campus Crusade for Christ is equally committed to spreading the word locally. The community is 300 strong and members can be seen armed with the Bible and pocket-sized pamphlets that read, “Would you like to know God personally?” Unlike traveling preachers who bring their one-man show to campuses to decry the sins of secularism, groups like New Life and Cru are taking a more delicate approach. The campus is a place where evangelicals have come not to scold so much as to tap into campus life and construct believers from the grassroots level. Ardle is a prime example. Not too many years ago, the pastor and his wife got involved as students in the evangelical community at Ohio State University. Now, his ministry in Ann Arbor cultivates the next generation of church leadership.
Gaia Stenson grew up in Michigan in an agnostic household. She pinpoints the moment in high school, at age 17, when she became interested in God. At a time when many high school kids are embracing Atheism as a response to school uniforms or Sunday morning mass, Stenson sought small group Bible study and found a community that really cared for each other. “I didn’t feel cornered, or judged, or pressured in any way,” she says. Stenson’s thoughtfulness is surprising. She’s a far cry from wild-eyed evangelists who trumpet rehearsed Bible verses laced with scorn. After graduating from U-M last year, Stenson decided to work for New Life as a campus organizer. “There have been a lot of bad things done in Jesus’ name,” she says. “Church positions have been used for power or oppression. I am ashamed at times, and deeply saddened that things have occurred.” Even so, she remains compelled by Jesus’ message, despite those who distort it: “I am not ashamed of the core of what Christ is about. That, in its most pure form, is the most beautiful thing.”
But is there an objective message? Faith is interpretative and interpretation involves selectivity. Some Christians see Jesus as a resolute pacifist, the ultimate peacemaker. For others, like Ardle, “Jesus doesn’t really address the issue of war very directly.” Both views depend on the emphasis of certain passages and the avoidance of others, and strain the logic of those who view the Bible as divine in its entirety. The good book has been a vessel through which people have sanctified their pre-existing political agendas for centuries. Its evolution is continually at the whim of power, illustrated by the multitude of successive translations and editions, each with their own adaptation of the text. This distortion has left a distinctly human imprint on the supposed word of God.
Believers all infuse their power into the Bible, but some have more power than others. There is a hierarchical relationship between national organizations and individual congregants. Groups like the Greater Commission Ministries fund church planting projects and have created a network of satellite churches, like New Life Ann Arbor. President Bush has helped to empower these umbrella groups by issuing executive orders for the establishment of “Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,” within government, which allow religious groups access to federal funds. The National Association of Evangelicals has received not only monetary support for its agenda but an amplified voice within Bush’s born-again boardroom.
Ardle’s ministry is also one chapter within an enormous international organization that bears the same name. The predominant interpretations on modern evangelism are forged at the top, where decision making power resides. It’s a pervasive traditionalism among conservative elites that facilitates a certain dissemination of God’s view on gay marriage. It’s the perceived clash with Islamic fundamentalists that compels evangelical leaders to pull out verses from “Romans” to justify war against the wrongdoers. And then there are the millions who relate to this brand of evangelism; those who fill the pews (or stadium style seating) of mega-churches every Sunday to have their worldview sanctified.
Pastor Ardle maintains that evangelism is not political. Though not overtly partisan, his carefully crafted statements of the faith do contain something fundamentally political, and at times paradoxical. Acceptance and judgment exist in tension alongside each other. New Life’s website embraces this tension too, speaking of eternal love and eternal damnation: “God declares righteous all who put their faith in Christ alone for their salvation.” For those who don’t honor the Bible, a less upbeat promise. “At physical death the unbeliever enters immediately into eternal, conscious separation from the Lord and awaits…everlasting suffering, judgment and condemnation,” the site reads.
This tension is reflected in specific issues like the dominant evangelical view on homosexuality. Ardle adds a disclaimer to his comments, emphasizing that it is not the goal of his ministry to condemn gay people. But as he elaborates, the judgment comes forth, less shrouded in niceties. “It would be just as sinful for me to commit adultery against my wife, as for someone to be in a homosexual relationship,” he says. “Both would be repugnant in the eyes of God.” Given the battle raging over gay marriage on state ballots, Ardle’s ministry finds itself intimately entangled in struggles of earthly power.
Though Stenson and Ardle represent a diversity within evangelism, there are central ideas that unify their community. To give your life to Jesus involves making, as Stenson asserts, “an exclusive claim on truth.” Choosing not to embrace Jesus is not simply a matter of preference, but a matter of eternal life or eternal death. Even the more tolerant amongst evangelicals seem steadfast in their conviction that theirs is the only way to “salvation.” This is hard for Stenson. “In terms of scripture, and what I believe, there is one way, and I’m fully aware that that is offensive, and hard to deal with, but it becomes an issue of standing on truth,” she says. But presuming to know truth on such questions has often had bloody consequences.
The problem of fundamentalism is not exclusive to Christianity, but the American brand presents a stunning case study. Evangelists in America are not only a mobilized demographic force or a community emboldened by sympathetic elements in government. The new technology of evangelism operates with a subtlety that is particularly insidious. Recognizing that no one wants to be screamed at about eternal damnation, evangelical groups on campus react to difference first with an invitation. Ardle insists that sin is the great equalizing force, but with a catch: “Everybody will be judged for their sin. But the only way I escape judgment is because of Jesus Christ, because I have placed my life in his hands.” The invitation is for everybody, but the promise of salvation quickly turns into judgment if a homosexual refuses to “become” straight, or a Muslim refuses the “enlightenment” of Jesus. Campus evangelical groups are a comforting presence for some students, but they remain part of a well-oiled fundamentalist machine that operates internationally on the premises of self-righteousness, intolerance and exclusion.
from The Michigan Independent
Nate Ardle looks more like a normal guy working on his laptop in the Union than a spiritual leader. He enjoys the hit series “24,” the occasional computer game, and time with the family. And he’s really into Jesus. As Pastor for Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru), Ardle leads a ministry aimed at the common college student. “We feel like every person needs to have a relationship with Christ,” he says. At the University of Michigan, Cru works alongside evangelical churches like New Life to infuse the good news with mass appeal. Less reliant on fear-mongering, campus evangelism is guided by ‘Christian rock’ strategies of planting the faith into the mainstream. It seems to be working. New Life’s community has outgrown its worship space in the Modern Language Building and is finishing construction of a new chapel for its 900 congregants. Until then, Sunday services get fired up fashionably late at 10:01 and 12:01 and hundreds pack into MLB Auditorium 3 seeking the promised “relevant, guilt-free, rockin’ good time.” This ain’t your grandma’s church. It’s an interactive concert, God’s Woodstock, and for evangelicals, it’s cool to be “saved.”
But these groups don’t thrive on the campaign of cool alone. The church community attracts students seeking personal guidance or a way to put their faith into action. Members of both New Life and Cru sign up for service trips aimed at quelling AIDS in Africa, hunger in Haiti, and hurricane destruction in New Orleans. These voyages don’t escape the complex history of missionary work and usually retain some strain of self-righteous zeal. Even with positive by-products, missions are part of the proselytization work for believers who see sin and depravity in the ‘underdeveloped’ world.
Pastor Ardle’s Campus Crusade for Christ is equally committed to spreading the word locally. The community is 300 strong and members can be seen armed with the Bible and pocket-sized pamphlets that read, “Would you like to know God personally?” Unlike traveling preachers who bring their one-man show to campuses to decry the sins of secularism, groups like New Life and Cru are taking a more delicate approach. The campus is a place where evangelicals have come not to scold so much as to tap into campus life and construct believers from the grassroots level. Ardle is a prime example. Not too many years ago, the pastor and his wife got involved as students in the evangelical community at Ohio State University. Now, his ministry in Ann Arbor cultivates the next generation of church leadership.
Gaia Stenson grew up in Michigan in an agnostic household. She pinpoints the moment in high school, at age 17, when she became interested in God. At a time when many high school kids are embracing Atheism as a response to school uniforms or Sunday morning mass, Stenson sought small group Bible study and found a community that really cared for each other. “I didn’t feel cornered, or judged, or pressured in any way,” she says. Stenson’s thoughtfulness is surprising. She’s a far cry from wild-eyed evangelists who trumpet rehearsed Bible verses laced with scorn. After graduating from U-M last year, Stenson decided to work for New Life as a campus organizer. “There have been a lot of bad things done in Jesus’ name,” she says. “Church positions have been used for power or oppression. I am ashamed at times, and deeply saddened that things have occurred.” Even so, she remains compelled by Jesus’ message, despite those who distort it: “I am not ashamed of the core of what Christ is about. That, in its most pure form, is the most beautiful thing.”
But is there an objective message? Faith is interpretative and interpretation involves selectivity. Some Christians see Jesus as a resolute pacifist, the ultimate peacemaker. For others, like Ardle, “Jesus doesn’t really address the issue of war very directly.” Both views depend on the emphasis of certain passages and the avoidance of others, and strain the logic of those who view the Bible as divine in its entirety. The good book has been a vessel through which people have sanctified their pre-existing political agendas for centuries. Its evolution is continually at the whim of power, illustrated by the multitude of successive translations and editions, each with their own adaptation of the text. This distortion has left a distinctly human imprint on the supposed word of God.
Believers all infuse their power into the Bible, but some have more power than others. There is a hierarchical relationship between national organizations and individual congregants. Groups like the Greater Commission Ministries fund church planting projects and have created a network of satellite churches, like New Life Ann Arbor. President Bush has helped to empower these umbrella groups by issuing executive orders for the establishment of “Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,” within government, which allow religious groups access to federal funds. The National Association of Evangelicals has received not only monetary support for its agenda but an amplified voice within Bush’s born-again boardroom.
Ardle’s ministry is also one chapter within an enormous international organization that bears the same name. The predominant interpretations on modern evangelism are forged at the top, where decision making power resides. It’s a pervasive traditionalism among conservative elites that facilitates a certain dissemination of God’s view on gay marriage. It’s the perceived clash with Islamic fundamentalists that compels evangelical leaders to pull out verses from “Romans” to justify war against the wrongdoers. And then there are the millions who relate to this brand of evangelism; those who fill the pews (or stadium style seating) of mega-churches every Sunday to have their worldview sanctified.
Pastor Ardle maintains that evangelism is not political. Though not overtly partisan, his carefully crafted statements of the faith do contain something fundamentally political, and at times paradoxical. Acceptance and judgment exist in tension alongside each other. New Life’s website embraces this tension too, speaking of eternal love and eternal damnation: “God declares righteous all who put their faith in Christ alone for their salvation.” For those who don’t honor the Bible, a less upbeat promise. “At physical death the unbeliever enters immediately into eternal, conscious separation from the Lord and awaits…everlasting suffering, judgment and condemnation,” the site reads.
This tension is reflected in specific issues like the dominant evangelical view on homosexuality. Ardle adds a disclaimer to his comments, emphasizing that it is not the goal of his ministry to condemn gay people. But as he elaborates, the judgment comes forth, less shrouded in niceties. “It would be just as sinful for me to commit adultery against my wife, as for someone to be in a homosexual relationship,” he says. “Both would be repugnant in the eyes of God.” Given the battle raging over gay marriage on state ballots, Ardle’s ministry finds itself intimately entangled in struggles of earthly power.
Though Stenson and Ardle represent a diversity within evangelism, there are central ideas that unify their community. To give your life to Jesus involves making, as Stenson asserts, “an exclusive claim on truth.” Choosing not to embrace Jesus is not simply a matter of preference, but a matter of eternal life or eternal death. Even the more tolerant amongst evangelicals seem steadfast in their conviction that theirs is the only way to “salvation.” This is hard for Stenson. “In terms of scripture, and what I believe, there is one way, and I’m fully aware that that is offensive, and hard to deal with, but it becomes an issue of standing on truth,” she says. But presuming to know truth on such questions has often had bloody consequences.
The problem of fundamentalism is not exclusive to Christianity, but the American brand presents a stunning case study. Evangelists in America are not only a mobilized demographic force or a community emboldened by sympathetic elements in government. The new technology of evangelism operates with a subtlety that is particularly insidious. Recognizing that no one wants to be screamed at about eternal damnation, evangelical groups on campus react to difference first with an invitation. Ardle insists that sin is the great equalizing force, but with a catch: “Everybody will be judged for their sin. But the only way I escape judgment is because of Jesus Christ, because I have placed my life in his hands.” The invitation is for everybody, but the promise of salvation quickly turns into judgment if a homosexual refuses to “become” straight, or a Muslim refuses the “enlightenment” of Jesus. Campus evangelical groups are a comforting presence for some students, but they remain part of a well-oiled fundamentalist machine that operates internationally on the premises of self-righteousness, intolerance and exclusion.
Why America needs to find its inner-Socialist
Stigmatized Solutions
From The Michigan Independent
On the eve of the 2006 midterm elections, the Michigan Union lawn was littered with the tiny billboards of a few dozen candidates. A rented truck shot four giant rotating light beams from its chassis to the sky, publicizing a midnight campus visit by Governor Granholm. Giddy Democrats packed the ballroom inside, but outside something was askew. Campaign knick-knacks generally sport some variation of the stars and stripes theme followed by vague promises of a hopeful dawn. But there, drowning in a sea of red white and blue, sat Matt Erard’s campaign sign for the Michigan House of Representatives 53rd District seat. Erard’s Socialist campaign cut costs on their yard-signs - sporting a smaller dimension, black and white print, and neither stars nor stripes - but this one stood out amid the glare of high-beam, two party fanfare.
Though our generation is involved with politics, much of this energy gets funneled into organizations like the College Democrats, which push for reform within a free enterprise framework. Though Marxist theory is a staple of most liberal arts educations, many students fail to see how revolutionary change can happen, or refuse to believe that such drastic measures are necessary. Instead, many liberals choose the gradualist strategies of election activism, which carry the appeal of a short term framework and tangible results, not to mention a row of glossy candidates, slogans, and policy promises which students can latch on to. For Socialists, this is not satisfying enough; no matter who wins within today’s political framework, corporate capitalism remains the central actor and beneficiary.
Erard recognized this early on, joining the Socialist party at age 15. His predominantly black attire accentuates the white anti-Bush slogan on his t-shirt and the button on his jacket complaining: “U.S. military spending is killing US.” Currently an Undergrad at the University of Michigan, Matt ran his 2006 campaign to expand the Socialist presence more than to actually win. “It would be great if it were possible to come to power through the American electoral system, but for a variety of reasons it’s likely to be impossible,” he says. Radicals in America constantly recite an ambivalent mantra. Erard’s pessimistic view of the capitalist behemoth is balanced by a resolute optimism of will - the belief that organized voices of a working majority can overcome seemingly insuperable barriers to Socialist transformation.
The American system won’t ban Socialists from running, nor keep Erard from planting his sign. But monied adherents to the two-party paradigm have mechanisms for protecting their monopoly from those who seek entrance. One small example is ballot access. Erard, just like any aspiring third party candidate, faces outrageous requirements. “It’s very difficult for Socialists to get on the ballots,” he says. “And the reason for these restrictive laws is because of past Socialist and Communist victories.” In Michigan, some 40,000 valid signatures, collected throughout the state within a 180-day period, are needed to get on the ballot with minor party affiliation. The two dominant parties are beholden to lower ballot access requirements and use federal and corporate aid to mobilize signature campaigns. There is also a virtual blackout from major media outlets, which operate on a foolish tautology: contending voices deserve little coverage because they don’t get any to begin with. Virtually every aspect of capitalist society becomes a commodity available to the highest bidder. America’s ideology of fairness is corrupted by those who can purchase a soapbox sufficiently large to dominate discourse with amplified voices.
Within a hostile political climate, Erard believes a movement can be built from the workplace. The establishment of radical democracy starts with organized worker’s associations to regain control over the value that their labor produces. Economic democracy is the necessary prerequisite to political democracy, says Erard: “As long as you have a ruling class controlling most of society’s institutions, that class will use its clout to control the state.” Socialists don’t merely battle an exploitative relation between “capital and labor” but a cultural milieu that normalizes capitalism as conventional wisdom. The Cold War witnessed a blitz of what Erard calls “capitalist propaganda” that made the thought of communism almost criminal. The intensity of that campaign has faded, leaving a residue of triumphalism. The fall of the Soviet state, and with it the relevance of Marx, came at the hands of a superior free market model, so the story goes. Socialist ideas sound foreign in a society where every facet of our lives is filtered through an ideological lens that frames existence in capitalist terms.
So what sets radicals like Erard apart from liberals? The substantive differences become clear where bi-partisan consensus thrives. The two-party discussion of “national security” lacks debate over imperialism. Democrats and Republicans largely presuppose American primacy in the world, with tactical disagreements over how best to manage and police it. Liberal opposition to the ravaging of Iraq was largely muted until Bush’s nation-building strategy began producing American body bags. Even as Democrats take a stronger stance against troop levels, very few question the legitimacy of the 14 U.S. bases now being primed for a permanent stay in Iraq. Bi-partisan expansionism cradled the American arms industry in its formative years; now it’s a manufacturing hub and a core American export unto the world. While over 50 percent of the Federal discretionary budget goes to the Department of Defense, and the U.S. military budget is larger than that of the next 14 highest countries combined, America’s social safety net is in tatters. Both parties are more or less willing to work within the artificial budgetary constraints imposed by frivolous military buildup.
In the face of yet another fear-mongering blitz from government and a brand of open force not seen since Vietnam, the Socialist appeal to anti-imperialism is more prescient than ever. The deployment of a post-WWII global military presence is, for Socialists, evidence of capitalism’s appetite for control over foreign spheres. America’s comparative advantage is weapons production, and the arms industry has a giant stake in preserving the militarized status quo. General Electric, a major weapons producer, also owns NBC and gives large PAC donations to both parties (on a consistent 60/40 split between Republicans and Democrats), illustrating the central role of corporate power on the ideological and material fronts of America’s hegemony project.
But not everyone follows in lock step. In 2006, Bernie Sanders was elected to the U.S. Senate as the first self-described Socialist Senator in American history. Sanders has spent decades in Vermont politics, first as mayor of Burlington, then spent 15 years in Congress. Though the Socialist Party does not recognize him, and actually ran a candidate against him this year (Sanders ran as an Independent), his work within the system of American capitalism carries radical strains.
One might dismiss Sanders as an aberration, a Vermont progressive whose message could never hold weight in the heartland. But Sanders’ focus on economic struggle is far from elitist. In a July interview with The Nation, Bernie lamented that the liberal establishment allows Republicans to steal working class votes with divisive cultural issues: "The Republicans jump in and say, 'OK, look. Democrats are not talking about your economic issues. We're not either, but at least we're telling you about the Ten Commandments, we're telling you about abortion, we're telling you about gay rights.' The biggest mistake Democrats make is to take economics off the table.” His advocacy for working class America is in striking contrast to most Democratic elites who embrace the myth of economic fairness rather than affect the changes necessary to realize it.
Erard reminds me that Sanders does not advocate basic Socialist tenets like “social ownership, or worker control of basic economic institutions,” but Sanders is an infiltrator, pushing the envelope from within a restrictive system. Entering the electoral world has required him to adapt. Even so, he remains unafraid of addressing America’s class crisis: “The richest one percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The richest 13,000 families earn more income than the bottom 20 million families. We are moving toward an oligarchic form of society.” While so many have so little, Sanders wonders aloud why we don’t hear about this inequality on the nightly news. He blames not only failed government policies, but the cynical refusal by large media conglomerates to broadcast pressing American realities.
Still, among Socialists, Sanders has earned the nickname “Bernie the Bomber” for his support of the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the US-led UN Sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s. This conflict with Sanders represents a larger tactical crisis for Socialists. Operating within our electoral system requires compromise, something that doesn’t mix well with the resolute Socialist camp. Infighting also threatens Socialist unity, as every splinter group claims to be more radical than the next. Erard is currently engaged in an initiative which would incorporate such groups under a decision making model called democratic de-centralism, thus creating a more unified umbrella organization. But splinter groups fight for autonomy, often at the expense of substantial common ground. According to Erard, some 30 Trotskyist groups are currently alive in the United States, many of whom insist on being the vanguard of the American socialist movement. As they figure out how best to engage the American political system, Socialists struggle simultaneously to avoid painting themselves into a corner.
A hundred years ago, American Socialists organized in reaction to a “rags to riches” myth which proved to be more exception than rule. Eugene Debs ran for President several times in the early 20th century to expose capitalism’s affinity for conquest: “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives.” Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for these words, which violated the Espionage Act of 1917. In prison or not, Debs knew that he and American workers were incarcerated by the confines of industrial capitalism. The poor were squeezed of their labor and sent to the front lines of America’s expanding imperialist frontier. And Debs’ persecution validated his message; the master class would not tolerate opposition to a war (or an economic model) which required the participation of the working majority.
These struggles are not distant lore. According to Sanders, American wealth inequality today is comparable to that of the infamous “roaring twenties,” when Debs warned against America’s unsustainable productive drive. By the end of the decade, American capitalism was in shambles, and the Socialist prophecy was redeemed, if only to be co-opted by Roosevelt’s New Deal which saved capitalism from itself. Today, the injunction to embrace capitalism infiltrates our conceptions of human nature to such a degree that divergent impulses seem perverse. In a time when the hegemony of market ideology coincides with increasing inequality on a global scale, embattled Socialist critiques are needed more urgently than ever.
From The Michigan Independent
On the eve of the 2006 midterm elections, the Michigan Union lawn was littered with the tiny billboards of a few dozen candidates. A rented truck shot four giant rotating light beams from its chassis to the sky, publicizing a midnight campus visit by Governor Granholm. Giddy Democrats packed the ballroom inside, but outside something was askew. Campaign knick-knacks generally sport some variation of the stars and stripes theme followed by vague promises of a hopeful dawn. But there, drowning in a sea of red white and blue, sat Matt Erard’s campaign sign for the Michigan House of Representatives 53rd District seat. Erard’s Socialist campaign cut costs on their yard-signs - sporting a smaller dimension, black and white print, and neither stars nor stripes - but this one stood out amid the glare of high-beam, two party fanfare.
Though our generation is involved with politics, much of this energy gets funneled into organizations like the College Democrats, which push for reform within a free enterprise framework. Though Marxist theory is a staple of most liberal arts educations, many students fail to see how revolutionary change can happen, or refuse to believe that such drastic measures are necessary. Instead, many liberals choose the gradualist strategies of election activism, which carry the appeal of a short term framework and tangible results, not to mention a row of glossy candidates, slogans, and policy promises which students can latch on to. For Socialists, this is not satisfying enough; no matter who wins within today’s political framework, corporate capitalism remains the central actor and beneficiary.
Erard recognized this early on, joining the Socialist party at age 15. His predominantly black attire accentuates the white anti-Bush slogan on his t-shirt and the button on his jacket complaining: “U.S. military spending is killing US.” Currently an Undergrad at the University of Michigan, Matt ran his 2006 campaign to expand the Socialist presence more than to actually win. “It would be great if it were possible to come to power through the American electoral system, but for a variety of reasons it’s likely to be impossible,” he says. Radicals in America constantly recite an ambivalent mantra. Erard’s pessimistic view of the capitalist behemoth is balanced by a resolute optimism of will - the belief that organized voices of a working majority can overcome seemingly insuperable barriers to Socialist transformation.
The American system won’t ban Socialists from running, nor keep Erard from planting his sign. But monied adherents to the two-party paradigm have mechanisms for protecting their monopoly from those who seek entrance. One small example is ballot access. Erard, just like any aspiring third party candidate, faces outrageous requirements. “It’s very difficult for Socialists to get on the ballots,” he says. “And the reason for these restrictive laws is because of past Socialist and Communist victories.” In Michigan, some 40,000 valid signatures, collected throughout the state within a 180-day period, are needed to get on the ballot with minor party affiliation. The two dominant parties are beholden to lower ballot access requirements and use federal and corporate aid to mobilize signature campaigns. There is also a virtual blackout from major media outlets, which operate on a foolish tautology: contending voices deserve little coverage because they don’t get any to begin with. Virtually every aspect of capitalist society becomes a commodity available to the highest bidder. America’s ideology of fairness is corrupted by those who can purchase a soapbox sufficiently large to dominate discourse with amplified voices.
Within a hostile political climate, Erard believes a movement can be built from the workplace. The establishment of radical democracy starts with organized worker’s associations to regain control over the value that their labor produces. Economic democracy is the necessary prerequisite to political democracy, says Erard: “As long as you have a ruling class controlling most of society’s institutions, that class will use its clout to control the state.” Socialists don’t merely battle an exploitative relation between “capital and labor” but a cultural milieu that normalizes capitalism as conventional wisdom. The Cold War witnessed a blitz of what Erard calls “capitalist propaganda” that made the thought of communism almost criminal. The intensity of that campaign has faded, leaving a residue of triumphalism. The fall of the Soviet state, and with it the relevance of Marx, came at the hands of a superior free market model, so the story goes. Socialist ideas sound foreign in a society where every facet of our lives is filtered through an ideological lens that frames existence in capitalist terms.
So what sets radicals like Erard apart from liberals? The substantive differences become clear where bi-partisan consensus thrives. The two-party discussion of “national security” lacks debate over imperialism. Democrats and Republicans largely presuppose American primacy in the world, with tactical disagreements over how best to manage and police it. Liberal opposition to the ravaging of Iraq was largely muted until Bush’s nation-building strategy began producing American body bags. Even as Democrats take a stronger stance against troop levels, very few question the legitimacy of the 14 U.S. bases now being primed for a permanent stay in Iraq. Bi-partisan expansionism cradled the American arms industry in its formative years; now it’s a manufacturing hub and a core American export unto the world. While over 50 percent of the Federal discretionary budget goes to the Department of Defense, and the U.S. military budget is larger than that of the next 14 highest countries combined, America’s social safety net is in tatters. Both parties are more or less willing to work within the artificial budgetary constraints imposed by frivolous military buildup.
In the face of yet another fear-mongering blitz from government and a brand of open force not seen since Vietnam, the Socialist appeal to anti-imperialism is more prescient than ever. The deployment of a post-WWII global military presence is, for Socialists, evidence of capitalism’s appetite for control over foreign spheres. America’s comparative advantage is weapons production, and the arms industry has a giant stake in preserving the militarized status quo. General Electric, a major weapons producer, also owns NBC and gives large PAC donations to both parties (on a consistent 60/40 split between Republicans and Democrats), illustrating the central role of corporate power on the ideological and material fronts of America’s hegemony project.
But not everyone follows in lock step. In 2006, Bernie Sanders was elected to the U.S. Senate as the first self-described Socialist Senator in American history. Sanders has spent decades in Vermont politics, first as mayor of Burlington, then spent 15 years in Congress. Though the Socialist Party does not recognize him, and actually ran a candidate against him this year (Sanders ran as an Independent), his work within the system of American capitalism carries radical strains.
One might dismiss Sanders as an aberration, a Vermont progressive whose message could never hold weight in the heartland. But Sanders’ focus on economic struggle is far from elitist. In a July interview with The Nation, Bernie lamented that the liberal establishment allows Republicans to steal working class votes with divisive cultural issues: "The Republicans jump in and say, 'OK, look. Democrats are not talking about your economic issues. We're not either, but at least we're telling you about the Ten Commandments, we're telling you about abortion, we're telling you about gay rights.' The biggest mistake Democrats make is to take economics off the table.” His advocacy for working class America is in striking contrast to most Democratic elites who embrace the myth of economic fairness rather than affect the changes necessary to realize it.
Erard reminds me that Sanders does not advocate basic Socialist tenets like “social ownership, or worker control of basic economic institutions,” but Sanders is an infiltrator, pushing the envelope from within a restrictive system. Entering the electoral world has required him to adapt. Even so, he remains unafraid of addressing America’s class crisis: “The richest one percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The richest 13,000 families earn more income than the bottom 20 million families. We are moving toward an oligarchic form of society.” While so many have so little, Sanders wonders aloud why we don’t hear about this inequality on the nightly news. He blames not only failed government policies, but the cynical refusal by large media conglomerates to broadcast pressing American realities.
Still, among Socialists, Sanders has earned the nickname “Bernie the Bomber” for his support of the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the US-led UN Sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s. This conflict with Sanders represents a larger tactical crisis for Socialists. Operating within our electoral system requires compromise, something that doesn’t mix well with the resolute Socialist camp. Infighting also threatens Socialist unity, as every splinter group claims to be more radical than the next. Erard is currently engaged in an initiative which would incorporate such groups under a decision making model called democratic de-centralism, thus creating a more unified umbrella organization. But splinter groups fight for autonomy, often at the expense of substantial common ground. According to Erard, some 30 Trotskyist groups are currently alive in the United States, many of whom insist on being the vanguard of the American socialist movement. As they figure out how best to engage the American political system, Socialists struggle simultaneously to avoid painting themselves into a corner.
A hundred years ago, American Socialists organized in reaction to a “rags to riches” myth which proved to be more exception than rule. Eugene Debs ran for President several times in the early 20th century to expose capitalism’s affinity for conquest: “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives.” Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for these words, which violated the Espionage Act of 1917. In prison or not, Debs knew that he and American workers were incarcerated by the confines of industrial capitalism. The poor were squeezed of their labor and sent to the front lines of America’s expanding imperialist frontier. And Debs’ persecution validated his message; the master class would not tolerate opposition to a war (or an economic model) which required the participation of the working majority.
These struggles are not distant lore. According to Sanders, American wealth inequality today is comparable to that of the infamous “roaring twenties,” when Debs warned against America’s unsustainable productive drive. By the end of the decade, American capitalism was in shambles, and the Socialist prophecy was redeemed, if only to be co-opted by Roosevelt’s New Deal which saved capitalism from itself. Today, the injunction to embrace capitalism infiltrates our conceptions of human nature to such a degree that divergent impulses seem perverse. In a time when the hegemony of market ideology coincides with increasing inequality on a global scale, embattled Socialist critiques are needed more urgently than ever.
March 03, 2008
Welcome
Welcome friends. I'm as new to this place as you are. I'm warming it up here with two newly published stories below as well as old stuff too, and more writing and photos coming along.
That's 75 South cutting through Southwest Detroit, mexicantown, my home. We have a wonderful old train station without windows and a view of the ren cen on a clear day. Full streets and lots of movement in this part of town. We've also got ft. wayne, clark park, hotel yorba, churros, a blinking restaurant district, the border patrol, the ambassador bridge going south, and two more years of highway construction.
On this first post, I want to share a remarkable piece just published in The New Yorker dealing with America's legacy of torture. It was written by my favorite professor and mentor from Ann Arbor, historian Paul Kramer.
enjoy.
That's 75 South cutting through Southwest Detroit, mexicantown, my home. We have a wonderful old train station without windows and a view of the ren cen on a clear day. Full streets and lots of movement in this part of town. We've also got ft. wayne, clark park, hotel yorba, churros, a blinking restaurant district, the border patrol, the ambassador bridge going south, and two more years of highway construction.
On this first post, I want to share a remarkable piece just published in The New Yorker dealing with America's legacy of torture. It was written by my favorite professor and mentor from Ann Arbor, historian Paul Kramer.
enjoy.
Part-Time Faculty Organizing at Wayne State!
From March 2008, at Labor Notes and Monthly Review's WebZine
by Paul Abowd
One at a time, the teachers came out of the sub-zero January cold and into the lobby of Wayne State University's McGregor Hall in Detroit. By the time the board of governors meeting began -- where the teachers had three minutes total to detail their concerns -- they were together in force.
Before they went inside, staff organizer Bryan Pfeifer held out a green folder full of names. These were the part-time teachers who lost work last fall when the university cut its humanities department and interdisciplinary studies program.
"We had a teacher who was here for 10 years, and they told him his class was cancelled the day before the semester began," said Pfeifer, who organizes contingent faculty for Michigan's American Federation of Teachers (AFT) branch. "Without a union, what can you do?"
DELAYED REACTION
The part-timer phenomenon has its roots in the 1970s, when college administrators suffering from funding cuts scrambled to reduce costs just as demand for post-secondary education rose. Campus populations were changing, as "non-traditional" students appeared in classrooms, struggling to find a place in the weak job market.
"Schools could no longer project how many sections of English 1A they needed to staff, and they lived in terror of the fact that full-time faculty might go idle," said Joe Berry, a labor educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower.
To stay flexible, schools began to hire more contingent faculty and reduced tenure track positions. The result was a new workforce employed for lower pay and fewer benefits, with precarious job security.
Four decades of lean management in higher education has produced a nationwide reliance on contingent teachers. Full-time non-tenure track professors and part-time adjuncts form a majority of faculty in higher education. Contingent instructors rose from 43 percent of the workforce in 1975 to 65 percent in 2003, according to a Department of Education report.
MICHIGAN EPICENTER
Southeast Michigan has been an epicenter of part-time faculty organizing. Contingent instructors are the fastest-growing segment of the Michigan AFT. Part-time professors at Wayne State, who outnumber full-timers four to one, voted 445 to 58 to form the AFT-affiliated Union for Part-Time Faculty (UPTF) last spring.
As they negotiate their first contract, teachers are holding community forums and visiting each other in classrooms to break down the isolation between overworked contingents. Amanda Hiber teaches English at Wayne, where two-thirds of her department is staffed by adjuncts. "I did not know many of my colleagues," she said. "We didn't usually have time to talk to each other, but now we have some community."
Many of the 1,000 part-timers at Wayne responded to UPTF's surveys, revealing the sordid details of life as an adjunct: no pensions, health care, or seniority system. Pay is not prorated with tenure-track faculty, and varies by department.
University President Irvin Reid, however, made $394,000 last year -- a 63 percent raise. But teacher salaries don't make life in the ivory tower cushy. "If I taught the teaching load of a full-time professor at Wayne," Hiber said, "I would make less than $14,000 a year."
At other Michigan universities, contingent teachers are organizing, and seeing results. The Lecturer Employees Organization at University of Michigan built a union to represent most of the non-tenure track faculty on all three of its campuses. LEO's one-day strike in 2004 secured pay raises, health benefits, and sick pay for 1,200 teachers, an agreement that was renewed late last year.
EXPANDING EFFORTS
Nearby Henry Ford Community College recently voted for a union and full-time non-tenure track professors at Michigan State University in Lansing are organizing, while Wayne State hammers out their first agreement.
Local organizing is growing, but Berry says national solidarity is a must. The Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a loose network of activists, works to forge these ties by highlighting common struggles. Late last year, the Chicago COCAL released a guide on unemployment insurance, which has been consistently denied to contingent faculty on a university's claim to give "reasonable assurance" of employment.
When San Francisco Community College teachers won a class-action appeal for the right to unemployment benefits in 1989, California part-time teachers organized around this legal precedent.
Though different regulations exist from state to state, the victory in California informed organizing strategies elsewhere. The Washington AFT in 2001 carved out a legislative provision for contingent faculty at two-year colleges to secure eligibility for these benefits.
Teachers have joined the growing ranks of the part-time, flexible labor force as corporate cost-cutting models have seeped into the university. But the spread of contingent teachers also represents a potential for organizing.
"In the last 30 years, the rate of 'yes' votes for part-time faculty unions has been huge," Berry said, "But it hasn't been enough to change standards across the board. Now it's a matter of building a critical mass nationally."
by Paul Abowd
One at a time, the teachers came out of the sub-zero January cold and into the lobby of Wayne State University's McGregor Hall in Detroit. By the time the board of governors meeting began -- where the teachers had three minutes total to detail their concerns -- they were together in force.
Before they went inside, staff organizer Bryan Pfeifer held out a green folder full of names. These were the part-time teachers who lost work last fall when the university cut its humanities department and interdisciplinary studies program.
"We had a teacher who was here for 10 years, and they told him his class was cancelled the day before the semester began," said Pfeifer, who organizes contingent faculty for Michigan's American Federation of Teachers (AFT) branch. "Without a union, what can you do?"
DELAYED REACTION
The part-timer phenomenon has its roots in the 1970s, when college administrators suffering from funding cuts scrambled to reduce costs just as demand for post-secondary education rose. Campus populations were changing, as "non-traditional" students appeared in classrooms, struggling to find a place in the weak job market.
"Schools could no longer project how many sections of English 1A they needed to staff, and they lived in terror of the fact that full-time faculty might go idle," said Joe Berry, a labor educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower.
To stay flexible, schools began to hire more contingent faculty and reduced tenure track positions. The result was a new workforce employed for lower pay and fewer benefits, with precarious job security.
Four decades of lean management in higher education has produced a nationwide reliance on contingent teachers. Full-time non-tenure track professors and part-time adjuncts form a majority of faculty in higher education. Contingent instructors rose from 43 percent of the workforce in 1975 to 65 percent in 2003, according to a Department of Education report.
MICHIGAN EPICENTER
Southeast Michigan has been an epicenter of part-time faculty organizing. Contingent instructors are the fastest-growing segment of the Michigan AFT. Part-time professors at Wayne State, who outnumber full-timers four to one, voted 445 to 58 to form the AFT-affiliated Union for Part-Time Faculty (UPTF) last spring.
As they negotiate their first contract, teachers are holding community forums and visiting each other in classrooms to break down the isolation between overworked contingents. Amanda Hiber teaches English at Wayne, where two-thirds of her department is staffed by adjuncts. "I did not know many of my colleagues," she said. "We didn't usually have time to talk to each other, but now we have some community."
Many of the 1,000 part-timers at Wayne responded to UPTF's surveys, revealing the sordid details of life as an adjunct: no pensions, health care, or seniority system. Pay is not prorated with tenure-track faculty, and varies by department.
University President Irvin Reid, however, made $394,000 last year -- a 63 percent raise. But teacher salaries don't make life in the ivory tower cushy. "If I taught the teaching load of a full-time professor at Wayne," Hiber said, "I would make less than $14,000 a year."
At other Michigan universities, contingent teachers are organizing, and seeing results. The Lecturer Employees Organization at University of Michigan built a union to represent most of the non-tenure track faculty on all three of its campuses. LEO's one-day strike in 2004 secured pay raises, health benefits, and sick pay for 1,200 teachers, an agreement that was renewed late last year.
EXPANDING EFFORTS
Nearby Henry Ford Community College recently voted for a union and full-time non-tenure track professors at Michigan State University in Lansing are organizing, while Wayne State hammers out their first agreement.
Local organizing is growing, but Berry says national solidarity is a must. The Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, a loose network of activists, works to forge these ties by highlighting common struggles. Late last year, the Chicago COCAL released a guide on unemployment insurance, which has been consistently denied to contingent faculty on a university's claim to give "reasonable assurance" of employment.
When San Francisco Community College teachers won a class-action appeal for the right to unemployment benefits in 1989, California part-time teachers organized around this legal precedent.
Though different regulations exist from state to state, the victory in California informed organizing strategies elsewhere. The Washington AFT in 2001 carved out a legislative provision for contingent faculty at two-year colleges to secure eligibility for these benefits.
Teachers have joined the growing ranks of the part-time, flexible labor force as corporate cost-cutting models have seeped into the university. But the spread of contingent teachers also represents a potential for organizing.
"In the last 30 years, the rate of 'yes' votes for part-time faculty unions has been huge," Berry said, "But it hasn't been enough to change standards across the board. Now it's a matter of building a critical mass nationally."
Chicago Group Protests War with Civil Resistance
March 1, 2008 in Z Magazine
Over a year after Democrats won Congress on a still un-fulfilled anti-war pledge, Chicago-based Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) was one of the many anti-war groups still calling for a transformation of U.S. foreign policy. Buttressed by mass opposition to the war, the Chicago group went to Iowa for caucus week to launch a civil disobedience campaign called Seasons of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project (SoDA POP).
Throughout the primary season, the SoDA POP members will be in campaign offices making demands that no major candidate will likely agree to. In Des Moines, they asked candidates to support a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan within 100 days after they take office, as well as an end to military plans and sanctions on Iran and a commitment to fully fund the reconstruction of Iraq. They refused to leave offices until they received these assurances. Fifteen were arrested in Iowa, and in the process they revealed the discomfort, even among “anti-war” candidates, with the anti-war movement.
These acts of civil disobedience express hope and despair. The transgression rejects an unresponsive corporate “democracy,” but appeals to its leaders for support. Jeff Leys reconciles this tension: “We have to use every non-violent lever at our disposal. We need to do this extra-legal work as an extension of the necessary work of participation.” Leys spent the week in Des Moines campaign offices and at the precinct.
After arrests at Guliani headquarters, another wave of protests hit the Clinton campaign, which literally shut the door on debate. Four protesters risked arrest and tried to enter, but ended up protesting outside the locked office until it closed for the day. On New Year’s Eve, cameras crowded the doors of Huckabee headquarters where three more protestors inquired of the reverend: “Who would Jesus Bomb?”
Kathy Kelly, Mona Shaw, and Robert Braam before their arrests at Huckabee's Des Moines campaign headquarter—photo from Des Moines Catholic Worker
One of these women was Kathy Kelly, a tireless veteran of the peace movement. The day after her arrest at Huckabee headquarters, she appeared on C-SPAN from Des Moines where the anchorperson went through her lengthy bio. She has been to Iraq dozens of times and was in Baghdad during the 2003 shock and awe bombings. “I was with children (in Iraq) who were so terrified they began to grind their teeth, morning, noon, and night,” she said. A hostile Iraq war veteran called in to inquire as to whether she was from this planet, where we face Islamic radicalism. Kelly pointed out, “When you hear children crying in pain, you have a different experience of the effect of bombs being dropped from 30,000 feet in the air.”
For months members of the Chicago community have asked Senator Obama to take this risk, not just to end the war, but to change priorities. Says Kelly: “There’s such an opportunity for leadership among the Democrats to educate Americans about the consequences of this war and about what could be done with the money that would be voted to fund ongoing wars.” They met up again with the campaign in Des Moines to ask for Obama’s support. The response from the office of a candidate running on his anti-war credentials revealed not just hostility, but a coordinated attempt to marginalize the anti-war message.
About a dozen protesters entered, carrying banners and pictures of Iraqis they’d met in their travels. Obama’s people swiftly removed members of the press, claiming that space had to be made for visitors at the front entrance, which was then promptly locked. A sign was posted, directing visitors to the back entrance away from the protest.
With the red, white, and blue Obama “O” as his backdrop, John Tuzcu, a member of Des Moines Catholic Worker, read from the Illinois candidate’s plan to leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq through his first term. The campaign staff quietly evacuated the main room in protest of the protesters. Brian Terrell, 51, read from MLK’s April 1967 speech on Vietnam; “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Obama’s people whispered to each other, then had police usher the protest out the side door.
Kelly and others are giving equal scrutiny to the liberal field. Leys is concerned; “The biggest danger is that Democrats are normalizing the idea of partial withdrawal, and disarming the anti-war movement to the idea of residual troop levels.” The SoDA POP organizers are pushing for withdrawal, not just from Iraq, but also from a failed strategy that diverts public funds for a highly militarized global presence.
The VCNV project is about reclamation of the political process, and reclamation of funds better used for the common good. Leys sees the drain of the war effort on public services in Chicago: “The state government is on doomsday number three for mass transit funding. Fares might be doubled in the next few weeks, and the suburbs are already cutting their routes and services to the city.”
As the war brings its effects home, it has sparked a rise in civil resistance actions nationwide in the last year. Each arrest makes it clear that Americans don’t accept these realities willingly. Leys hopes that more voices will join to create a more forceful culture of protest: “We need to acknowledge that we haven’t done enough yet to build up anti-war sentiment in Congress.”
Robert Braam, one of the people arrested in Des Moines, called the discontented to action: “Only thing we did wrong? Stayed in the wilderness too long. Only thing we did right? The day we stood up to fight.”
Over a year after Democrats won Congress on a still un-fulfilled anti-war pledge, Chicago-based Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) was one of the many anti-war groups still calling for a transformation of U.S. foreign policy. Buttressed by mass opposition to the war, the Chicago group went to Iowa for caucus week to launch a civil disobedience campaign called Seasons of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project (SoDA POP).
Throughout the primary season, the SoDA POP members will be in campaign offices making demands that no major candidate will likely agree to. In Des Moines, they asked candidates to support a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan within 100 days after they take office, as well as an end to military plans and sanctions on Iran and a commitment to fully fund the reconstruction of Iraq. They refused to leave offices until they received these assurances. Fifteen were arrested in Iowa, and in the process they revealed the discomfort, even among “anti-war” candidates, with the anti-war movement.
These acts of civil disobedience express hope and despair. The transgression rejects an unresponsive corporate “democracy,” but appeals to its leaders for support. Jeff Leys reconciles this tension: “We have to use every non-violent lever at our disposal. We need to do this extra-legal work as an extension of the necessary work of participation.” Leys spent the week in Des Moines campaign offices and at the precinct.
After arrests at Guliani headquarters, another wave of protests hit the Clinton campaign, which literally shut the door on debate. Four protesters risked arrest and tried to enter, but ended up protesting outside the locked office until it closed for the day. On New Year’s Eve, cameras crowded the doors of Huckabee headquarters where three more protestors inquired of the reverend: “Who would Jesus Bomb?”
Kathy Kelly, Mona Shaw, and Robert Braam before their arrests at Huckabee's Des Moines campaign headquarter—photo from Des Moines Catholic Worker
One of these women was Kathy Kelly, a tireless veteran of the peace movement. The day after her arrest at Huckabee headquarters, she appeared on C-SPAN from Des Moines where the anchorperson went through her lengthy bio. She has been to Iraq dozens of times and was in Baghdad during the 2003 shock and awe bombings. “I was with children (in Iraq) who were so terrified they began to grind their teeth, morning, noon, and night,” she said. A hostile Iraq war veteran called in to inquire as to whether she was from this planet, where we face Islamic radicalism. Kelly pointed out, “When you hear children crying in pain, you have a different experience of the effect of bombs being dropped from 30,000 feet in the air.”
For months members of the Chicago community have asked Senator Obama to take this risk, not just to end the war, but to change priorities. Says Kelly: “There’s such an opportunity for leadership among the Democrats to educate Americans about the consequences of this war and about what could be done with the money that would be voted to fund ongoing wars.” They met up again with the campaign in Des Moines to ask for Obama’s support. The response from the office of a candidate running on his anti-war credentials revealed not just hostility, but a coordinated attempt to marginalize the anti-war message.
About a dozen protesters entered, carrying banners and pictures of Iraqis they’d met in their travels. Obama’s people swiftly removed members of the press, claiming that space had to be made for visitors at the front entrance, which was then promptly locked. A sign was posted, directing visitors to the back entrance away from the protest.
With the red, white, and blue Obama “O” as his backdrop, John Tuzcu, a member of Des Moines Catholic Worker, read from the Illinois candidate’s plan to leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq through his first term. The campaign staff quietly evacuated the main room in protest of the protesters. Brian Terrell, 51, read from MLK’s April 1967 speech on Vietnam; “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Obama’s people whispered to each other, then had police usher the protest out the side door.
Kelly and others are giving equal scrutiny to the liberal field. Leys is concerned; “The biggest danger is that Democrats are normalizing the idea of partial withdrawal, and disarming the anti-war movement to the idea of residual troop levels.” The SoDA POP organizers are pushing for withdrawal, not just from Iraq, but also from a failed strategy that diverts public funds for a highly militarized global presence.
The VCNV project is about reclamation of the political process, and reclamation of funds better used for the common good. Leys sees the drain of the war effort on public services in Chicago: “The state government is on doomsday number three for mass transit funding. Fares might be doubled in the next few weeks, and the suburbs are already cutting their routes and services to the city.”
As the war brings its effects home, it has sparked a rise in civil resistance actions nationwide in the last year. Each arrest makes it clear that Americans don’t accept these realities willingly. Leys hopes that more voices will join to create a more forceful culture of protest: “We need to acknowledge that we haven’t done enough yet to build up anti-war sentiment in Congress.”
Robert Braam, one of the people arrested in Des Moines, called the discontented to action: “Only thing we did wrong? Stayed in the wilderness too long. Only thing we did right? The day we stood up to fight.”
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