JUNE 29
On Wisconsin
When you don’t live in Wisconsin it is hard to keep track of the flood of new laws implemented to bust unions, eliminate environmental protections, destroy infrastructure, target immigrants, dismantle state health care and all else that is held in common. In fact, those of us outside of the state may be more focused on visions of rallies of unprecedented size and pizza for all. We may feel giddy contemplating a level of global/local solidarity that we didn't know was possible.
We are not attending those long meetings where everyone disagrees and unity seems illusive. We are not around to keep tabs on the electoral and legislative leaps backward; the newly elected judge, a Walkerite, who assaulted a fellow judge in the first days of his office; the cold fact that collective bargaining has been eliminated, come August, for those public employees whose contracts are up. We do not see or feel the effects of school closings, lay offs, speed ups and slow downs.
A teacher of developmentally disabled children in Verona was told her classrooms will have 40 students next year. She has decided to quit her job, knowing she cannot serve the needs of her students with those numbers. For all the talk of getting rid of bad teachers they are doing a great job of getting rid of the good ones- educators with standards, who need to teach and cannot continue in a position where the conditions make that impossible.
In our three days in Madison I had the opportunity to interview three exemplary educators. Elizabeth (Beth) Miller is a bilingual teacher of 4th and 5th grade Latino children. She had lucrative career as an architectural historian before returning to school to get her degree in bilingual education.
When her son was young she volunteered in his bilingual classroom and discovered she loved it. As he grew up she longed to be around young children. In addition she was motivated by a a need to address a pressing social justice issue: filling the educational needs of non English -speaking immigrants.
So she took a large pay cut to become a teacher.
For Beth it is not just the attacks on teachers and public sector workers and collective bargaining that affect her personally. She is also acutely aware of how the anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation hurt her students and their families. In addition, the elimination of Badger Care will leave many of them without health coverage.
Like Beth, Larry Iles also traded in a much more lucrative career for a life as a teacher. Larry was an engineer, working for a big company, flying around the country. Like Beth Larry also began moving down the path twoard becoming a teacher when he volunteered is his child’s first grade classroom.
Larry teaches math at West High School, where his wife teaches science. They arrive at school early and stay late and weekends are spent grading and planning for the next week. They share students, trade tips; living and breathing teaching... and loving it .
Both LArry and Beth told me about their experience participating in a four day work stoppage organized by the Madison Teachers union (MTI) last February. They called in sick 4 days in a row. and lost four days wages as a consequence. Said Beth "I conisdered it my job, during those days to go down to the Capital and protest." Larry talked about how beautiful it was to see students from rival schools marching together. Beth was inspired by some of her undocumented students and their families who had the courage to come out and join the protests. Both of them said that what happened was unprecdented. Like the 1960s but--- according to Beth--, much more diverse, with people from all walks of life involved and –according to Larry—lcking in the violence he remembers as a kid growing up in Madison during the “War at Home” against the Vietnam War. Now “everyone was polite and cared for each other”.
I also interviewed Donna Vukelich-Selva, a professor of Education at Edgewood College. As a teacher of future teachers Donna is acutely aware of problems in our current education, especially for students of color. She is passionate about training teachers who are culturally competent and understand the needs of children experiencing poverty. Teachers in Madison learn soon enough that many of their children are hungry when they come to school. 50% of Madison’s children are receiving free and reduced lunch. Notes Donna: “The teachers I work with are all bringing in granola bars, cheese sticks and raisin to feed their students”
AS Donna tries to ready her students for the classroom she fears that cuts will make their jobs impossible. The move is to increase class size of every level. High school kids on trips abroad with 40 kids instead of fifteen will get less out of it. More critical is the increase in kindergarten class size. “When you add four five or seven more kids to a classroom more kids are going to fall through the cracks. Beth echoed this concern: “It is about money” she said. Kids need attention and they are not going to get what they need in bigger classrooms
For these three, educators, teaching is a calling, a social justice commitment, a passion. It is their life’s work, not just a job. However, it is possible to turn away even such dedicated teacher. “I’m starting to think about early retirement, said Beth.
Wisconsin uprising is truly inspiring to those of us out side of the state. However, the struggle to protect the common good here has just begun.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Bridging economic and cultural divides
Written August 1 2011 , six weeks inot a 60 week bicycle trip around the U.S.
One of the great privileges of this trip is that we get to cross economic, cultural, racial, ethnic, religious and ideological borders and be with all kinds of people in all kinds of settings. We enter a community, at the laundramat, the KFC, the College, the hotel, the RV park. Often we have needs that thrust us into the community for that moment or hour or evening. We need rest, food, water, and always a bathroom. We need help with navigation, seek shelter from the elements, and yes, use wifi.
Often we hear dire warnings from our new community, about those people in the other part of town, or the next town. We have yet to find these warnings to be true.
We (that is – people in the United States – and probably most other places) live in such closed spheres, often side by side. We are often unaware of this and will deny it wholesale.
In Rochester, Cleveland, and Ann Arbor we saw entirely different worlds within blocks of each other. Trees are often an indication that you are crossing a class dividing line- (you know the term leafy neighborhood? What comes to mind? Not a slum. ) Who decides who gets the trees on the boulevards?
North Hampton is the home of Smith College a prestigious private liberal arts college for women. Our daughter’s workshop was taking place there and so it was our first stop. Coming in on the bike trail we missed our mark by one stop . We stopped at the KFC to clean up and to ask directions. None of the dozen people in the KFC- all happy to help- knew where Smith College was! We soon learned we were ½ mile from it. Just four blocks away from the KFC is the beginning of the college-oriented shops. Two different countries just blocks apart. Two worlds that seem to know nothing of the other.
The Smith college shopping area is stuffed with more organic local restaurants, clothing stores, coffee shops, yoga and reflexology studios and day spas than exist along the entire Erie Canal trail. Many more.
The people at the KFC, where we shared shade and clean bathrooms (“checked every 30 minutes”) but not food, were dining on buckets that provide lots of calories and flavor for little money. Around the corner you can spend 4 times as much on an organic mesclun salad.
I do not know what these observations have to do with how Smith College uses its resources to benefit the whole community. At the University of Minnesota where I got three degrees and taught for a decade, I participated in many discussions and projects designed to bridge the divide between “ town and gown”: to bring the resources and the knowledge generated at the university to benefit the community and the wisdom of the community into the university. I found that there were those deeply committed to this endeavor and others, often in positions of power, who preferred the greenhouse effect: a university cloistered from ‘the real world”.
In a car we can pass through areas that are worlds apart from us without learning anything about them. On a bicycle it is also possible to pass the worlds in which you do not belong without letting them touch you. But on a long trip like this we stop when we have needs and given our peanut-sized bladders – we stop a lot. We rely on people from all walks of life to help us out. Hopefully, in the exchange, as we share ourselves with them, we give something as well.
These exchanges are, by far, the best part of this 60 week bicycle trip around the United States.
One of the great privileges of this trip is that we get to cross economic, cultural, racial, ethnic, religious and ideological borders and be with all kinds of people in all kinds of settings. We enter a community, at the laundramat, the KFC, the College, the hotel, the RV park. Often we have needs that thrust us into the community for that moment or hour or evening. We need rest, food, water, and always a bathroom. We need help with navigation, seek shelter from the elements, and yes, use wifi.
Often we hear dire warnings from our new community, about those people in the other part of town, or the next town. We have yet to find these warnings to be true.
We (that is – people in the United States – and probably most other places) live in such closed spheres, often side by side. We are often unaware of this and will deny it wholesale.
In Rochester, Cleveland, and Ann Arbor we saw entirely different worlds within blocks of each other. Trees are often an indication that you are crossing a class dividing line- (you know the term leafy neighborhood? What comes to mind? Not a slum. ) Who decides who gets the trees on the boulevards?
North Hampton is the home of Smith College a prestigious private liberal arts college for women. Our daughter’s workshop was taking place there and so it was our first stop. Coming in on the bike trail we missed our mark by one stop . We stopped at the KFC to clean up and to ask directions. None of the dozen people in the KFC- all happy to help- knew where Smith College was! We soon learned we were ½ mile from it. Just four blocks away from the KFC is the beginning of the college-oriented shops. Two different countries just blocks apart. Two worlds that seem to know nothing of the other.
The Smith college shopping area is stuffed with more organic local restaurants, clothing stores, coffee shops, yoga and reflexology studios and day spas than exist along the entire Erie Canal trail. Many more.
The people at the KFC, where we shared shade and clean bathrooms (“checked every 30 minutes”) but not food, were dining on buckets that provide lots of calories and flavor for little money. Around the corner you can spend 4 times as much on an organic mesclun salad.
I do not know what these observations have to do with how Smith College uses its resources to benefit the whole community. At the University of Minnesota where I got three degrees and taught for a decade, I participated in many discussions and projects designed to bridge the divide between “ town and gown”: to bring the resources and the knowledge generated at the university to benefit the community and the wisdom of the community into the university. I found that there were those deeply committed to this endeavor and others, often in positions of power, who preferred the greenhouse effect: a university cloistered from ‘the real world”.
In a car we can pass through areas that are worlds apart from us without learning anything about them. On a bicycle it is also possible to pass the worlds in which you do not belong without letting them touch you. But on a long trip like this we stop when we have needs and given our peanut-sized bladders – we stop a lot. We rely on people from all walks of life to help us out. Hopefully, in the exchange, as we share ourselves with them, we give something as well.
These exchanges are, by far, the best part of this 60 week bicycle trip around the United States.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Stuff
June 10 2011
Stuff.
Recently people in Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and North Minneapolis Minnesota have been devastated by Tornados. Hundreds of people have died and thousands have lost loved ones. Tens of thousands of people have lost the stuff of their lives; homes, essentials for eating, dressing and work, and things that make them comfortable, bring joy and provide them with a sense of themselves.
People need stuff; for survival, for pleasure, for identity, for memories. But us homosapians also seem to have a tendency to collect, hoard, accumulate stuff that can hold us down.IT is hard for us to know when we have enough, when more is less, when to let go, when to share. Most of us don't have John McCain's problem - not knowing how many houses we own- but most of us do accumulate things that not only don't we need - but having them actually drags us down. That can happen even when there are other things we need and don't have ( like perhaps we could use one of McCain's houses because we are without but we have collected too many pens, because, you never know.).
As we talk to people about this trip, people tell us about their dreams, where they would go and what they would do with a year. More often than not, in one way or another, people cite stuff as the thing that keeps them from going. Stuff to organize , stuff to remove, stuff that must be dealt with before one can take off, stuff that is too expensive to store, too burdensome to sort through.
David and I like to think we are not that bad in stuff accumulation. Neither of us like to shop. We have been deliberately not accumulating for about five years now, since layoff number one, blah blah blah.
For the past nine months now, the primary - get-ready-for-the-trip activity has been dealing with stuff. Packing away, giving away, throwing away stuff that we forget about the minute it is out of sight. Among the stuff, are hundreds of pens and pencils, over a dozen staplers, same for scissors, ditto on skin cream, (weird since we don't use it much) and combs( yet I never have one) and unfilled photo frames. Hundreds of notebooks, many with one page written in them. Fourteen containers of floss, nine containers of partially-used suncreen. We wont talk about books, magazines, toys, (the kid is 21), and the gazillions of articles cut out of the newspaper and stuffed anywhere because they are SO important, but will never be found when needed. The floss and suncreen containers are going on the bikes - for penance, and because we dont want to pay for more of this stuff!
In one week we will begin a 14 month bike trip,traveling with all of our stuff on our bicycles: bed, house, food, clothing medicine cabinet, toiletries, work, amusment, and of course, transportation. We know we are immensely fortunate to be leaving a house in south Minneapolis, still full of stuff, for us to enjoy , or not, when we get back.
Stuff.
Recently people in Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and North Minneapolis Minnesota have been devastated by Tornados. Hundreds of people have died and thousands have lost loved ones. Tens of thousands of people have lost the stuff of their lives; homes, essentials for eating, dressing and work, and things that make them comfortable, bring joy and provide them with a sense of themselves.
People need stuff; for survival, for pleasure, for identity, for memories. But us homosapians also seem to have a tendency to collect, hoard, accumulate stuff that can hold us down.IT is hard for us to know when we have enough, when more is less, when to let go, when to share. Most of us don't have John McCain's problem - not knowing how many houses we own- but most of us do accumulate things that not only don't we need - but having them actually drags us down. That can happen even when there are other things we need and don't have ( like perhaps we could use one of McCain's houses because we are without but we have collected too many pens, because, you never know.).
As we talk to people about this trip, people tell us about their dreams, where they would go and what they would do with a year. More often than not, in one way or another, people cite stuff as the thing that keeps them from going. Stuff to organize , stuff to remove, stuff that must be dealt with before one can take off, stuff that is too expensive to store, too burdensome to sort through.
David and I like to think we are not that bad in stuff accumulation. Neither of us like to shop. We have been deliberately not accumulating for about five years now, since layoff number one, blah blah blah.
For the past nine months now, the primary - get-ready-for-the-trip activity has been dealing with stuff. Packing away, giving away, throwing away stuff that we forget about the minute it is out of sight. Among the stuff, are hundreds of pens and pencils, over a dozen staplers, same for scissors, ditto on skin cream, (weird since we don't use it much) and combs( yet I never have one) and unfilled photo frames. Hundreds of notebooks, many with one page written in them. Fourteen containers of floss, nine containers of partially-used suncreen. We wont talk about books, magazines, toys, (the kid is 21), and the gazillions of articles cut out of the newspaper and stuffed anywhere because they are SO important, but will never be found when needed. The floss and suncreen containers are going on the bikes - for penance, and because we dont want to pay for more of this stuff!
In one week we will begin a 14 month bike trip,traveling with all of our stuff on our bicycles: bed, house, food, clothing medicine cabinet, toiletries, work, amusment, and of course, transportation. We know we are immensely fortunate to be leaving a house in south Minneapolis, still full of stuff, for us to enjoy , or not, when we get back.
Monday, May 23, 2011
STOP ALL Raids
Stop ALL Raids
When my father was five years old soldiers barged into his apartment, upending furniture, tearing apart closets, and taking papers, photos and other possessions, looking for my grandfather. For months afterward the family lived with curtains drawn during the day, hoping not to attract attention from government authorities. When I was twenty-something, my dad and I visited his childhood home. As we stood in front of the stone apartment building, he told me about the raid as though it happened yesterday. His face changed to that of a small child and I was suddenly called to comfort the terrified kid inside a man twice my age.
Today U.S. authorities use raids for a variety of purposes. In Iraq and Afghanistan it is a common military tactic. In the United States raids of homes, workplaces and communities are also conducted by local police, the Drug Enforcement Agency, (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE) the FBI, and Homeland Security.
Raids as a military tactic. The wars that the United States fights today no longer involve soldiers facing soldiers. Raids of neighborhoods by U.S. and allied forces are modus operandi. According to Iraq Veterans Against the War “raids of Iraqi homes are a daily occurrence”. If you are Iraqi or Afghani, that is reason enough to subject you to search and seizure at any time without a warrant. In other words, to the foreign occupiers of Iraq and Afghanistan, if you are a citizen of your own country, you are automatically guilty until proven innocent.
Raids as a tactic of immigration policy In the United States, ICE agents have different formula: if you are of Latin American descent, or look like you might be, that is reason enough to warrant raids of your workplaces, your homes, your community spaces. In the case of undocumented immigrants, such a raid can lead to deportation. Documented or not, immigration raids lead to arrests and detentions in centers where civil, and human rights are violated.
Raids in Drug enforcement Have you seen the movie American Violet? It depicts a true story of an apartment complex in a black neighborhood of a racially segregated Texas town in the early 21st century. We know about the raid because one young mother of four accused of selling drugs to children at the local high-school refused to plead guilty and take a plea bargain for a crime she did not commit. This meant she would remain in jail, away from her kids for weeks, lose her job and find herself blacklisted when seeking employment elsewhere. The ACLU took up her case. Their website is full of stories of innocent people losing property and livelihoods due to drug raids. The effect of these drug raids on children in predominately low income and African American communities, are not measured.
FBI raids
The FBI, we are told, is ever vigilant and proactive these days, trying to find terrorists before they act. What I have learned from the raids and subpoenas of anti war activists in our community is that we need to question the motives and judgment of any action taken by the FBI or Homeland Security. Just as these government raiders operate under a “guilty until proven innocent” policy, we who care about human rights, civil liberties and the security of our communities need to view the actions of these officials in the same light.
Surely, not all raids are conducted against heroes, like the Fall, 2010 FBI raids against anti-war activists in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Not all of those who are victims of raids are innocent of any crime, or victims of unjust laws. However, even when raids are conducted against those that most would agree are involved in criminal activities, raids are a blunt instrument that inevitably involve so-called collateral damage. In addition, raiders are highly susceptible to corruption because they are given license to loot property and profit from the latter. In fact those ordering and conducting raids are often the ones engaging in illegal acts: from stealing, to crimes against humanity. In affect then, raids increase crime in our communities and our world. Those damaged by these crimes are often the most innocent among us: children. The damage can last a life time.
Raids are an effective tool for fascists like the Nazi’s who raided my dad’s apartment in Glievitz, Germany when he was a child. They have no place in a democracy.
When my father was five years old soldiers barged into his apartment, upending furniture, tearing apart closets, and taking papers, photos and other possessions, looking for my grandfather. For months afterward the family lived with curtains drawn during the day, hoping not to attract attention from government authorities. When I was twenty-something, my dad and I visited his childhood home. As we stood in front of the stone apartment building, he told me about the raid as though it happened yesterday. His face changed to that of a small child and I was suddenly called to comfort the terrified kid inside a man twice my age.
Today U.S. authorities use raids for a variety of purposes. In Iraq and Afghanistan it is a common military tactic. In the United States raids of homes, workplaces and communities are also conducted by local police, the Drug Enforcement Agency, (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE) the FBI, and Homeland Security.
Raids as a military tactic. The wars that the United States fights today no longer involve soldiers facing soldiers. Raids of neighborhoods by U.S. and allied forces are modus operandi. According to Iraq Veterans Against the War “raids of Iraqi homes are a daily occurrence”. If you are Iraqi or Afghani, that is reason enough to subject you to search and seizure at any time without a warrant. In other words, to the foreign occupiers of Iraq and Afghanistan, if you are a citizen of your own country, you are automatically guilty until proven innocent.
Raids as a tactic of immigration policy In the United States, ICE agents have different formula: if you are of Latin American descent, or look like you might be, that is reason enough to warrant raids of your workplaces, your homes, your community spaces. In the case of undocumented immigrants, such a raid can lead to deportation. Documented or not, immigration raids lead to arrests and detentions in centers where civil, and human rights are violated.
Raids in Drug enforcement Have you seen the movie American Violet? It depicts a true story of an apartment complex in a black neighborhood of a racially segregated Texas town in the early 21st century. We know about the raid because one young mother of four accused of selling drugs to children at the local high-school refused to plead guilty and take a plea bargain for a crime she did not commit. This meant she would remain in jail, away from her kids for weeks, lose her job and find herself blacklisted when seeking employment elsewhere. The ACLU took up her case. Their website is full of stories of innocent people losing property and livelihoods due to drug raids. The effect of these drug raids on children in predominately low income and African American communities, are not measured.
FBI raids
The FBI, we are told, is ever vigilant and proactive these days, trying to find terrorists before they act. What I have learned from the raids and subpoenas of anti war activists in our community is that we need to question the motives and judgment of any action taken by the FBI or Homeland Security. Just as these government raiders operate under a “guilty until proven innocent” policy, we who care about human rights, civil liberties and the security of our communities need to view the actions of these officials in the same light.
Surely, not all raids are conducted against heroes, like the Fall, 2010 FBI raids against anti-war activists in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Not all of those who are victims of raids are innocent of any crime, or victims of unjust laws. However, even when raids are conducted against those that most would agree are involved in criminal activities, raids are a blunt instrument that inevitably involve so-called collateral damage. In addition, raiders are highly susceptible to corruption because they are given license to loot property and profit from the latter. In fact those ordering and conducting raids are often the ones engaging in illegal acts: from stealing, to crimes against humanity. In affect then, raids increase crime in our communities and our world. Those damaged by these crimes are often the most innocent among us: children. The damage can last a life time.
Raids are an effective tool for fascists like the Nazi’s who raided my dad’s apartment in Glievitz, Germany when he was a child. They have no place in a democracy.
On "Humanitarian" Intervention
On “Humanitarian” military intervention.
Based on a Speech given, May 4, 2011 at a Forum at the Carlson School of Management, sponsored by May Day Books.
Elites who benefit from war don’t fight them, and those men and women who do, would never pick up a gun to protect the interests of some 19th century railroad tycoon or 21st century oil company or weapons manufacturer. So there must be a trumped up humanitarian justification. Sometimes that humanitarianism is couched in bigotry: the enemies are in need of a different god, or are less capable of governance. Nevertheless, the people are led to believe they are doing good.
A quick review of history of the humanitarian propaganda used to sell U.S. militarism:
• 1600s – 20th century: The “Indian Wars.” These were “manifest”. God willed that the United States spread from sea to shining sea and save Native Americans souls, dead or alive. What is more humanitarian than saving someone from eternal damnation?
• 1846-48: U.S. Mexican war was to “Overthrow a tyrant” Mexican President Santanna was tyrant enough. Nevertheless that had nothing to do with U.S. desire to grab half of Mexico’s land and get access to ports on the Pacific Ocean.
• 1898: The war in Cuba that resulted in the United States inheriting a Caribbean and pacific empire from Spain – was “the splendid little war” (I just read a few days ago someone use that same phrase ironically for the war in Libya). The author of the 1899 best seller Our War for Cuba’s Freedom” argued it was the first altruistic conflagration in the history of mankind. (An ad in the New York Times in late April, put out by the NGO “Global Citizens” made the same argument about Libya, 2011. Like Mexico (and Libya) the Spanish empire was indeed tyrannical. But, to encapsulate the sentiments of Jose Marti; U.S. intervention was taking Cuba from the frying pan into the fire. Cubans could defeat the dying Spanish Empire. But, as Marti said, “once the U.S. is in who will get her out?”
• 1914-1918: In WWI all sides argued they were fighting to defeat a tyrant-- and all sides were right. The U.S. argued theirs was an anti imperialist struggle and a “war to end all wars”. The vibrant pacifist and anti-imperialist movements of the time were usurped to justify a truly insane and deadly war between imperialists squabbling over territory. During this period the United States invaded and/or occupied Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
• 1930s -1990: Before during and after WWII, “the war to defeat fascism” the United States coddled and trained tyrants fascist and otherwise, in order to “defeat communism”. Anti-communism worked for a while as a humanitarian ideology, but Americans grew wary of it after Vietnam. .
• 1980s: To overcome this “Vietnam Syndrome” covert tactics were perfected to hide wars and interventions from the U. S. public. Most of the Caribbean region interventions (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras , Guatemala) were covert. The 1983 invasion of Grenada, however, was overt. It took place a moment after an internal coup and so it was billed, not as an effort to overthrow the popular Maurice Bishop, but to “restore democracy”.
• 1989-1991: After the Panama invasion “against a madman” and the Persian Gulf War, successfully sold as an anti-imperialist war (opposing the intervention of a large nation –Iraq- against a small neighbor- Kuwait) Bush Sr. declared the Vietnam Syndrome dead.
• 1990s: Interventions in Haiti and Bosnia were about “nation building,” “avoiding a bloodbath” and “against ethnic cleansing”. In Haiti it appears that the United States heavy hand was involved in the 1991 removal, 1994 reinstatement and 2004 removal of President Aristide, based on his willingness and lack thereof, to comply with Neo-liberal measures imposed on him by the Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations. Nation building?
• 21st Century: Let us not forget that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan 2001 and 2003 were sold as efforts to “take down a tyrant” and “save the world from weapons of mass destruction”.
So that still leaves the question:
Might the intervention in Libya be something different? We can agree the history is sordid but don’t you think change is possible? Ghaddafi is beating up his own people and in the 21st century we shouldn’t let that happen.
I agree. When parents abuse their children, we get in our neighbors’ business. On an international level we need a body that can save the people of our planet from abuses of power.
Juan Cole, the progressive Middle East Scholar who supports the Libyan intervention says he believes that body is the United Nations.
I believe in the idea and promise of the United Nations, as perhaps Eleanor Roosevelt envisioned it, as the glorious UN Declaration of Human Rights embodies it and as many of those who work on the ground in the World Health Organization and UNICEF believe it can be: an international organization in which principals of equality, economic and social justice reign.
However that is not the United Nations that we have. In the U. N. Security Council rich countries rule and the United States dominates.
Unfortunately there is no evidence that the Obama administration is set on changing the course of our country’s foreign relations history; not in the Middle East where tyrants like Mubarak are friends until they are no longer able to hold onto power and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan still rage, and Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain are still major aid recipients; not in Latin America, where just days ago Obama refused to apologize for the U.S. sponsored coup overthrowing Allende and installing the brutal dictator Pinochet in 1973.
Any entity that uses bombs as the instrument for carrying out humanitarianism must be rejected. The emperor wears no clothes. Bombs are not humanitarian. They kill people. Period.
***********************:
Opposing this latest intervention in Libya does not need to be an elite leftist pursuit. We too can capitalize on humanitarianism. I’ve noticed that the gungho veterans in my classes tend to share that extra dose of humanitarianism that WAMM members have. We need to think about how to talk to people of all political stripes who in their core are humanitarians like the rest of us.
We need to talk about real humanitarian alternatives. Unions like the ILWU, the longshoremen’s union use work stoppages to protest attack on workers across the globe. Consumers use boycotts as we did in apartheid S. Africa and in Arizona more recently. The courageous people in the International solidarity movement, Witness for Peace, Non-violent Peace Task force send people to war- torn regions to stand before tanks and broker peace and justice. You don’t have to be a hero. Anyone with a buck can support these organizations engaged in real humanitarianism.
But, as the health professionals say “first do no harm”. Our first responsibility as U.S. humanitarians is to stop U.S. military madness.
Based on a Speech given, May 4, 2011 at a Forum at the Carlson School of Management, sponsored by May Day Books.
Elites who benefit from war don’t fight them, and those men and women who do, would never pick up a gun to protect the interests of some 19th century railroad tycoon or 21st century oil company or weapons manufacturer. So there must be a trumped up humanitarian justification. Sometimes that humanitarianism is couched in bigotry: the enemies are in need of a different god, or are less capable of governance. Nevertheless, the people are led to believe they are doing good.
A quick review of history of the humanitarian propaganda used to sell U.S. militarism:
• 1600s – 20th century: The “Indian Wars.” These were “manifest”. God willed that the United States spread from sea to shining sea and save Native Americans souls, dead or alive. What is more humanitarian than saving someone from eternal damnation?
• 1846-48: U.S. Mexican war was to “Overthrow a tyrant” Mexican President Santanna was tyrant enough. Nevertheless that had nothing to do with U.S. desire to grab half of Mexico’s land and get access to ports on the Pacific Ocean.
• 1898: The war in Cuba that resulted in the United States inheriting a Caribbean and pacific empire from Spain – was “the splendid little war” (I just read a few days ago someone use that same phrase ironically for the war in Libya). The author of the 1899 best seller Our War for Cuba’s Freedom” argued it was the first altruistic conflagration in the history of mankind. (An ad in the New York Times in late April, put out by the NGO “Global Citizens” made the same argument about Libya, 2011. Like Mexico (and Libya) the Spanish empire was indeed tyrannical. But, to encapsulate the sentiments of Jose Marti; U.S. intervention was taking Cuba from the frying pan into the fire. Cubans could defeat the dying Spanish Empire. But, as Marti said, “once the U.S. is in who will get her out?”
• 1914-1918: In WWI all sides argued they were fighting to defeat a tyrant-- and all sides were right. The U.S. argued theirs was an anti imperialist struggle and a “war to end all wars”. The vibrant pacifist and anti-imperialist movements of the time were usurped to justify a truly insane and deadly war between imperialists squabbling over territory. During this period the United States invaded and/or occupied Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
• 1930s -1990: Before during and after WWII, “the war to defeat fascism” the United States coddled and trained tyrants fascist and otherwise, in order to “defeat communism”. Anti-communism worked for a while as a humanitarian ideology, but Americans grew wary of it after Vietnam. .
• 1980s: To overcome this “Vietnam Syndrome” covert tactics were perfected to hide wars and interventions from the U. S. public. Most of the Caribbean region interventions (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras , Guatemala) were covert. The 1983 invasion of Grenada, however, was overt. It took place a moment after an internal coup and so it was billed, not as an effort to overthrow the popular Maurice Bishop, but to “restore democracy”.
• 1989-1991: After the Panama invasion “against a madman” and the Persian Gulf War, successfully sold as an anti-imperialist war (opposing the intervention of a large nation –Iraq- against a small neighbor- Kuwait) Bush Sr. declared the Vietnam Syndrome dead.
• 1990s: Interventions in Haiti and Bosnia were about “nation building,” “avoiding a bloodbath” and “against ethnic cleansing”. In Haiti it appears that the United States heavy hand was involved in the 1991 removal, 1994 reinstatement and 2004 removal of President Aristide, based on his willingness and lack thereof, to comply with Neo-liberal measures imposed on him by the Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations. Nation building?
• 21st Century: Let us not forget that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan 2001 and 2003 were sold as efforts to “take down a tyrant” and “save the world from weapons of mass destruction”.
So that still leaves the question:
Might the intervention in Libya be something different? We can agree the history is sordid but don’t you think change is possible? Ghaddafi is beating up his own people and in the 21st century we shouldn’t let that happen.
I agree. When parents abuse their children, we get in our neighbors’ business. On an international level we need a body that can save the people of our planet from abuses of power.
Juan Cole, the progressive Middle East Scholar who supports the Libyan intervention says he believes that body is the United Nations.
I believe in the idea and promise of the United Nations, as perhaps Eleanor Roosevelt envisioned it, as the glorious UN Declaration of Human Rights embodies it and as many of those who work on the ground in the World Health Organization and UNICEF believe it can be: an international organization in which principals of equality, economic and social justice reign.
However that is not the United Nations that we have. In the U. N. Security Council rich countries rule and the United States dominates.
Unfortunately there is no evidence that the Obama administration is set on changing the course of our country’s foreign relations history; not in the Middle East where tyrants like Mubarak are friends until they are no longer able to hold onto power and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan still rage, and Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain are still major aid recipients; not in Latin America, where just days ago Obama refused to apologize for the U.S. sponsored coup overthrowing Allende and installing the brutal dictator Pinochet in 1973.
Any entity that uses bombs as the instrument for carrying out humanitarianism must be rejected. The emperor wears no clothes. Bombs are not humanitarian. They kill people. Period.
***********************:
Opposing this latest intervention in Libya does not need to be an elite leftist pursuit. We too can capitalize on humanitarianism. I’ve noticed that the gungho veterans in my classes tend to share that extra dose of humanitarianism that WAMM members have. We need to think about how to talk to people of all political stripes who in their core are humanitarians like the rest of us.
We need to talk about real humanitarian alternatives. Unions like the ILWU, the longshoremen’s union use work stoppages to protest attack on workers across the globe. Consumers use boycotts as we did in apartheid S. Africa and in Arizona more recently. The courageous people in the International solidarity movement, Witness for Peace, Non-violent Peace Task force send people to war- torn regions to stand before tanks and broker peace and justice. You don’t have to be a hero. Anyone with a buck can support these organizations engaged in real humanitarianism.
But, as the health professionals say “first do no harm”. Our first responsibility as U.S. humanitarians is to stop U.S. military madness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)