The following is a trailer for the new film Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, which was recently screened at the National Constitution Center and the Ritz East theater in Philadelphia. I am one of the people featured in the film as well as the trailer:
JUSTICE ON TRIAL - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal from bignoisetactical on Vimeo.
September 26, 2010
Of Course Poverty Is on the Rise in Charles Dickens' America
Well, it appears that some of the nation's leading economists have proclaimed that the recession is over. Of course, these were the best and brightest who failed to warn us of the Great Recession in the first place, but I don't want to sidetrack you with trivialities.
So, let us pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate.
I suppose that if you are one of those billion-dollar hedge fund managers, this piece of information could actually mean something to you. However, if you are one of those struggling souls in that Dickens novel known as twenty-first century America, it means little or nothing to you.
That anyone can actually utter the words "the recession is over" at a time of mass unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness and general despair tells you all you need to know about America. The nation actually exists as two nations: the few that have, and the many who don't. The former group does not depend on the well-being of the latter in order to thrive, and arguably thrives on its misfortunes. Ultimately, the American dream is exactly that -- a dream. And as millions of people are waking up to stark realities, they long to resume their slumber.
Currently, as the Census Bureau reported, 43.6 million people, or 14.3 percent of the U.S. population live in poverty. For people of color it is even worse. While 9.4 percent of whites are in poverty, 25.3 percent of Latinos and 25.8 percent of blacks are poor. And childhood poverty has risen to an alarming 20.7 percent. To be sure, it hasn't been this bad since the 1960s. Some people say that all we need to do to alleviate poverty is to grow the economy. But what good will creating a larger pie do for us, with the top 1 percent still taking the lion's share of the pie?
Establishment conservatives are so transparent in their greed that their only solution is to keep the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans making over $250,000. Meanwhile, the Tea Party gangsters are so heartless that their extremist solutions -- to abolish unemployment insurance and reduce dependence on government -- would amount to pouring salt in an open wound.
Amidst all of the suffering we're witnessing during this recent crisis in the world's largest economy, this awkwardly named land of opportunity, the number of billionaires has soared. The gap between the top 1 percent and everyone else hasn't been this large since the 1920s. The top 1 percent claim 33.8 percent of the wealth, and the bottom half of Americans own a negligible 2.5 percent of the economic pie. Real average earnings have not increased in half a century, and the last two decades were great, if you were a CEO, that is.
The fact is that Republican tax policies have widened the gulf between rich and poor, with the rich paying less and less in taxes. Despite the longstanding, folkloric national rhetoric regarding opportunity -- or perhaps even because of it -- the fact is that it is harder to make it in America than anywhere else in the industrialized world. Upward economic mobility is far more elusive in the U.S. than in those so-called evil socialist nations of Scandinavia and the rest of Western Europe. If you are poor in the "land of the free," chances are that you will stay that way. But unlike those Europeans, at least you'll have your guns to protect you, right? Yeah, right.
The Obama administration is at a crossroads with the selection of Elizabeth Warren to get the consumer protection agency up and running. Even some of the most diehard fans of this president were losing faith, with the daily parade of white male Wall Street front men advising Obama into the abyss of one-term presidential status. They have served him poorly, and would do for the U.S. economy what they already have done for the U.S. economy, which is to wreck it further and collect their spoils.
But perhaps now, there is a chance that the people might win for a change. The middle class has been hollowed out and wiped out, while the poor is even more entrenched than ever. And yet one gets the sense that it cannot remain like this. Something's gotta give, one way or another. The question is how we will let this all play out as a country -- with widespread destitution, social unrest and uprisings, or with responsive government action that seeks to bring about equity and justice to the many. Call it a new New Deal, call it socialism, call it democracy, call it what you will. But one thing is clear: American-style capitalism is eating the people alive, and now is the time to put it in check.
So, let us pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate.
I suppose that if you are one of those billion-dollar hedge fund managers, this piece of information could actually mean something to you. However, if you are one of those struggling souls in that Dickens novel known as twenty-first century America, it means little or nothing to you.
That anyone can actually utter the words "the recession is over" at a time of mass unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness and general despair tells you all you need to know about America. The nation actually exists as two nations: the few that have, and the many who don't. The former group does not depend on the well-being of the latter in order to thrive, and arguably thrives on its misfortunes. Ultimately, the American dream is exactly that -- a dream. And as millions of people are waking up to stark realities, they long to resume their slumber.
Currently, as the Census Bureau reported, 43.6 million people, or 14.3 percent of the U.S. population live in poverty. For people of color it is even worse. While 9.4 percent of whites are in poverty, 25.3 percent of Latinos and 25.8 percent of blacks are poor. And childhood poverty has risen to an alarming 20.7 percent. To be sure, it hasn't been this bad since the 1960s. Some people say that all we need to do to alleviate poverty is to grow the economy. But what good will creating a larger pie do for us, with the top 1 percent still taking the lion's share of the pie?
Establishment conservatives are so transparent in their greed that their only solution is to keep the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans making over $250,000. Meanwhile, the Tea Party gangsters are so heartless that their extremist solutions -- to abolish unemployment insurance and reduce dependence on government -- would amount to pouring salt in an open wound.
Amidst all of the suffering we're witnessing during this recent crisis in the world's largest economy, this awkwardly named land of opportunity, the number of billionaires has soared. The gap between the top 1 percent and everyone else hasn't been this large since the 1920s. The top 1 percent claim 33.8 percent of the wealth, and the bottom half of Americans own a negligible 2.5 percent of the economic pie. Real average earnings have not increased in half a century, and the last two decades were great, if you were a CEO, that is.
The fact is that Republican tax policies have widened the gulf between rich and poor, with the rich paying less and less in taxes. Despite the longstanding, folkloric national rhetoric regarding opportunity -- or perhaps even because of it -- the fact is that it is harder to make it in America than anywhere else in the industrialized world. Upward economic mobility is far more elusive in the U.S. than in those so-called evil socialist nations of Scandinavia and the rest of Western Europe. If you are poor in the "land of the free," chances are that you will stay that way. But unlike those Europeans, at least you'll have your guns to protect you, right? Yeah, right.
The Obama administration is at a crossroads with the selection of Elizabeth Warren to get the consumer protection agency up and running. Even some of the most diehard fans of this president were losing faith, with the daily parade of white male Wall Street front men advising Obama into the abyss of one-term presidential status. They have served him poorly, and would do for the U.S. economy what they already have done for the U.S. economy, which is to wreck it further and collect their spoils.
But perhaps now, there is a chance that the people might win for a change. The middle class has been hollowed out and wiped out, while the poor is even more entrenched than ever. And yet one gets the sense that it cannot remain like this. Something's gotta give, one way or another. The question is how we will let this all play out as a country -- with widespread destitution, social unrest and uprisings, or with responsive government action that seeks to bring about equity and justice to the many. Call it a new New Deal, call it socialism, call it democracy, call it what you will. But one thing is clear: American-style capitalism is eating the people alive, and now is the time to put it in check.
September 24, 2010
Too Ignorant To Articulate Their Own Ideas
Although one is not supposed to enjoy watching a train wreck in progress, I must say that the Arizona gubernatorial debate between Gov. Jan Brewer and her Democratic opponent Terry Goddard was a special moment. It made for satisfying entertainment. Brewer's conspicuously long moment of silence -- not in remembrance of someone who died, but because there was nothing in her brain -- seemed to last for an eternity.
And the funny thing is that in that backwards state, it's likely that she'll still win.
Brewer has decided not to do any more debates because she sucks at them, and she only did this one in order to claim "$1.7 million-plus" of "public funds" for her campaign. Besides, as she said, "I don't believe that things come out in proper context in an adversarial atmosphere." And when she was challenged post-debate by reporters about her unsubstantiated -- no, false -- claim that decapitated bodies were being found in Arizona, she couldn't take the heat and walked away.
I blame Janet Napolitano for this mess, partly at least. When she quit as governor of Arizona to head Obama's Homeland Security operations, she created a gaping hole in Arizona politics, allowing the dumbness to fill the void. Brewer, Arizona's not-ready-for-primetime secretary of state, was next in line because, unfortunately, Arizona doesn't have a position of lieutenant governor.
Now, don't get me wrong, everyone has a bad day now and then -- a brain fart, forgotten lines, thoughts cut off in mid stream. Chalk it up to lack of sleep, stress, stage fright, what have you. However, I would argue that in Gov. Brewer's case, her reticence was due to the exceedingly low storage capacity in her mind. Simply put, she has very little to work with. After all, this was the person who could not answer an important question that gets to the heart of S.B. 1070, the anti-immigrant bill that she signed into law. Regarding the law -- which essentially authorizes police to stop and arrest people who are suspected of being "illegal" immigrants -- Brewer was asked what an illegal immigrant looks like. She did not have an answer, but assured that "the law will be enforced civilly, fairly and without discriminatory points to it," whatever in Sam Hill that means. Perhaps she should have consulted the white supremacists, prison profiteers and lobbyists who wrote the bill.
But even more, I blame people such as Sarah Palin, and Bush before her, for making ignorance acceptable, fashionable and even virtuous in politics. On the campaign trail in 2008, Palin refused to speak to reporters, and in that regard became the worst of role models. In this year's midterm elections, we've witnessed the same behavior with Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, and Rand Paul, the GOP Senate candidate from Kentucky. And candidates such as Angle and Senate hopeful Ken Buck of Colorado have given their websites a makeover to remove their troubling tea party positions. For politicians, and specifically for the new breed of rightwing politicians, media attention is a fabulous thing when things are going your way. However, when things don't work out--for example, when a candidate makes a gaffe, receives negative publicity, is judged to be an extremist, or cannot speak in full sentences -- these politicians silence themselves. Or even worse, they feel that they are accountable to no one, including the public. In the end, they are mere front men and women for powerful interests, and the money speaks louder than words if we bother to listen.
By no means would I suggest that this dumbing down of political discourse is a new phenomenon. However, in the present-day context, it is very selective. And I dare say that if Barack Obama had possessed the underwhelming intellectual capabilities of a Sharron Angle, or the deficient oratorical skills of a Jan Brewer, there would be no president today named Barack Obama. In any case, it boggles the mind that this class of conservatives, however bold and self-assured, is unable or unwilling to articulate and defend their atrocious viewpoints--policies which will surely destroy this nation, or at least come closer to it than even George Bush ever could have hoped.
A big part of the problem with today's political discourse is that we do not have honest, thorough debates on the issues that educate and inform the voters. A properly functioning democracy begs for an informed populace, and America enjoys neither. And the tea party movement, the engine of excitement in the GOP, is anti-intellectual, as lynch mobs tend to be.
In order to understand the way things could be in U.S. politics, I urge you to check out the legendary debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley at Cambridge University, a university where a decade ago I had the pleasure of giving a lecture to students on human rights in the U.S. The Baldwin-Buckley debate, titled "The American Dream is at the Expense of the American Negro," took place on October 26, 1965, 45 years ago. Yet the debate is timeless in its truth telling, particularly as far as Baldwin's contributions are concerned.
To be sure, my political beliefs bear little resemblance to the ideological leanings of the late Buckley. And while I disagree with him on almost everything, he was a conservative public intellectual worthy of respect, and there are few of those these days. Today's conservatives surely would have shunned him, as they would have marginalized their standard bearer and quasi-deity Ronald Reagan. Tea party folks are far too extreme for old-time conservatives who mostly cared about their money. (Come to think of it, for all of their so-called Christianity, the tea party conservatives wouldn't have thought much of Jesus for that matter -- a hippy man of color who spoke out against the rich and powerful, and hung out with the sick and the poor and the prostitutes. But alas, I digress.)
The selectively reticent, ultra-conservative public figure is a danger, a dishonest player in a game where people deserve to know where you stand. A true debate on the issues would keep all of us honest by forcing us to think about our stances and that which undergirds or fails to undergird them. But the self-serving silence of Brewer and those of her ilk does not bode well for this increasingly failed state called America. They do not express or defend their positions, perhaps because they are ignorant, or because they simply refuse to speak, or because they are patsies for oil tycoons who do all of the talking and sign the checks. Maybe it's all of the above. And I don't know which is worse.
Why conservatives want to rewrite civil rights history
From theGrio:
Recently, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said some things that surprised me. And they should surprise you as well. In an interview with Human Events, a conservative website, Barbour discussed growing up in an integrated, tolerant and inclusive South. In his opinion, it was the "old Democrats who had fought for segregation so hard." Speaking of the change in party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in the South, Barbour continued.
"The people that led the change of parties in the South, just as I mentioned earlier, was my generation. My generation, who went to integrated schools. I went to an integrated college. Never thought twice about it. It was the old Democrats who had fought for segregation so hard. By my time, people realized that was the past. It was indefensible, wasn't going to be that way anymore."
Barbour-- who is being touted as the most prominent Republican and the face of the GOP-- is head of the Republican Governors Association. In reality, Barbour was born under Jim Crow segregation and attended segregated public schools. He attended college with only a handful of black students. And he sent his children to Manchester Academy, one of the "segregation academies" established so that white parents could avoid sending their daughters to integrated schools, where they would undoubtedly date black boys. Manchester Academy did not integrate until 1996, when it admitted its first African-American student.
And while Barbour would have you believe that the Republican Party is such a dominant force in the South today because of its support of integration. But the reality is that the GOP inherited the segregationist mantle from the Dixiecrats. After President Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts into law, the Democrats would lose the South for generations. Moreover, beginning with Nixon, the GOP employed a "Southern Strategy" to attract segregationist sympathizers and other disaffected whites from the Democratic Party. All of the talk about taxes, small government, welfare and the like were code for hating black folks.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE
Recently, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said some things that surprised me. And they should surprise you as well. In an interview with Human Events, a conservative website, Barbour discussed growing up in an integrated, tolerant and inclusive South. In his opinion, it was the "old Democrats who had fought for segregation so hard." Speaking of the change in party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in the South, Barbour continued.
"The people that led the change of parties in the South, just as I mentioned earlier, was my generation. My generation, who went to integrated schools. I went to an integrated college. Never thought twice about it. It was the old Democrats who had fought for segregation so hard. By my time, people realized that was the past. It was indefensible, wasn't going to be that way anymore."
Barbour-- who is being touted as the most prominent Republican and the face of the GOP-- is head of the Republican Governors Association. In reality, Barbour was born under Jim Crow segregation and attended segregated public schools. He attended college with only a handful of black students. And he sent his children to Manchester Academy, one of the "segregation academies" established so that white parents could avoid sending their daughters to integrated schools, where they would undoubtedly date black boys. Manchester Academy did not integrate until 1996, when it admitted its first African-American student.
And while Barbour would have you believe that the Republican Party is such a dominant force in the South today because of its support of integration. But the reality is that the GOP inherited the segregationist mantle from the Dixiecrats. After President Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts into law, the Democrats would lose the South for generations. Moreover, beginning with Nixon, the GOP employed a "Southern Strategy" to attract segregationist sympathizers and other disaffected whites from the Democratic Party. All of the talk about taxes, small government, welfare and the like were code for hating black folks.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE
September 8, 2010
Creeping Fascism and the American Politics of Madness
There was a very revealing story that made it in the news recently, but did not get the attention one would expect. A DNA test was performed on 39 living relatives of Adolph Hitler. And the results were stunning: The Haplogroup E1b1b1 chromosome was found in the samples, which is rare in Western Europe, and is usually found among the Berbers of North Africa, and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. So, if we put two and two together, we may conclude that the ultimate "Aryan" leader of the Third Reich was himself of Jewish heritage, if not a person of color.
So, the most loathsome figure of the twentieth century-- responsible for the Holocaust, the genocide of 6 million Jews, as well as millions of others, including Roma, homosexuals, political prisoners and people with disabilities --was himself conceivably a Jew. The madness and brutality of this man was daunting, as was his apparently high degree of self-loathing. And yet there is much we can learn from the Fuhrer's legacy of death and destruction. Indeed, we must learn if we are to avoid revisiting the tragic mistakes of the past. People say "never again" because the idea is to ensure that such inhumanity does not repeat, lest we conclude in our smugness that "it could never happen here."
And yet genocide, and the ritual scapegoating that society perpetrates against a defenseless minority, has happened in the six and a half decades since Hitler's demise--and more than once.
As for Adolph Hitler, warped, delusional and paranoid as he was, he had a lot of help. Criminally insane as he was to conceptualize a final solution and then carry it out to the utmost, he had in Germany a nation of willing executioners that was more than willing to oblige. After all, it was a country suffering from hyperinflation and economic deprivation, with a predisposition for virulent anti-Semitism and an unhealthy respect for authority. And what do you do when an entire nation, or most of it, is literally insane? As I remember my Harvard professor, Holocaust survivor Erich Goldhagen, saying over twenty years ago, it was as if the entire German society was under a spell, or some type of fog that was lifted when the regime was brought to an end.
The Third Reich, we must remember, was democratically elected at first. Hitler had a mandate, perverted as it was. People needed a boogeyman to blame for all of their problems, and the fascist narrative was made to order. Nazis wanted to restore Germany's honor, return to some nonexistent glorious past, the good ol' days I suppose. And they would deal with those segments of the population they believed were the root cause of their social ills.
It began with mob violence, the lynch mob if you will, with acts of physical assaults, vandalism, desecration of property, and the burning of "un-German" books. Racist propaganda with offensive media images helped to soften up the populace and normalize society's hatred towards the scapegoats. The next step was to codify and fully legitimize the hatred--that is, utilize the legal system to marginalize Jews from every facet of society, remove them from civic life, and neutralize them. Jews and so-called Aryans were forbidden by law to marry. Jews could not own property, attend school or hold professions, and were stripped of their citizenship, their voting rights and their personhood. And they were deported, ghettoized and thrown into concentration camps.
But could it happen again?
People of good will who observe today's America cannot help but react with concern, if not alarm. The U.S. economy is a basket case, or at least will soon become one if President Obama does not channel his inner FDR and bring on the second New Deal many are waiting for. In any case, Americans are in pain, with massive unemployment, poverty and homelessness on the rise, and 40 million people on food stamps. Many folks out there are looking for someone to blame. The Patriot movement, including militias, neo-Nazis, Minutemen, Oath Keepers and other armed hate groups are proliferating and boosting their membership, united in a hatred of Latino immigrants, people of color and President Obama. And political extremism has entered the mainstream. The Republican Party-- almost completely purged of moderate voices-- and the corporate-sponsored Tea Parties are comparing notes, if they aren't one in the same. This, as the GOP hopes to score major political points via an updated Southern Strategy of hating Muslims, mosques, Mexicans and marriage equality.
Meanwhile, as two billionaire brothers bankroll this nascent fascist movement to suit their narrow business interests, another rich guy serves as its propagandist, inflaming racial, ethnic and religious tensions on the airwaves, and setting up groups and individuals to be the victims of hate crimes. There is a cable network that articulates the frustration of low-income, low-information whites who are angry that this neighborhood called America is changing, browning up to be more exact, and that is the Fox News Channel. Fox News and Glenn Beck--that opportunistic and delusional little jester of "restoring honor" fame-- would make Goebbels proud.
And I use the term fascism, indeed creeping fascism, to describe what is happening because no other words will suffice. Now is the time that we refrain from dancing around the problems here in America. Burning the Holy Qur'an, bombing and burning mosques, banning houses of worship on private property, widespread denial of the president's citizenship, efforts to nullify the Fourteenth Amendment, states scrambling to enact punitive, unjust laws to target Latinos--these are the ingredients of which fascism is made.
The crises outlined above are far too complex to be resolved in this commentary. However, it must be said that these forces of right-wing extremism are able to exploit the desperation of hard economic times and seize the moment. Reforming America's dysfunctional casino-shell game economic system in fundamental ways, making people whole, and restoring a sense of equity and justice are the things we need. Tweaking at the edges will not do. President Obama, are you listening?
So, the most loathsome figure of the twentieth century-- responsible for the Holocaust, the genocide of 6 million Jews, as well as millions of others, including Roma, homosexuals, political prisoners and people with disabilities --was himself conceivably a Jew. The madness and brutality of this man was daunting, as was his apparently high degree of self-loathing. And yet there is much we can learn from the Fuhrer's legacy of death and destruction. Indeed, we must learn if we are to avoid revisiting the tragic mistakes of the past. People say "never again" because the idea is to ensure that such inhumanity does not repeat, lest we conclude in our smugness that "it could never happen here."
And yet genocide, and the ritual scapegoating that society perpetrates against a defenseless minority, has happened in the six and a half decades since Hitler's demise--and more than once.
As for Adolph Hitler, warped, delusional and paranoid as he was, he had a lot of help. Criminally insane as he was to conceptualize a final solution and then carry it out to the utmost, he had in Germany a nation of willing executioners that was more than willing to oblige. After all, it was a country suffering from hyperinflation and economic deprivation, with a predisposition for virulent anti-Semitism and an unhealthy respect for authority. And what do you do when an entire nation, or most of it, is literally insane? As I remember my Harvard professor, Holocaust survivor Erich Goldhagen, saying over twenty years ago, it was as if the entire German society was under a spell, or some type of fog that was lifted when the regime was brought to an end.
The Third Reich, we must remember, was democratically elected at first. Hitler had a mandate, perverted as it was. People needed a boogeyman to blame for all of their problems, and the fascist narrative was made to order. Nazis wanted to restore Germany's honor, return to some nonexistent glorious past, the good ol' days I suppose. And they would deal with those segments of the population they believed were the root cause of their social ills.
It began with mob violence, the lynch mob if you will, with acts of physical assaults, vandalism, desecration of property, and the burning of "un-German" books. Racist propaganda with offensive media images helped to soften up the populace and normalize society's hatred towards the scapegoats. The next step was to codify and fully legitimize the hatred--that is, utilize the legal system to marginalize Jews from every facet of society, remove them from civic life, and neutralize them. Jews and so-called Aryans were forbidden by law to marry. Jews could not own property, attend school or hold professions, and were stripped of their citizenship, their voting rights and their personhood. And they were deported, ghettoized and thrown into concentration camps.
But could it happen again?
People of good will who observe today's America cannot help but react with concern, if not alarm. The U.S. economy is a basket case, or at least will soon become one if President Obama does not channel his inner FDR and bring on the second New Deal many are waiting for. In any case, Americans are in pain, with massive unemployment, poverty and homelessness on the rise, and 40 million people on food stamps. Many folks out there are looking for someone to blame. The Patriot movement, including militias, neo-Nazis, Minutemen, Oath Keepers and other armed hate groups are proliferating and boosting their membership, united in a hatred of Latino immigrants, people of color and President Obama. And political extremism has entered the mainstream. The Republican Party-- almost completely purged of moderate voices-- and the corporate-sponsored Tea Parties are comparing notes, if they aren't one in the same. This, as the GOP hopes to score major political points via an updated Southern Strategy of hating Muslims, mosques, Mexicans and marriage equality.
Meanwhile, as two billionaire brothers bankroll this nascent fascist movement to suit their narrow business interests, another rich guy serves as its propagandist, inflaming racial, ethnic and religious tensions on the airwaves, and setting up groups and individuals to be the victims of hate crimes. There is a cable network that articulates the frustration of low-income, low-information whites who are angry that this neighborhood called America is changing, browning up to be more exact, and that is the Fox News Channel. Fox News and Glenn Beck--that opportunistic and delusional little jester of "restoring honor" fame-- would make Goebbels proud.
And I use the term fascism, indeed creeping fascism, to describe what is happening because no other words will suffice. Now is the time that we refrain from dancing around the problems here in America. Burning the Holy Qur'an, bombing and burning mosques, banning houses of worship on private property, widespread denial of the president's citizenship, efforts to nullify the Fourteenth Amendment, states scrambling to enact punitive, unjust laws to target Latinos--these are the ingredients of which fascism is made.
The crises outlined above are far too complex to be resolved in this commentary. However, it must be said that these forces of right-wing extremism are able to exploit the desperation of hard economic times and seize the moment. Reforming America's dysfunctional casino-shell game economic system in fundamental ways, making people whole, and restoring a sense of equity and justice are the things we need. Tweaking at the edges will not do. President Obama, are you listening?
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