A recent Newsweek magazine article by a former Marxist who is now firmly in the neoliberal, globalization, screw-the-workers Establishment camp illuminates the diversionary tacticts and false promises of US "democracy." It also illuminates how much our government establishment is firmly planted in the last century and not the future.
Jorge Castañeda's talking point is Cuba but his commentary says a lot about the country he champions, the United States.
A car collision of sorts is about to happen at an upcoming Organization of American States (OAS) meeting where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, representing the Cold Warrior of the 20th century, will run headlong into the 21st century present and future, which at best admires Cuba's achievements since its 1959 revolution; at worst is willing to tolerate it along with the other forms of government, even those to which one might be extraordinarily rendered. This event occasions Castañeda's piece and gives him the opportunity to hold an old friend, Communist Cuba, to a standard he would not hold his own homeland, Mexico.
The United States, for reasons peculiar to its peculiar democracy, will not leave the Cold War in the dustbin of history. It cannot for fear of losing the class war against the poor and unleashing the masses to do unthinkable things, like seize back public properties and convene war-crimes tribunals. Casteñeda deploys some verbiage that reminds me of Nixon's "war on crime," which in reality was a war on Blacks. Behold the double ententre. The US embraces the Cold War, tries to dress it up its rhetoric, as Secy of State Clinton will certainly do at this upcoming OAS meeting, and convince US workers it's all to their benefit.
Except only for the United States of America, the OAS now wants the1962 expulsion of Cuba rescinded. Revealing the uneven power dynamic in this relationship, the US Establishment is calling for a "compromise" even though it has long ago lost this debate.
Cuba avowedly will not rejoin such an organization as the OAS, which it dismisses as a US Colonial Office.
Castañeda, a former Mexican government official, is now firmly with the Establishment: Cuba should not be re-admitted, he argues in his article. The expulsion should not be rescinded. He betrays the US form of democracy by reiterating US-authored OAS directives:
"In 2001, nations in the region came together to sign the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which states explicitly that representative democracy is a condition for belonging to the OAS, and defines it as "respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms," "periodic, free and fair elections based on secret balloting," separation of powers between truly independent branches of government and a pluralistic system of political parties and organizations. Needless to say, Cuba meets none of these conditions, and thus any attempt to invite Cuba back to the OAS should founder."
How many US friends meet these standards? For generations, the US supported apartheid South Africa and labeled Mandela and the African National Congress terrorist organizations. Currently, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, are among our closest friends with blood and torture on their hands, and no free elections.
Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Not only does the US itself fall short of these standards but also this is code. Human rights and fundamental freedom is not about food, land use access, and union organizing but rather the rights to exploit and corporations free from public regulations. It is a fundamental freedom of the US that the pursuit of property be its national religion.
Periodic free and fair elections. Remember this directive is passed George W Bush's first year in office, thanks to a compliant US Supreme Court and thousands of uncounted ballots.
Separation of powers between truly independent branches of government. History knows where the US obsession with liberalizing old-world regimes, like the British Empire, began. Post WWII, the US demanded Britain dismantle its empire, not because the US cared about human rights but rather because liberalized, separated governments are easy to penetrate. Truly independent is more code to simply to draw suspicion to the "hard-left" as Casteñeda calls them, from the business class, which inherently has the nations best interests at heart - that is, Ayn Rand's heart of coal.
Before we begin a meaningful and constructive dialogue about political reform in the state and the country, we must understand from whence we came. Castañeda's article draws heavy underlines under US hypocrisy at home and abroad. We must inoculate ourselves from the myth makers who speak a phony populism as if they had any depth of feeling for human rights or humanity's rights.
US policy towards Cuba succeeds where US domestic policy is dangerously anemic; there is a symbiosis. It is fashionable for ex-Administration officials to pooh-pooh the US blockade as ineffective. But the whole US rhetoric against Cuba succeeds because it has made the average American believe Fidel is a Caribbean Hitler and Cuba a gulag of 10 million people. Ergo, nothing good could come out of such a dungeon - no new models of sustainable farming, no new free education K - university models, no free medical care programs, and no democratic political reform.
Ask the average American about Cuba and they will accuse it of committing the heinous crimes actually committed by the US's most dear and trusted allies. But Cuba has long instituted workplace, neighborhood, regional, and national democracy. Try this at some of the popular union-busting companies in the US. Cuba has addressed these social ills to such an extent it exports doctors and technicians to other part of the Third World.
So while the state of California chases for the bottom position alongside Mississippi and Alabama, cutting social services to the sick, the poor, the disabled, and students, we would not collectively fathom that a poor, Caribbean revolution might have begun to address these problems two generations ago. We would not collectively imagine it because Cuba is the bogeyman of the hemisphere, and the OAS is in fact a Colonial Office of the US government.
Today we need solutions from other models, like Cuba, and not be taught more ancient lessons from the people who have failed us.
If you liked this article, check out: California Supreme Court upholds Prop 8 * California gov drops H-bomb on the poor * Employment should be s social right
28 May 2009
California governor drops H-bomb on poor, sick, unemployed
California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has dropped an H-bomb on the state poor, sick, unemployed. He has proposed balancing the huge budget deficit by ending state social safety, CalWorks.
We are not entering the twilight zone. This is not uncharted territory. We have not lost control of our televisions. We have relinquished control and are being driven steadily back to a bygone century of child labor, high death rates for the poor, prostitution, and slavery.
If these human rights crimes seem beyond the pale and impossible for a civilized country to contemplate, look at the US government's friends, like the dictatorships in the Middle East our spokespersons say nothing about while the enslavement of South Asians and child labor persists for profits in their midst. There is no depth unknown in this moral dungeon into which we are being plunged.
If I am sounding alarmist it is because I am alarmed. I am alarmed that the governor has decided in his infinite wisdom to throw our most vulnerable, our most sacrificed into the sea as maliciously as a US-backed Latin America general was known to drop leftists dissidents literally into the oceans.
Health officials have been clear: people will die. Mental health treatments denied. HIV antiretroviral drugs denied. Services to drug addicts denied. Medical services to prison population denied. These affected will head not to Sacramento for emergency care but rather to their local clinic and hospitals, which will have less funds since the governor is "borrowing" from local funds for three years. Remind the families of the dead the money borrowed will be paid back with interest.
The governor says the state would be insolvent without these cuts. The truth is our right wing political culture - which includes the Democrats who reply they hope not to make all the cuts proposed, so will allow one person to live and another die - has wanted to dismantle our social services for more than a generation. Reagan and the Dept of Education. Welfare queens. The privatization of social security. Welfare reform. Not to forget successive Howard Jarvis "tax revolts," like the infamous Prop 13, which dropped another bomb on California's once-stellar public school systems. Prop 13 cannot be mentioned enough for it was the canary in the mineshaft - to those who care about the condition of miners, that is.
This is not a natural disaster but a political one. The governor can as easily cut food to the hungry and medicines to the sick as he can take the gluttonous third helping from the rich or raise their taxes. But we don't live in that kind of country, do we? There is no God to these creatures but the ghost of Ayn Rand.
If you liked this article, check out: Jury system answer to direct democracy * California is being waterboarded in special election * Race war seethes beneath the class war in LA
For more info: Health care cuts would mean higher costs and possibly deaths * From golden state to 19th century backwater
We are not entering the twilight zone. This is not uncharted territory. We have not lost control of our televisions. We have relinquished control and are being driven steadily back to a bygone century of child labor, high death rates for the poor, prostitution, and slavery.
If these human rights crimes seem beyond the pale and impossible for a civilized country to contemplate, look at the US government's friends, like the dictatorships in the Middle East our spokespersons say nothing about while the enslavement of South Asians and child labor persists for profits in their midst. There is no depth unknown in this moral dungeon into which we are being plunged.
If I am sounding alarmist it is because I am alarmed. I am alarmed that the governor has decided in his infinite wisdom to throw our most vulnerable, our most sacrificed into the sea as maliciously as a US-backed Latin America general was known to drop leftists dissidents literally into the oceans.
Health officials have been clear: people will die. Mental health treatments denied. HIV antiretroviral drugs denied. Services to drug addicts denied. Medical services to prison population denied. These affected will head not to Sacramento for emergency care but rather to their local clinic and hospitals, which will have less funds since the governor is "borrowing" from local funds for three years. Remind the families of the dead the money borrowed will be paid back with interest.
The governor says the state would be insolvent without these cuts. The truth is our right wing political culture - which includes the Democrats who reply they hope not to make all the cuts proposed, so will allow one person to live and another die - has wanted to dismantle our social services for more than a generation. Reagan and the Dept of Education. Welfare queens. The privatization of social security. Welfare reform. Not to forget successive Howard Jarvis "tax revolts," like the infamous Prop 13, which dropped another bomb on California's once-stellar public school systems. Prop 13 cannot be mentioned enough for it was the canary in the mineshaft - to those who care about the condition of miners, that is.
This is not a natural disaster but a political one. The governor can as easily cut food to the hungry and medicines to the sick as he can take the gluttonous third helping from the rich or raise their taxes. But we don't live in that kind of country, do we? There is no God to these creatures but the ghost of Ayn Rand.
If you liked this article, check out: Jury system answer to direct democracy * California is being waterboarded in special election * Race war seethes beneath the class war in LA
For more info: Health care cuts would mean higher costs and possibly deaths * From golden state to 19th century backwater
26 May 2009
California Supreme Court uphold Prop 8 - Activists need to call a boycott of state
The California Supreme Court has upheld the voter-backed, discriminatory Prop 8. When Prop 8 passed last November, I suggested to a men's chat group I frequented that we launch a Boycott against the state of California. This would discourage anyone except in a family emergency from coming to this state for a vacation or a convention, dissuade them from spending any money here. The men were against such a boycott.
It's time now for a boycott of California. The people and our courts stand against us.
I want the bigots - for, that is what they are, regardless how they dress their prejudices up in their false love of the Family or Children - to know their hate has a cost. And if opponents of Gay Marriage want this state to look like Mississippi, they will soon find themselves in a minority.
Sadly, California is behind the curve. Again. It ruined is phenomenal public education system in the late 1970's and is now whistling Dixiecratism with regard to its LGBT citizens.
Local boycotts can be very effective. When right-wing Cuban-Americans, bent on returning Revolution Cuba to it colonial status, stopped a planned visit of Nelson Mandela to Miami, FL, the Black community launched a boycott of the city's tourist industry. Mandela, of course, is a good friend of Fidel and made his first visit outside South Africa to Cuba to thank that country for its contributions in fighting apartheid specifically and training African doctors and technicians generally. The US and its partner in crime, the UK, had deemed Mandela a terrorist and backed apartheid South Africa. In Miami, 3 years and $50 million in lost revenues later, the city capitulated.
California, like the rest of the country, is in bad fiscal shape. Gay Marriage is not my top priority in this political crisis - I still maintain that social rights are community rights, not to be assigned to those who marry, and only marry "up." Housing, public education, and health care for all is a very attainable goal if these public services are taken out of the hands of profiteers. And crushing further the state's economy is not an idea I relish.
But since these bigots seem to have no human bones in their bodies, we must reach their bellies, their wallets and purses.
The Court ruling allows the nearly 20,000 LGBT marriages to stand, weirdly creating a tier within a tier in the LGBT community.
In the meantime, supporters of Gay Marriage contemplate yet another ballot measure to undo this ruling. A boycott of those businesses in our communities which have opted to remove themselves from civil society, do not believe in communities of values by funding bigotry, is also necessary.
For more info: List of Business Supporting Prop 8 * California Supreme Court Ruling
It's time now for a boycott of California. The people and our courts stand against us.
I want the bigots - for, that is what they are, regardless how they dress their prejudices up in their false love of the Family or Children - to know their hate has a cost. And if opponents of Gay Marriage want this state to look like Mississippi, they will soon find themselves in a minority.
Sadly, California is behind the curve. Again. It ruined is phenomenal public education system in the late 1970's and is now whistling Dixiecratism with regard to its LGBT citizens.
Local boycotts can be very effective. When right-wing Cuban-Americans, bent on returning Revolution Cuba to it colonial status, stopped a planned visit of Nelson Mandela to Miami, FL, the Black community launched a boycott of the city's tourist industry. Mandela, of course, is a good friend of Fidel and made his first visit outside South Africa to Cuba to thank that country for its contributions in fighting apartheid specifically and training African doctors and technicians generally. The US and its partner in crime, the UK, had deemed Mandela a terrorist and backed apartheid South Africa. In Miami, 3 years and $50 million in lost revenues later, the city capitulated.
California, like the rest of the country, is in bad fiscal shape. Gay Marriage is not my top priority in this political crisis - I still maintain that social rights are community rights, not to be assigned to those who marry, and only marry "up." Housing, public education, and health care for all is a very attainable goal if these public services are taken out of the hands of profiteers. And crushing further the state's economy is not an idea I relish.
But since these bigots seem to have no human bones in their bodies, we must reach their bellies, their wallets and purses.
The Court ruling allows the nearly 20,000 LGBT marriages to stand, weirdly creating a tier within a tier in the LGBT community.
In the meantime, supporters of Gay Marriage contemplate yet another ballot measure to undo this ruling. A boycott of those businesses in our communities which have opted to remove themselves from civil society, do not believe in communities of values by funding bigotry, is also necessary.
For more info: List of Business Supporting Prop 8 * California Supreme Court Ruling
22 May 2009
Hawaiian Gardens Gang arrests speaks to a race war beneath a class war in LA
Hawaiian Gardens gang arrests speaks to a race war seething beneath the class war. This morning's police arrest of nearly 150 members of the gang who have allegedly avowed to kill Blacks points to something our press ostriches within our borders but easily points to in other countries. Ethnic cleansing. Genocide. Holocausts. But never, ever in the United States.
But what world government ever admits to ethnic cleansing rather than make some excuse or other?
Why would a Latino gang hunt down Blacks for indiscriminate killing? Why would Black gangs hunt down Latinos for indiscriminate killing? The Los Angeles Times reports the aim was to drive Blacks from Hawaiian Gardens. The better answer can be found perhaps in that Sacramento promises deep cuts to California's social programs, attacking further the poor, pitting one program against another. They say nothing about raising the tax burden on the rich. It's simply not on their proverbial boardroom or editorial tables.
Of course the rich don't want a class war. The rich don't the anger and energy of this Latino gang aimed at It, or the same anger of a Black gang. The rich want free reign to move public services around like our lives were a Monopoly game. And they don't want the poor, the underemployed, unemployed to direct their righteous ire against them. Better they kill each other, hate each other, suspect the Black of being lazy or the Latino [code word for immigrant] for stealing tax money.
It's called a red herring. The reality is a corporate gang which is never featured in our newspapers of record, because the corporate gang owns the corporate press and our corporate political system.
These gangs of poor are pretty low on the food-chain for turning to Klan tactics. No future Weather Underground or Black Panthers in their midst. The corporate gangs intent to drive public services from our neighborhoods are no better. Single-payer, socialzed medicine for all will not pass their lips.
Lacking class consciousness can be forgiven in these Los Angeles Times, which has made clear whose side it is on. LA Times attacks schools from one side while the state of California attacks from the other. The collateral damage might include a few sprigs of green but sadly also includes these LA gangs, which are but a phenomenon of the attack on the poor generally, social services specifically. It is a wonder we don't have larger gangs of hate in this region.
But like any disease, different bodies deal distinctly with infection. The stronger may ride it out and learn something of the battle. The weak are scarred. So too the body politic, which is not made stronger by the dark clouds on the horizon which foretell deep cuts in services whose beneficiaries the LA Times won't tell you about.
But what world government ever admits to ethnic cleansing rather than make some excuse or other?
Why would a Latino gang hunt down Blacks for indiscriminate killing? Why would Black gangs hunt down Latinos for indiscriminate killing? The Los Angeles Times reports the aim was to drive Blacks from Hawaiian Gardens. The better answer can be found perhaps in that Sacramento promises deep cuts to California's social programs, attacking further the poor, pitting one program against another. They say nothing about raising the tax burden on the rich. It's simply not on their proverbial boardroom or editorial tables.
Of course the rich don't want a class war. The rich don't the anger and energy of this Latino gang aimed at It, or the same anger of a Black gang. The rich want free reign to move public services around like our lives were a Monopoly game. And they don't want the poor, the underemployed, unemployed to direct their righteous ire against them. Better they kill each other, hate each other, suspect the Black of being lazy or the Latino [code word for immigrant] for stealing tax money.
It's called a red herring. The reality is a corporate gang which is never featured in our newspapers of record, because the corporate gang owns the corporate press and our corporate political system.
These gangs of poor are pretty low on the food-chain for turning to Klan tactics. No future Weather Underground or Black Panthers in their midst. The corporate gangs intent to drive public services from our neighborhoods are no better. Single-payer, socialzed medicine for all will not pass their lips.
Lacking class consciousness can be forgiven in these Los Angeles Times, which has made clear whose side it is on. LA Times attacks schools from one side while the state of California attacks from the other. The collateral damage might include a few sprigs of green but sadly also includes these LA gangs, which are but a phenomenon of the attack on the poor generally, social services specifically. It is a wonder we don't have larger gangs of hate in this region.
But like any disease, different bodies deal distinctly with infection. The stronger may ride it out and learn something of the battle. The weak are scarred. So too the body politic, which is not made stronger by the dark clouds on the horizon which foretell deep cuts in services whose beneficiaries the LA Times won't tell you about.
21 May 2009
Model the Jury System to make democracy more robust
Could a legislature seated by jury work much better than our present arrangement where anyone who can raise money from private interests is asked to serve for the public interest? George Bernard Shaw said democracy is a system that guarantees we will be governed no better than what we deserve.
The recent sleaze in UK politics that has not spared even a member of its noble families [the US abolished noble titles but not ruling families]. It has made for fast and furious debates within the palace of Westminster [aka, Parliament], the streets, and the pages of the UK Guardian. Depending on where you rank nobility, the falling Lord Hailsham either tops of trails a growing list of casualties for pilfering the public money, which is in short supply due to our irrational economic system.
You won't find the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, or OC Register having such a debate, laying so many sacred institutions on the table.
Even the British monarchy is suggested for the chopping block in the UK, its oldest institution and still the source of power in the UK system. Another commentator called the Queen a "lame duck" for having but not being able to use her ancient powers to simply fire the prime minister, close Parliament [it is, after all, a royal palace], and call a new election.
Contrast the British outrage to what resulted after the 2000 fracas when Al Gore's plurality of votes was contradicted by the Constitutional Electoral College appointment of George W Bush? Our press lords are deafeningly silent. In the early 1960's, when the Queen hand-picked the Earl of Home to be prime minister over a more popular choice, the Conservative Party instituted elections of their party leaders to prevent such a power from being exercised.
The US slowness to reform is not due to the public but rather our rulers, who unfortunately don't have their old titles so can't be escorted to the guillotine ... figuratively speaking of course. They simply don't want to give up power and wo't let their organs in the pressrooms let you know they weild power.
In California, in the wake of last Tuesday's sound failure of Sacramento's pedestrian measures to lessen our growing debt and ineptitude, and our High Court playing with LGBT rights as if they were capricious children and we just one of too many toys.
We might begin with Legislature Reform. Presently, we might as well have a House of Lords - to continue too far the British comparison. Republican and Democrat may not be able to pass a Budget; they are very effective in keeping their favorites in power, even while they rotate every two terms, or speakership from north to south and back again. They are mostly unremarkable.
Why not implement a Jury Legislature? A jury is a sacred and evolved piece of our court system, giving adults access to shaping court rulings and the accused a guarantee that the public will be included in the adminstrration of justice. If its good enough for the courts and the accused, why not the community as a whole?
A jury of legislators could be picked at random to sit for two-year terms not only in Sacramento but also locally as well.
The recent sleaze in UK politics that has not spared even a member of its noble families [the US abolished noble titles but not ruling families]. It has made for fast and furious debates within the palace of Westminster [aka, Parliament], the streets, and the pages of the UK Guardian. Depending on where you rank nobility, the falling Lord Hailsham either tops of trails a growing list of casualties for pilfering the public money, which is in short supply due to our irrational economic system.
You won't find the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, or OC Register having such a debate, laying so many sacred institutions on the table.
Even the British monarchy is suggested for the chopping block in the UK, its oldest institution and still the source of power in the UK system. Another commentator called the Queen a "lame duck" for having but not being able to use her ancient powers to simply fire the prime minister, close Parliament [it is, after all, a royal palace], and call a new election.
Contrast the British outrage to what resulted after the 2000 fracas when Al Gore's plurality of votes was contradicted by the Constitutional Electoral College appointment of George W Bush? Our press lords are deafeningly silent. In the early 1960's, when the Queen hand-picked the Earl of Home to be prime minister over a more popular choice, the Conservative Party instituted elections of their party leaders to prevent such a power from being exercised.
The US slowness to reform is not due to the public but rather our rulers, who unfortunately don't have their old titles so can't be escorted to the guillotine ... figuratively speaking of course. They simply don't want to give up power and wo't let their organs in the pressrooms let you know they weild power.
In California, in the wake of last Tuesday's sound failure of Sacramento's pedestrian measures to lessen our growing debt and ineptitude, and our High Court playing with LGBT rights as if they were capricious children and we just one of too many toys.
We might begin with Legislature Reform. Presently, we might as well have a House of Lords - to continue too far the British comparison. Republican and Democrat may not be able to pass a Budget; they are very effective in keeping their favorites in power, even while they rotate every two terms, or speakership from north to south and back again. They are mostly unremarkable.
Why not implement a Jury Legislature? A jury is a sacred and evolved piece of our court system, giving adults access to shaping court rulings and the accused a guarantee that the public will be included in the adminstrration of justice. If its good enough for the courts and the accused, why not the community as a whole?
A jury of legislators could be picked at random to sit for two-year terms not only in Sacramento but also locally as well.
16 May 2009
Unions & The Spokespeople of the Workers
I have the union movement and workers on my mind and their place in the public imagination - if the public imagines them at all - and how to get them there.
My worry persists about the Kool-Aid the Los Angeles Times has drunk, recently exemplified by its columnist Sandy Banks in her newspaper's assault on public school teachers. More that the Times is pulling the Jim Jones Kool-Aid Drinking Game and making the rest of us imbibe their venomous attacks on the LA public school system and its teachers. But the union movement also strikes closer to my proverbial home and makes me think of the TSA officers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), among whom I work. The public must not imagine us too well if you follow the conventional wisdoms.
When President George W Bush started the US Dept of Homeland Security and TSA he argued that allowing collective bargaining for the agency would inhibit its security function. Most of the Democrats, not to be outdone, allowed this travesty. TSA employees are the only federal workers denied collective bargaining rights. The seven terminals at LAX are run like little fiefdoms, the TSA officers the mere vassals of their immediate supervisors and managers.
Fiefdoms, the whims of a chain-of-command who might or might not know how to manage, flexible workforce are some of the results of TSA officers - and any wage-worker in this country - not having collective bargaining.
And what is so bad about collective bargaining? Has collective bargaining inhibited the Border Patrol or CIA or the Coast Guard from fulfilling its functions? I am unfamiliar with the campaigns to strip these agencies of union rights. I have not heard any Republicans or Democrats run for office to end unions in the federal system or bash unionized federal workers, like the LA Times enjoys punching our city's teachers.
I have not heard much about the unfair, arbitrary treatment of TSA employees, the long, two-year probationary period, the ridiculous and transparent "incentive" program, which we are all forced to sign into, which no TSA officers finds fair. I fought this program last year when asked to sign up for the current fiscal year. I refused to sign, made my arguments that I'd rather opt-out and take my chances with the standard federal raise. I was told my job was incumbent on me signing. Then, why am I signing?
I had hoped Obama's "Change is coming" mantra might mean a deep, purging sweep of TSA upper echelons and the implementation of fairer rules for TSA officers and the beleaguered traveling public. No such luck. When I put the question of a certain local high official to Jane Harman [D-California], weapons-lover, on a local radio station she seemed amazed. She said she'd heard nothing but good things about the official I asked about. She was undoubtedly following newspapers of record and not talking to TSA officers. I knew then without a doubt that Harman was ripe for plucking from her Congressional office if not her committees.
Since my tenure began at TSA, the officers job responsibilities have increased. Our pay has not. I know a bit about this from my 10 years as a public school teacher, where our own class sizes increased; but I had a union UESF to fight for us. TSA has none.
A union would address this and tell TSA to pay for its work. Then TSA officers and the traveling public will see how really necessary some of these things really are.
Where might you read about the plight of the workers, those 6 million who have lost their lost jobs and those who still hang on to theirs? Not the papers of record. You will not read favorable things about unions and unioinzing in the Los Angeles Times, which is the paper whose owners also want a flexible workforce, which means the ability to hire and fire as their balance book dictates. You won't hear this from politicians, like Harman.
The AFGE*, AFL-CIO, SEIU, IWW, Teamsters, Retailworker websites are considered unfavorably biased, yet the corporate sponsored LA Times is esteemed as objective and trustworthy. Denied the ability to speak to the Press, denied a Union to speak for us, all the public hears is what comes from the TSA management: What they have told the public is a mixture of lies and propaganda. What they have told the public flies directly in the face of the low-morale TSA officers have.
Any newspaper on a campaign against working people is an anti-social cretin, a vile toxin poured into the community well.
As newspapers are forced to revamp their business models, we should look back at a history. An array of news sources, strongly taking disparate positions, once existed. The Morning Star of the UK is the only full-service Marxist daily newspaper I know of in the English language.
The struggles of those who labor, the workers, the underemployed, those to whom the land should belong [to quote Paulo Freire] needs a newspaper, a news agency, with a Labor Section more than a Business Section.
Joe and Suzy Public don't want disaffected, underpaid teachers educating their children in swollen classrooms with no support, or the children of their neighbors and community. I would hope they wouldn't want the TSA officers hired to protect their flights similarly disgruntled and overburdened. TSA officers aren't yet disgruntled. But they are weary and cynical and according to the federal governments own surveys the most disaffected employees in the federal workforce.
I tell my colleagues a Union will set workplace rules but it won't keep TSA from hiring incompetent managers. In a country where Bonzo's monkey can be president for two terms, anyone can be a TSA manager. Some are promising; many seemed to have won their positions in a lottery. A union will set a known, fair pay rate for our work but it won't stop some of the ridiculous security measures, under-staffings, under-resourcing, which functionaries paid to do nothing else hand down from Mt. Ignoramus. But the place to have these debates is in public, and the public must be informed.
(* For the record, I do not belong to AFGE, the union that has fought for TSA union rights since the founding of the agency)
For more info: American Federation of Government Employees * American Federation of Labor- Congress of Industrial Organizations * Service Employees International Union * International Brotherhood of the Teamsters * Industrial Workers of the World * Retailworker Forum * United Educators San Francisco * United Teachers Los Angeles. * TSA Screeners Union
My worry persists about the Kool-Aid the Los Angeles Times has drunk, recently exemplified by its columnist Sandy Banks in her newspaper's assault on public school teachers. More that the Times is pulling the Jim Jones Kool-Aid Drinking Game and making the rest of us imbibe their venomous attacks on the LA public school system and its teachers. But the union movement also strikes closer to my proverbial home and makes me think of the TSA officers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), among whom I work. The public must not imagine us too well if you follow the conventional wisdoms.
When President George W Bush started the US Dept of Homeland Security and TSA he argued that allowing collective bargaining for the agency would inhibit its security function. Most of the Democrats, not to be outdone, allowed this travesty. TSA employees are the only federal workers denied collective bargaining rights. The seven terminals at LAX are run like little fiefdoms, the TSA officers the mere vassals of their immediate supervisors and managers.
Fiefdoms, the whims of a chain-of-command who might or might not know how to manage, flexible workforce are some of the results of TSA officers - and any wage-worker in this country - not having collective bargaining.
And what is so bad about collective bargaining? Has collective bargaining inhibited the Border Patrol or CIA or the Coast Guard from fulfilling its functions? I am unfamiliar with the campaigns to strip these agencies of union rights. I have not heard any Republicans or Democrats run for office to end unions in the federal system or bash unionized federal workers, like the LA Times enjoys punching our city's teachers.
I have not heard much about the unfair, arbitrary treatment of TSA employees, the long, two-year probationary period, the ridiculous and transparent "incentive" program, which we are all forced to sign into, which no TSA officers finds fair. I fought this program last year when asked to sign up for the current fiscal year. I refused to sign, made my arguments that I'd rather opt-out and take my chances with the standard federal raise. I was told my job was incumbent on me signing. Then, why am I signing?
I had hoped Obama's "Change is coming" mantra might mean a deep, purging sweep of TSA upper echelons and the implementation of fairer rules for TSA officers and the beleaguered traveling public. No such luck. When I put the question of a certain local high official to Jane Harman [D-California], weapons-lover, on a local radio station she seemed amazed. She said she'd heard nothing but good things about the official I asked about. She was undoubtedly following newspapers of record and not talking to TSA officers. I knew then without a doubt that Harman was ripe for plucking from her Congressional office if not her committees.
Since my tenure began at TSA, the officers job responsibilities have increased. Our pay has not. I know a bit about this from my 10 years as a public school teacher, where our own class sizes increased; but I had a union UESF to fight for us. TSA has none.
A union would address this and tell TSA to pay for its work. Then TSA officers and the traveling public will see how really necessary some of these things really are.
Where might you read about the plight of the workers, those 6 million who have lost their lost jobs and those who still hang on to theirs? Not the papers of record. You will not read favorable things about unions and unioinzing in the Los Angeles Times, which is the paper whose owners also want a flexible workforce, which means the ability to hire and fire as their balance book dictates. You won't hear this from politicians, like Harman.
The AFGE*, AFL-CIO, SEIU, IWW, Teamsters, Retailworker websites are considered unfavorably biased, yet the corporate sponsored LA Times is esteemed as objective and trustworthy. Denied the ability to speak to the Press, denied a Union to speak for us, all the public hears is what comes from the TSA management: What they have told the public is a mixture of lies and propaganda. What they have told the public flies directly in the face of the low-morale TSA officers have.
Any newspaper on a campaign against working people is an anti-social cretin, a vile toxin poured into the community well.
As newspapers are forced to revamp their business models, we should look back at a history. An array of news sources, strongly taking disparate positions, once existed. The Morning Star of the UK is the only full-service Marxist daily newspaper I know of in the English language.
The struggles of those who labor, the workers, the underemployed, those to whom the land should belong [to quote Paulo Freire] needs a newspaper, a news agency, with a Labor Section more than a Business Section.
Joe and Suzy Public don't want disaffected, underpaid teachers educating their children in swollen classrooms with no support, or the children of their neighbors and community. I would hope they wouldn't want the TSA officers hired to protect their flights similarly disgruntled and overburdened. TSA officers aren't yet disgruntled. But they are weary and cynical and according to the federal governments own surveys the most disaffected employees in the federal workforce.
I tell my colleagues a Union will set workplace rules but it won't keep TSA from hiring incompetent managers. In a country where Bonzo's monkey can be president for two terms, anyone can be a TSA manager. Some are promising; many seemed to have won their positions in a lottery. A union will set a known, fair pay rate for our work but it won't stop some of the ridiculous security measures, under-staffings, under-resourcing, which functionaries paid to do nothing else hand down from Mt. Ignoramus. But the place to have these debates is in public, and the public must be informed.
(* For the record, I do not belong to AFGE, the union that has fought for TSA union rights since the founding of the agency)
For more info: American Federation of Government Employees * American Federation of Labor- Congress of Industrial Organizations * Service Employees International Union * International Brotherhood of the Teamsters * Industrial Workers of the World * Retailworker Forum * United Educators San Francisco * United Teachers Los Angeles. * TSA Screeners Union
14 May 2009
Obituary: The Anglo-Saxons
The ECONOMIST has pronounced the death of the Anglo-Saxons (May 9-15). Against its own warped judgement in favor of said Anglo-Saxons and their economic models, the editors of this respected magazine gauge the death somewhere around April G-20 Summit, when Nicolas Sarkozy in poor taste gloated about the French economic system he had earlier sworn to toss for something like London's.
But London, the titular head of the Anglo-Saxons, and Gordon Brown, whose continued existence in high office proves there is no social democracy of any kind in the UK, is in poor shape. The US, London's Poodle Master and, alternately, its student - for, we must respect our former Masters, the British Crown - is in equally bad shape. Alarming shape. Our shape reminds me of Mann's Death in Venice, where the plague rages and the rulers say the frequent interventions are just precautions: keep the faith, keep spending, and ignore the corpses.
But this being the Economist, it readily admits to still favoring the Anglo-Saxon, neo-liberal model over the French social system, so it won't bury this corpse. It euphemistically says the Anglo-Saxons leave more power in the hands of individuals rather than the state: translated, this means it allows me to screw you over and the government impotent to restrain me, or to help you and your shelter, job, or access to health care.
The headline says it all: "A new pecking order: There has been a change in Europe's balance of economic power; but don't expect that to last for long" [p13]
The article reads "Thirty years after Thatcherism began to work its cruel magic in Britain, continental Europe still tends to favor a larger state, higher taxes, heavier regulation of product and labor markets, and a more generous social safety-net than freer-market sorts like the Iron Lady would tolerate."
Missing the obvious, the passage ends with "So what is the evidence for the continental model being better?"
The US is in more turbulent times than our venerable corporate papers or our corporate-funded one-ideology, two-winged party system will let on. This crisis began in the late 90's and hit the working class first, but since this class has not been empowered by the Anglo-Saxons, has no newspapers of record, and has no political representation but continue to believe in the Trinity, Crusades, and the Democrats, no one took any notice to the rise in evictions. Not until the earth trembled under white-collar heels did the Chicken Little see the sky darken at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
Like Simon Bolivar in Latin America's war of independence from Spain, these times demand we seize the initiative. I heard an anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, that a Spanish prelate exhorted the peasants to follow the king and natural order of things, until Bolivar literally clubbed the little man from his pulpit and thereby broke the spell the Mother Church and Natural Order had over the masses. President Barack Obama has shown, at minimum, to be a pragmatist: this means he will not rock the Establishment too hard. Note how he continues to exclude single-payer health care a seat at his round table. He may be sane enough and continental enough to see the value in a French-style health system: he will not spend his political capital to be put through the sausage-maker that mangled Hillary Clinton.
Stubbornly, the Economist, essentially a mercantile publication, may not have stood for a colonial king, has nonetheless highlighted the royal crimes. At this point, there is no glossing over a dead body to make it look vital. We must seize the initiative and break the spell which keeps so many of us in slumber and from taking control over our political system to serve humanity.
07 May 2009
Is California becoming the new Dixie for the LGBT community?
After Maine's governor, Democrat John Baldacci, signed LGBT marriage legislation, and as New Hampshire's governor ponders the same, Los Angelinos should ponder whether their own state has become an antique, a relic, worthy of the dustbin of history where White Citizen Councils and anti-race mixing ordinances lay.
Gov. John Lynch of New Hampshire may sign the gay marriage bill or let it become law on its own, which would make his state the sixth in the nation to recognize LGBT marriage.
California is not pondering this issue at all but in full retreat, having just turned on LGBT equality at the ballot box, while states like Iowa are setting the national trend. California is no longer the national trend-setter it once famously was but the last Confederate Widow.
Make no mistake about it. I have serious concerns about the Marriage Issue altogether. LGBT or straight, the idea of assigning privileges based on marriage status is a bit out of step with a modern civilization. Persons should have housing, pension, and health care rights based on simply being alive and not based on whom they marry. A retail worker, for example, whose employer is more interested in quarterly reports to show profit and so will deny health and pension, should not have to rely on marrying a corporate attorney to have secure housing and health care.
But marriage is how we as a society distribute these 1000+ privileges, and if that is to be the case, we can no more deny them to married LGBT's than we can Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, or Native Americans; Republicans, Democrats, republicans and democrats, Revolutionary Communists or Democratic Socialists, Greens, Lutherans, Anglicans, et cetera. I make such an exhaustive list because some anti-LGBT Marriage people say Race is Not a Choice, where they allege sexuality is. What race you are is determined by a legal framework that set during a darker time in Western history. Further, how would it look, even during the Cold War, if the US had not allowed Communist Party USA members to marry?
Nor can we in the LGBT community be satisfied with second-tier, separate-but-equal measures, even from our so-called friends. Separate but equal didn't work for Blacks a few generations ago, didn't work for women before US Title IX, and doesn't work for the LGBT community.
But why the retreat for California? The state allowed the ruination of its stellar school system in 1978 by a vote and equally telling allowed the denial of equal rights for LGBT's in 2008. In between it ended the ability for our public universities to reflect the population in their student bodies. Again, by vote.
Who is safe now in California from having their rights taken, their services ended, simply by a majority vote?
I am not one opposed to California's Initiative Process. I am 100% for it. It is democracy that compels our foot-dragging assembly and legislature to do something, but who are these creatures who would use this process to dismantle our treasures? And who are these voters who are so easily scared to support having the ground beneath them blown to smithereens?
I do not doubt the assault on our public schools and this class of voter that can be so hoodwinked is related. We are becoming, across the board, but particularly where LGBT's are concerned, the Old South of paternal bigots who love their marginals, denialists who say we have no social problem where LGBT rights are concerned, and homophobes who make up a remarkably small percentage.
Contrary to popular belief, the homophobes really aren't our biggest worry but rather the paternal bigotry of our political friends who won't risk anything for our children, our schools, our multicultural communities, and LGBT equality but would rather make the familiar "Go-slow" excuses once made against making full equality for Blacks in the South.
States stereotyped for their backwardness, fashion-backwardness, gingham dresses are moving the nation forward. At this rate, California may have a future US Supreme Court impose Gay Marriage on us "with all deliberate speed."
* First appeared on my Examiner Page Site
Gov. John Lynch of New Hampshire may sign the gay marriage bill or let it become law on its own, which would make his state the sixth in the nation to recognize LGBT marriage.
California is not pondering this issue at all but in full retreat, having just turned on LGBT equality at the ballot box, while states like Iowa are setting the national trend. California is no longer the national trend-setter it once famously was but the last Confederate Widow.
Make no mistake about it. I have serious concerns about the Marriage Issue altogether. LGBT or straight, the idea of assigning privileges based on marriage status is a bit out of step with a modern civilization. Persons should have housing, pension, and health care rights based on simply being alive and not based on whom they marry. A retail worker, for example, whose employer is more interested in quarterly reports to show profit and so will deny health and pension, should not have to rely on marrying a corporate attorney to have secure housing and health care.
But marriage is how we as a society distribute these 1000+ privileges, and if that is to be the case, we can no more deny them to married LGBT's than we can Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, or Native Americans; Republicans, Democrats, republicans and democrats, Revolutionary Communists or Democratic Socialists, Greens, Lutherans, Anglicans, et cetera. I make such an exhaustive list because some anti-LGBT Marriage people say Race is Not a Choice, where they allege sexuality is. What race you are is determined by a legal framework that set during a darker time in Western history. Further, how would it look, even during the Cold War, if the US had not allowed Communist Party USA members to marry?
Nor can we in the LGBT community be satisfied with second-tier, separate-but-equal measures, even from our so-called friends. Separate but equal didn't work for Blacks a few generations ago, didn't work for women before US Title IX, and doesn't work for the LGBT community.
But why the retreat for California? The state allowed the ruination of its stellar school system in 1978 by a vote and equally telling allowed the denial of equal rights for LGBT's in 2008. In between it ended the ability for our public universities to reflect the population in their student bodies. Again, by vote.
Who is safe now in California from having their rights taken, their services ended, simply by a majority vote?
I am not one opposed to California's Initiative Process. I am 100% for it. It is democracy that compels our foot-dragging assembly and legislature to do something, but who are these creatures who would use this process to dismantle our treasures? And who are these voters who are so easily scared to support having the ground beneath them blown to smithereens?
I do not doubt the assault on our public schools and this class of voter that can be so hoodwinked is related. We are becoming, across the board, but particularly where LGBT's are concerned, the Old South of paternal bigots who love their marginals, denialists who say we have no social problem where LGBT rights are concerned, and homophobes who make up a remarkably small percentage.
Contrary to popular belief, the homophobes really aren't our biggest worry but rather the paternal bigotry of our political friends who won't risk anything for our children, our schools, our multicultural communities, and LGBT equality but would rather make the familiar "Go-slow" excuses once made against making full equality for Blacks in the South.
States stereotyped for their backwardness, fashion-backwardness, gingham dresses are moving the nation forward. At this rate, California may have a future US Supreme Court impose Gay Marriage on us "with all deliberate speed."
* First appeared on my Examiner Page Site
LA Times Campaign to Bash Public Schools and the Teachers who Love Them
I noticed a few weeks ago on the LA Times website a series of articles featuring yet again the failures of LA city schools, its union, and most recently a screed about teachers who get paid not to work because they can't be fired. A cursory look at some of the headlines should leave little doubt where the LA Times positions itself: "LA schools chief critical of unfit teachers milking the system," "School officials call for legislation easing firing of teachers," "Firing tenured teachers a tough and costly task," "LA Unified pays teachers not to teach," ad nauseum. This is vintage Reagan bashing Welfare Queens.
As a former public school teacher, who, a la James Baldwin's desire to leave the church to spread the gospel and Tony Benn's to leave Parliament to practice politics: I left teaching to be empowered to teach, since I had less power due to institutions and conspiracies like this one waged by the venerable LA Times.
So I am prejudiced. I am not only a former teacher but also come from a family of school teachers.
What is essentially behind this atrocious conspiracy to malign public schools is the same as that conspiracy to malign public services for want of neo-liberal privatizations, busting the rights of works as a necessary pre-condition for profits to be earned by those stellar pillars of the society that Ayn Rand alleged in Atlas Shrugged that we cannot do without.
So we must not have any faith at all in public schools or the men and women who serve them, who love them. I have not met any outsider who when finding out I was a teacher tell me that teachers deserve more money. Maybe, but I think not. My politics inform me that expanding public services is paramount to simply raising wages. Teachers go into the profession knowing they will not be on par with your average stockbroker - but our values are obviously different. Consider that when you see who the LA Times attacks [teachers] and who they do not [stock brokers] and deduce what values they want to govern civil society. Molesting a child is an horrific crime, but so is rationing homes so millions would live on the streets, health care so millions die, jobs so 5 million+ be unable to support themselves.
What we must see, as through the prism of the LA Times, is that schools are corrupt, dysfunctional, and its [union] workers suffer hubris, and they are not serving our children.
Our children? Neither the Left or Right, Republican or Democrat or Socialist, vegetarian or carnivore have a monopoly on concern for children and society. The Times of course has a checkered history in spreading lies and using children. Way back in the early 1930's when Upton Sinclair was running for governor of the state with the EPIC Movement Campaign [End Poverty in California], his victory was in reach. Sinclair was a socialist. The Chandler Family-controlled LA Times launched a smear campaign against Sinclair alleging he was going to take children from parents. This sort of psy-ops worked effectively, and Sinclair's support plummeted, and he lost the election.
I see absolutely no moral evolution between that Depression-era campaign and the present one in its desire to make people vote against its own best interest. In this respect, the LA Times' knuckles scrape the ground as it lumbers along pre-historically. These campaigns become a self-fulfilling prophecy since the more the LA Times maligns schools and the more they are short-changed basic resources, the worse off they will be, and the greater the cries to dismantle them altogether for some Voucher/Free Market option, where you will see the voucher lowered in value and the poor relegated to truly inferior, unfunded schools and forgotten on the pages of the venerable LA Times.
People who do not know, who follow such elitist paradigms, like to tell me that socialism doesn't work. Really? Besides reminding them where many old people might be without social security or where our neighborhoods would be without community fire departments, I mention the infinite successes of public education. It is offered to all, free of charge, and along with free- and reduced lunch programs, it has socialized many a young people to understand civil society.
The answer cannot be followed fro the LA Times' leads but in the opposite direction. Public schools should be a greater funded priority, free education should not be limited to K-12 but be extended to colleges and technical programs. Society has an interest in having literate, educated, trained people. Conversely, the political elites are frightened of the demands such masses make: this is that ancient and infamous crisis of democracy and why we cannot live in one and why the The LA Times must play its role in undermining this movement.
As a former public school teacher, who, a la James Baldwin's desire to leave the church to spread the gospel and Tony Benn's to leave Parliament to practice politics: I left teaching to be empowered to teach, since I had less power due to institutions and conspiracies like this one waged by the venerable LA Times.
So I am prejudiced. I am not only a former teacher but also come from a family of school teachers.
What is essentially behind this atrocious conspiracy to malign public schools is the same as that conspiracy to malign public services for want of neo-liberal privatizations, busting the rights of works as a necessary pre-condition for profits to be earned by those stellar pillars of the society that Ayn Rand alleged in Atlas Shrugged that we cannot do without.
So we must not have any faith at all in public schools or the men and women who serve them, who love them. I have not met any outsider who when finding out I was a teacher tell me that teachers deserve more money. Maybe, but I think not. My politics inform me that expanding public services is paramount to simply raising wages. Teachers go into the profession knowing they will not be on par with your average stockbroker - but our values are obviously different. Consider that when you see who the LA Times attacks [teachers] and who they do not [stock brokers] and deduce what values they want to govern civil society. Molesting a child is an horrific crime, but so is rationing homes so millions would live on the streets, health care so millions die, jobs so 5 million+ be unable to support themselves.
What we must see, as through the prism of the LA Times, is that schools are corrupt, dysfunctional, and its [union] workers suffer hubris, and they are not serving our children.
Our children? Neither the Left or Right, Republican or Democrat or Socialist, vegetarian or carnivore have a monopoly on concern for children and society. The Times of course has a checkered history in spreading lies and using children. Way back in the early 1930's when Upton Sinclair was running for governor of the state with the EPIC Movement Campaign [End Poverty in California], his victory was in reach. Sinclair was a socialist. The Chandler Family-controlled LA Times launched a smear campaign against Sinclair alleging he was going to take children from parents. This sort of psy-ops worked effectively, and Sinclair's support plummeted, and he lost the election.
I see absolutely no moral evolution between that Depression-era campaign and the present one in its desire to make people vote against its own best interest. In this respect, the LA Times' knuckles scrape the ground as it lumbers along pre-historically. These campaigns become a self-fulfilling prophecy since the more the LA Times maligns schools and the more they are short-changed basic resources, the worse off they will be, and the greater the cries to dismantle them altogether for some Voucher/Free Market option, where you will see the voucher lowered in value and the poor relegated to truly inferior, unfunded schools and forgotten on the pages of the venerable LA Times.
People who do not know, who follow such elitist paradigms, like to tell me that socialism doesn't work. Really? Besides reminding them where many old people might be without social security or where our neighborhoods would be without community fire departments, I mention the infinite successes of public education. It is offered to all, free of charge, and along with free- and reduced lunch programs, it has socialized many a young people to understand civil society.
The answer cannot be followed fro the LA Times' leads but in the opposite direction. Public schools should be a greater funded priority, free education should not be limited to K-12 but be extended to colleges and technical programs. Society has an interest in having literate, educated, trained people. Conversely, the political elites are frightened of the demands such masses make: this is that ancient and infamous crisis of democracy and why we cannot live in one and why the The LA Times must play its role in undermining this movement.
05 May 2009
Undocumented Immigrants should remind us of the Underground Railroad
While we are often quick to make heat-of-the-moment judgement about social matters, history would teach us to have more reservations. The immigration issue burns hot in our national consciousness, albeit a distant second to the "economy.". Whether you rank immigration linearly or see it as one of many overlapping, intersecting circles that make up our "society" you can't escape a heated debate of the issue in news coverage and water-cooler chat.
Tough talk abounds and rarely do we put some distance to this issue and take a long view.
History is a saner judge of these dust-ups, and our collective socio-political struggles really do develop political consciousness, despte the cynicism we are told is pandemic in this country. The Underground Railroad, led by Harriet Tubman, is for example, revered today but viewed as a crime during this country's long tenure as a slave colony, which turned human beings into property and enshrined this human rights abuse into our very US Constitution. We look back - back! - and admire Ms Tubman for her courage and ponder not well enough her stunning observation that she could have liberated more men and women had they known they were slaves[!]
Compare old views of the Underground Railroad with our visceral reactions to Illegal Aliens today. Compare our view of Harriet Tubman t with Roberto Canchola, an Underground Railroad Conductor if ever there was one. Canchola is the longtime LAX worker who was arrested last fall for using his LAX security clearance to allow undocumented immigrants to bypass immigration and customs officers and into the country. To use the old Negro parlance, he "stole" them away.
We cannot say that in the former example of Black slaves that these were citizens, and the illegals today not. US Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney was quite clear about the fact Blacks were not and could never be citizens. We cannot say the Undocumented weren't slaves in the countries of their birth given the official poverty imposed on them by law, union-busting, and the lack of any social service, just so a few privileged familes can live to excess.
Harriet Tubman was a thief yesterday, just as surely as Nelson Mandela was once branded a terrorist by the US and British governments. But today, our political elite know to get a little catch in their throats and tear in the eye when speaking about these yesterday's villains, today's heroes. When will Mr. Canchola, a 23 year employee and vetted by LAX and the federal government for his security access, be declared a hero? I suspect first when those undocumented immigrants he successfully got out of their poor countries and into our much less poor one are invited to the White House and honored for their bravery. Second, if history instructs us, with the passage of time Canchola's meager efforts, kindling in a current debate, will make school kids yawn tomorrow. Hopefully the time enough will elapse before the three years Canchola was sentenced to federal prison in a plea deal. When, Bernard Shaw's St Joan asks, when will be ready for our Saints? When?
Tough talk abounds and rarely do we put some distance to this issue and take a long view.
History is a saner judge of these dust-ups, and our collective socio-political struggles really do develop political consciousness, despte the cynicism we are told is pandemic in this country. The Underground Railroad, led by Harriet Tubman, is for example, revered today but viewed as a crime during this country's long tenure as a slave colony, which turned human beings into property and enshrined this human rights abuse into our very US Constitution. We look back - back! - and admire Ms Tubman for her courage and ponder not well enough her stunning observation that she could have liberated more men and women had they known they were slaves[!]
Compare old views of the Underground Railroad with our visceral reactions to Illegal Aliens today. Compare our view of Harriet Tubman t with Roberto Canchola, an Underground Railroad Conductor if ever there was one. Canchola is the longtime LAX worker who was arrested last fall for using his LAX security clearance to allow undocumented immigrants to bypass immigration and customs officers and into the country. To use the old Negro parlance, he "stole" them away.
We cannot say that in the former example of Black slaves that these were citizens, and the illegals today not. US Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney was quite clear about the fact Blacks were not and could never be citizens. We cannot say the Undocumented weren't slaves in the countries of their birth given the official poverty imposed on them by law, union-busting, and the lack of any social service, just so a few privileged familes can live to excess.
Harriet Tubman was a thief yesterday, just as surely as Nelson Mandela was once branded a terrorist by the US and British governments. But today, our political elite know to get a little catch in their throats and tear in the eye when speaking about these yesterday's villains, today's heroes. When will Mr. Canchola, a 23 year employee and vetted by LAX and the federal government for his security access, be declared a hero? I suspect first when those undocumented immigrants he successfully got out of their poor countries and into our much less poor one are invited to the White House and honored for their bravery. Second, if history instructs us, with the passage of time Canchola's meager efforts, kindling in a current debate, will make school kids yawn tomorrow. Hopefully the time enough will elapse before the three years Canchola was sentenced to federal prison in a plea deal. When, Bernard Shaw's St Joan asks, when will be ready for our Saints? When?
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