Over the last couple months, I have changed. I cannot say, with all honesty in mind, that the metamorphosis that I have undergone has not been painful. I kind of half smile at this but I have long been a person who failed to cry. As a child victim of abuse, frequently mocked for any "crocodile tears" that I shed, I had learned not to cry. The number of times that I have cried have been slim. I could go whole years without shedding a single solitary tear, no matter the circumstances, no matter what happened. I cried so infrequently that when I did, it was extremely painful--the salts filling my eyes burning the sclera to a torturous beet red. The slow solitary ones would burn my skin, etching red marks across pale tender flesh that would last until I washed them away. This fall, my lack of tears irrevocably changed. I cried not once a day. I was crying every day, multiple times a day. I cannot express how much it hurt but then, came the day where my tears no longer hurt, no longer burned. My eyes and skin had finally built up a tolerance to the salts within my tears or perhaps I had cried all those built up salts out until the salt composition of my tears became diluted enough to reach a point where they reached a natural state, no longer burning. After one month of tears, my tears stopped flowing. I had witnessed the destruction of all that I thought I knew, all that I had made unexamined presuppositions about, and was forced to acknowledge what it actually meant to be human. I became human again.
I had found deep compassion within myself where I know now that it had been wanting. Some might contest this as I have been told, time and time again, that I am the "nicest person that they had ever met". However, what I am saying here is, out of necessity, being said in all truth and honesty. My compassion for my fellow human being was wanting. What was probably most frequently mistaken as compassion was more of a sense of righteous indignation more than anything else. A sense of justice as opposed to forming a connection between one heart to another. I cannot point at any one instance over the past few months and say, "this moment, this sight--this is what caused me to change". It would not be true. All I can recollect, among the diverse, thousandfold of images forever emblazoned in my mind, is hearing Martin Luther King, Jr's voice, "I come to you in this magnificent place of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice". Or how sometimes it was changed to Mario Savio speaking of how "the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can no longer take part. You can't even passively take part." It's funny but I have had these words echoed in my head so many times that I don't need to look up on Google what it was that they precisely said. If there is any fault in quotation, it will be minor. They are words that have rung in my ears consistently, pervasively, and, soothing me in my woes where I, too, became sick at heart. Where I, too, could no longer do anything but act as my own conscience dictates.
A year ago, I would have said that I was acting as my conscience dictates every time I tossed something in the recycling bin or donated a bit of change to whatever charitable organization Safeway had chosen to promote. I would say that I was acting as my conscience dictates when I made my prior vlogs about what I was seeing and learning in my classes as a School of Business major. I would say now that would not be true either for what conscience requires in order to be truly followed is compassion.
There is a difference between a statement of fact or a warning given and one where I go from word to action. Acting as my conscience dictates has become no longer becoming a part of the system that I simply rebuke in a vlog. It's eliminating myself as being a part of the problem. Where I once looked at labels to determine the salt content of whatever it was that I bought out of a desire to protect damaged kidneys, I now look at them to see who it was that made the food product. Who is it that I am funding. I can't even remember the last time that I looked at the sodium content of a product, which is ironic for someone who has had to guard her kidneys for 15 years. Ironically enough, I have never felt better. I no longer retain water on a rampant, grotesque scale. My problems with ascites is now gone.
Acting as my conscience dictates, I could not, without immense distaste, participate in the usual crazed shopping spree of gifts that I knew that my children would not really use this last Christmas season. If I care about this planet, if I care about the people living on this planet, if I truly care about the world that I want for my children, then how could I, with good conscience, be a part of consumerist excess? Instead, I talked to my children, really spoke with them and told them what was within my heart. With tears of happiness and contentment, we chose to give away our Christmas. We would each get a gift that was something that we truly could use or desired and wouldn't become some object that would be buried within a closet or drawer. The rest of what we would normally spend, we would give away. Our combined conscience left us no other choice, now poignantly aware of our fellow human beings' suffering. We couldn't simply stand idle. How could we enjoy our Christmas when we knew of others whose hearts were breaking in the face of a seemingly cold and unfeeling world?
It may seem odd to imagine, for some, to watch children open a single present under the Christmas tree and be content but that was our home on Christmas morning. There we sat on the couch together and we spoke of the family that we chose to help and the smiles that we had brought to others that day. We smiled and cried a little. It was our best Christmas morning ever, one that we'll never forget. It was not a showing of charity that we gave, buying gifts for some unknown stranger that we would never have a face for. Within charity, there is a disconnect. An inevitable distancing between you and the recipient. With so many in need, we did not have to look far to find suffering and it was not charity that we offered. It was the love and appreciation of our fellow human beings and true friendship that we offered instead. It's almost tragic that it felt monumental to do, that those who knew of it responded with indrawn breaths of half disbelief and wonder.
What we did, we will never see as great or amazing for we simply became the people that we were supposed to be. That, which had long been hard wired within humanity that drove us to form communities and civilization in the first place. What has died within today's world has been that sense of community and compassion. It's no great surprise that these things have died when our culture has become one of struggle and a race to the top. I do not believe, however, for one moment that our society has become a society of rampant psychopathy. I choose, instead, to believe that each one of us, no matter how we bury it, still holds within them love for their fellow human being.
So, as my conscience dictates, I write this with all my hopes and with all my love. The word "activist" has become so polluted in today's world and engaged with ideas of radicals and fundamentalists. Activism, however, derives its meaning from action. I act as my conscience dictates. I have become activist without holding up a sign or shouting from a street corner. My activism, instead, is in one that fills my life on a daily basis. It embodies the choices that I make with a keen awareness of the effects of those choices I make upon others. If one wants society to change, then one must first become the change that they wish society to embody within itself. Change can come through pain, awareness, or inspiration but change will be inevitable.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Trampling the Poor: "Get a Job!"
Today's blog post was written by a guest writer, Michael Higginbotham. Mr. Higginbotham is a Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program researcher, psychologist, and specializes in the subjects of Autism.
So today while navigating through the many superfluous comments about nothing on my social media, I came across one that really disturbed me. I have seen many comments similar to this, but this time it just felt like I have heard enough about how the poor, the homeless, those at the level of poverty in this country just need to go and get a job.
Get a job…interesting solution to a far more complex issue. When I spoke out about this, I was told about all of the things that have helped to contribute to the status of some of our societies people. Interestingly enough, none of those items were actually directly related to the person but were all things that were truly out of the direct control of any one individual. What gets me is that even though people are fully aware of the circumstances of our economy, political status, job availability, they still want to blame the individual for the status of homelessness.
Get a job…Being homeless is not as simple as just a person being too lazy to get a job. It is not the complete lack of desire to obtain gainful employment. The comment that was posted was about a little girl wanting to become president and helping all of the homeless by “giving” them all homes. This statement is reminiscent of the statement made, “Well, let them eat cake.” The innocence of this statement is furthered by encouraging this young lady to come over and mow the lawn of a friend and then take the money she was paid to the homeless gentleman in front of the store. After a pause in thinking the logic finally overcomes her, “why doesn’t the homeless man just come and mow your lawn and keep the money himself?” The response to this, “Welcome to the Republican Party.” (The entire sequence is below). Is this really the type of message that we are sharing with our children…with pride no less?
"I was talking to a friend's little girl, and she said she wanted to be President someday.
Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were to be the President, what's the first thing you would do?'
She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.'
'Wow - what a worthy goal.” I told her, 'You don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the grass, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food or a new house.' She thought that over for a few seconds, 'cause she's only 6.
And while her Mom glared at me, the little girl looked me straight in the eye and asked, 'Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?'
And I said, 'Welcome to the Republican Party.'
Her folks still aren't talking to me..."
As the conversation began to progress concerning this matter, it started to become painfully obvious that there are people out there that feel that all or at the least most of the poor are people who have no desire to work, or change their position in life in any sort of positive way.
Get a job….As I wrapped up my stay at a family homeless shelter, I saw something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. There was a family, obviously living in their car and had been staying at the shelter for some time. I was sitting in the over spill room of a church at 6:00 am on Christmas morning and waiting (admittedly a little impatiently because I had to wait till everyone had evacuated the room before I could go home). As I sat there with head in hand trying to think positively and stop the thoughts of, “when are you going to go? Don’t you realize that it is time to leave?” and I saw a young boy, about 8 or 9 reach into a paper sack that his parents had left for him. Inside were a few unwrapped presents. The boy pulled out a single pair of tightly rolled new underwear; nothing special about them, just your standard boy’s jocky shorts. He unraveled them from their factory folding and he held them up to eye level. He looked them over and then at his mom with an expectant look and with the excitement of a little boy getting his first bicycle he said, “Mom, are these for me? Are they really for me?” His mother looked over with a sense of heaviness in her eyes, and nodded her head. The boy replied with that same excited voice, “Thank you so much mom! Thank you! Thank you!” It was everything I could do not to want to hug this boy. The simplicity of such a thing as underwear and the profound effect it had on his life is almost too much to comprehend.
I want a job…So how do I wrap this up? What can I really say? Is it really callousness that people exhibit when they spit out the words “Get a job” in its various forms, or is it really fear? I think it is really just the fear of seeing that they are only one step away from standing in the same spot as their fellow, but less fortunate human being. I am sure that most people who are capable would love to mow the proverbial lawn and spend that money on housing or food. But what happens when there are no more lawns to mow? What happens when there are no more people to pay the fifty bucks? If you are to take anything away from all of this…remember that poverty does not exist along party lines. The poor can’t pay their bills with Democrats or Republicans. The homeless can’t sleep out of the elements with an elephant or a donkey as their shelter. The poor, the homeless, the less fortunate exist, eat, stay warm sometimes purely on the generosity of others. Sometimes, that generosity comes from you.
If you want to volunteer and make a difference talk to your local food bank, church, or shelter. The place that I volunteered at is called Human Solutions (http://www.humansolutions.org/index.php ). Michael Lodge is the director. You can contact him concerning volunteer opportunities at sfisher@humansolutions.org or call 503-548-0253.
So today while navigating through the many superfluous comments about nothing on my social media, I came across one that really disturbed me. I have seen many comments similar to this, but this time it just felt like I have heard enough about how the poor, the homeless, those at the level of poverty in this country just need to go and get a job.
Get a job…interesting solution to a far more complex issue. When I spoke out about this, I was told about all of the things that have helped to contribute to the status of some of our societies people. Interestingly enough, none of those items were actually directly related to the person but were all things that were truly out of the direct control of any one individual. What gets me is that even though people are fully aware of the circumstances of our economy, political status, job availability, they still want to blame the individual for the status of homelessness.
Get a job…Being homeless is not as simple as just a person being too lazy to get a job. It is not the complete lack of desire to obtain gainful employment. The comment that was posted was about a little girl wanting to become president and helping all of the homeless by “giving” them all homes. This statement is reminiscent of the statement made, “Well, let them eat cake.” The innocence of this statement is furthered by encouraging this young lady to come over and mow the lawn of a friend and then take the money she was paid to the homeless gentleman in front of the store. After a pause in thinking the logic finally overcomes her, “why doesn’t the homeless man just come and mow your lawn and keep the money himself?” The response to this, “Welcome to the Republican Party.” (The entire sequence is below). Is this really the type of message that we are sharing with our children…with pride no less?
"I was talking to a friend's little girl, and she said she wanted to be President someday.
Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were to be the President, what's the first thing you would do?'
She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.'
'Wow - what a worthy goal.” I told her, 'You don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the grass, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food or a new house.' She thought that over for a few seconds, 'cause she's only 6.
And while her Mom glared at me, the little girl looked me straight in the eye and asked, 'Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?'
And I said, 'Welcome to the Republican Party.'
Her folks still aren't talking to me..."
As the conversation began to progress concerning this matter, it started to become painfully obvious that there are people out there that feel that all or at the least most of the poor are people who have no desire to work, or change their position in life in any sort of positive way.
Get a job….As I wrapped up my stay at a family homeless shelter, I saw something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. There was a family, obviously living in their car and had been staying at the shelter for some time. I was sitting in the over spill room of a church at 6:00 am on Christmas morning and waiting (admittedly a little impatiently because I had to wait till everyone had evacuated the room before I could go home). As I sat there with head in hand trying to think positively and stop the thoughts of, “when are you going to go? Don’t you realize that it is time to leave?” and I saw a young boy, about 8 or 9 reach into a paper sack that his parents had left for him. Inside were a few unwrapped presents. The boy pulled out a single pair of tightly rolled new underwear; nothing special about them, just your standard boy’s jocky shorts. He unraveled them from their factory folding and he held them up to eye level. He looked them over and then at his mom with an expectant look and with the excitement of a little boy getting his first bicycle he said, “Mom, are these for me? Are they really for me?” His mother looked over with a sense of heaviness in her eyes, and nodded her head. The boy replied with that same excited voice, “Thank you so much mom! Thank you! Thank you!” It was everything I could do not to want to hug this boy. The simplicity of such a thing as underwear and the profound effect it had on his life is almost too much to comprehend.
I want a job…So how do I wrap this up? What can I really say? Is it really callousness that people exhibit when they spit out the words “Get a job” in its various forms, or is it really fear? I think it is really just the fear of seeing that they are only one step away from standing in the same spot as their fellow, but less fortunate human being. I am sure that most people who are capable would love to mow the proverbial lawn and spend that money on housing or food. But what happens when there are no more lawns to mow? What happens when there are no more people to pay the fifty bucks? If you are to take anything away from all of this…remember that poverty does not exist along party lines. The poor can’t pay their bills with Democrats or Republicans. The homeless can’t sleep out of the elements with an elephant or a donkey as their shelter. The poor, the homeless, the less fortunate exist, eat, stay warm sometimes purely on the generosity of others. Sometimes, that generosity comes from you.
If you want to volunteer and make a difference talk to your local food bank, church, or shelter. The place that I volunteered at is called Human Solutions (http://www.humansolutions.org/index.php ). Michael Lodge is the director. You can contact him concerning volunteer opportunities at sfisher@humansolutions.org or call 503-548-0253.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Marching with Occupy Portland against the NDAA
As a single mom of two with a bleeding disorder and asthma who has watched encounter after encounter between largely peaceful protesters turning to violence with swinging batons and rampant use of pepper spray, marching or supporting Occupy through any direct means has been a risk-filled proposition. One baton blow to the head, my brain could hemorrhage. One blast of their potent pepper spray, my swine flu damaged, asthmatic lungs could cease. In short, for me, marching with Occupy, should things go wrong, meant possible death. Death is a pretty good deterrent, especially when you have two amazing kids counting on your life. Even the minimum of getting arrested would mean that both of my kids would be without their mom for the maximum two days of detainment that has been happening to arrested protesters. As any parent knows, the moment your child is born, your life isn't so much about you anymore, it's about them. For my little family, that changed with the passage of the National Defense Authority Act.
The NDAA is a dreadful act. Packaged in with the regular annual budget is legislation that directly impacts U.S. citizens through the possible deprivation of habeas corpus and due process. I have listened to both Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Rand Paul discuss this act and how it will possibly affect US citizens. I encourage anyone reading this blog post to do the same. It's a very un-American act that jeopardizes the US Constitution and our Bill of Rights. I would say that one can tell when a law is bad when you see people saying something reasonably critical of Congress and then, state that they could be indefinitely detained for the saying of it. Anything that inhibits free speech in such a way is toxic to our country. That is the essence of these acts, however. With mere suspicion of being sympathetic to a terrorist organization and others with intentionally ambiguous language as to just whom, a U.S. citizen may be indefinitely detained without charge or trial. It reminds me so much of the conversation that I had with the Russian girl, Maria, so long ago. I can almost hear her voice as she explained to me why she didn't call the police after her apartment was robbed: "If there is something that they don't like about you, you could just disappear." For a country who has had a long history of hatred toward Communism, we just took a step towards behaving like a Communist country.
As I watched, read and listened to all the discussion of the NDAA, I was filled with a terrible anxiety. I've raised my children to be out of the box, critical thinkers and to be outspoken when they view something as being unjust. To me, every citizen in the U.S. should do those things to be good citizens, who make wise decisions when it comes time to vote or speak. Under the NDAA, however, I may have raised my children to be future detainees. To worsen the scenario, under the guidelines of critical problem solving skills and thinking, my children and I have discussed a variety of real life subjects including such subjects of the Iraq War, Al Qaeda and the overall issues within the Middle East and their sources. Worse yet, to force a change of perspective, I have frequently reminded them that one country's terrorists are another country's freedom fighters because looking at an issue, a horrific instance, shouldn't be purely about emotionally reacting to what has been the end result, but also should include a understanding of the reasons why it occurred in the first place.
This is critical thinking and it's sad that, for saying that, I could be detained. It's tragic that, should my children repeat it, they could be detained. The one thing that I gleaned from my time as a Talented and Gifted student (a program sponsored by the National Defense Education Act for National Security, mind you) was to question everything. In essence, the very thing that my country once encouraged for certain gifted individuals may have become the very thing that they want to quash today. With these realizations and the understanding that my children may be in real, future jeopardy, I chose to march against the NDAA. What mother wouldn't put her life in jeopardy in order to protect her children? It may surprise some of my readers, but this was something that my children and I discussed together before I made the final decision to go. After assurances agreed upon for me to make an escape should trouble erupt either in the form of violence or possible arrest, we all agreed that I needed to march and make my voice heard not just for myself, not just for my children but for the love of my country and its Constitution.
When I arrived at the site of the march's beginning, I was sorely disappointed. There were a lot of what I would call "average concerned citizens" but they were peppered with the clearly indigent, both young and old. In fact, during the rally, two of these spoke very aggressively and, unlike the prior speakers before the group where everyone repeated what they said, the "human mic" died off. Attendance has been a growing problem for Occupy Portland. This is most likely why. It's really rather sad because these men probably have a number of justifiable grievances to make them so angry. They are the most downtrodden of us all in a sense. It was also interesting to note that the police present at the time moved forward when these individuals started to speak. They also were deliberately trying to cause issues during the march. One of them, with a notable tattoo across his face, stood in the middle of traffic and taunted the police. Another, when I called out stop as most of the marchers were waiting for the traffic lights to avoid blocking traffic, berated me with a slew of obscenities for doing so. As he and I went back and forth verbally, I was thinking to myself, "don't you know that I am here for you too? If I held any less conviction or hadn't lived downtown for two years and learned a thing or two about handling individuals like you, I would have gone home."
Things did not improve when the individual who berated me for calling out "stop!" began the chant, "Whose street? OUR STREET!". Keeping an ever watchful eye on the police escorting us, I again noted a discernible change in their demeanor. They didn't like the chant and, frankly, neither did I. It is too proprietary. These aren't Occupy's streets--they are streets that belong to the public at large from the shoppers and restaurant goers to the street musicians on the corners. Furthermore, this was a march in protest of the NDAA--not an Occupy march per se. "Whose streets? Our streets" do not inform the public as to what is wrong with our country and it certainly has absolutely nothing to do with the NDAA. It is no wonder that people are muddled about what Occupy represents. The blame does not solely fall upon poor media representation but rests upon the protesters who begin that particular chant. This isn't about streets. It's about corruption. Last night was certainly not about streets, it was about the threat of indefinite detainment.
Not long after that particular chant began, word started spreading through the march that we were taking a bridge. Again, I balked. What the hell is the point of taking a bridge? Again, it's too proprietary, has nothing to do with the NDAA, and only distances our voices from people that can actually hear what we were supposed to be down in Portland talking about. There was no way in hell that I would be "taking a bridge". In my mind, civil disobedience has its place only when it definitely can be related to the cause for dissent. When, soon after, word came through the marchers that someone had been "unlawfully arrested", I knew it was time to leave. I carefully leaned my friend, Mary's, NDAA sign against a building and glided out of the march without getting a second glance from the officers watching the protesters. It's rather sad that I didn't even get a second glance. To them, I was not one of the marchers. I was just some graceful, clearly well bred woman walking down the street. My mother raised me with books on my head just for that purpose.
That I left the march without issue or second glance from the police should indicate that the police have already stereotyped just who is an "Occupy protester". On October 6th, there were upwards of 10,000 people marching in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Last night, I would say that there was perhaps 100 marching in protest for the preservation of our Constitution. That is not good. If I had to hazard a guess, Occupy has become alienated from moderates and, as I stated earlier, the blame does not solely fall upon poor media representation but also on Occupy, itself, for not doing better self policing. The more aggressive individuals that were the cause for police response went unchecked. I would clearly identify them as provocateurs, who are not being paid by some corporation to defame a protest group, but instead, are hell bent on shooting themselves in the foot by directly undermining the people who are willing to make a stand for them. These individuals feel abandoned by Occupy Portland and I would state that they are working against it in retaliation. I would say that they are winning.
This is something that Occupy Portland really needs to consider and deal with. I am a moderate across the board. The only other time I have ever protested anything was alongside my mother for a bill that threatened Roe v. Wade possibly 20 years ago. I am not normally an activist. However, the issues that are raised by Occupy are very real and serious issues within our country. The NDAA is frightening. These factors promoted the motivation within me to become activist again. However, it is wholly disheartening to see that Occupy has let itself be undermined by provocateurs and that moderates, like myself, have abandoned it probably due to that very reason. Just as damning is the abandonment of Occupy by moderates like myself so that the protesters left have allowed police to stereotype in the first place. Would these provocateurs have nearly as much voice or power within the movement if they were outnumbered 100 to 1? I don't think so. Occupy Portland has itself stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place and saying "oh just ignore Metal", one of these provocateurs, isn't going to get them out of it. Aggression brings discomfort, a question of safety, and embarrassment. Yes, the issues are extraordinarily important but when the voice of the protest becomes polluted, then it's not airing those issues appropriately. It is no longer a place where people who are deeply concerned about those issues feel comfortable or well represented.
Not everyone can overlook these things simply because of patriotism. I would call myself a strong patriot. One branch of my family ancestry dates back to Jamestown. We're pre-Mayflower. The number of my ancestors who have served my country from its inception is staggering and a sacrifice of blood that does not get overlooked by me. When I marched last night, it was an acknowledgement of my ancestor's sacrifices in the name of freedom. I would not shame them by fearing my own security at the expense of liberty. However, if the medium is rendered ineffectual or has become polluted or gets diverted (whose streets? our streets), then it's back to choosing my battles. I want to protect our Constitution that so many have died for. I want to protect my government and legislation from the money that has allowed the rampant corruption of it. Just give me a medium from which to do so--pure and to the point.
The NDAA is a dreadful act. Packaged in with the regular annual budget is legislation that directly impacts U.S. citizens through the possible deprivation of habeas corpus and due process. I have listened to both Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Rand Paul discuss this act and how it will possibly affect US citizens. I encourage anyone reading this blog post to do the same. It's a very un-American act that jeopardizes the US Constitution and our Bill of Rights. I would say that one can tell when a law is bad when you see people saying something reasonably critical of Congress and then, state that they could be indefinitely detained for the saying of it. Anything that inhibits free speech in such a way is toxic to our country. That is the essence of these acts, however. With mere suspicion of being sympathetic to a terrorist organization and others with intentionally ambiguous language as to just whom, a U.S. citizen may be indefinitely detained without charge or trial. It reminds me so much of the conversation that I had with the Russian girl, Maria, so long ago. I can almost hear her voice as she explained to me why she didn't call the police after her apartment was robbed: "If there is something that they don't like about you, you could just disappear." For a country who has had a long history of hatred toward Communism, we just took a step towards behaving like a Communist country.
As I watched, read and listened to all the discussion of the NDAA, I was filled with a terrible anxiety. I've raised my children to be out of the box, critical thinkers and to be outspoken when they view something as being unjust. To me, every citizen in the U.S. should do those things to be good citizens, who make wise decisions when it comes time to vote or speak. Under the NDAA, however, I may have raised my children to be future detainees. To worsen the scenario, under the guidelines of critical problem solving skills and thinking, my children and I have discussed a variety of real life subjects including such subjects of the Iraq War, Al Qaeda and the overall issues within the Middle East and their sources. Worse yet, to force a change of perspective, I have frequently reminded them that one country's terrorists are another country's freedom fighters because looking at an issue, a horrific instance, shouldn't be purely about emotionally reacting to what has been the end result, but also should include a understanding of the reasons why it occurred in the first place.
This is critical thinking and it's sad that, for saying that, I could be detained. It's tragic that, should my children repeat it, they could be detained. The one thing that I gleaned from my time as a Talented and Gifted student (a program sponsored by the National Defense Education Act for National Security, mind you) was to question everything. In essence, the very thing that my country once encouraged for certain gifted individuals may have become the very thing that they want to quash today. With these realizations and the understanding that my children may be in real, future jeopardy, I chose to march against the NDAA. What mother wouldn't put her life in jeopardy in order to protect her children? It may surprise some of my readers, but this was something that my children and I discussed together before I made the final decision to go. After assurances agreed upon for me to make an escape should trouble erupt either in the form of violence or possible arrest, we all agreed that I needed to march and make my voice heard not just for myself, not just for my children but for the love of my country and its Constitution.
When I arrived at the site of the march's beginning, I was sorely disappointed. There were a lot of what I would call "average concerned citizens" but they were peppered with the clearly indigent, both young and old. In fact, during the rally, two of these spoke very aggressively and, unlike the prior speakers before the group where everyone repeated what they said, the "human mic" died off. Attendance has been a growing problem for Occupy Portland. This is most likely why. It's really rather sad because these men probably have a number of justifiable grievances to make them so angry. They are the most downtrodden of us all in a sense. It was also interesting to note that the police present at the time moved forward when these individuals started to speak. They also were deliberately trying to cause issues during the march. One of them, with a notable tattoo across his face, stood in the middle of traffic and taunted the police. Another, when I called out stop as most of the marchers were waiting for the traffic lights to avoid blocking traffic, berated me with a slew of obscenities for doing so. As he and I went back and forth verbally, I was thinking to myself, "don't you know that I am here for you too? If I held any less conviction or hadn't lived downtown for two years and learned a thing or two about handling individuals like you, I would have gone home."
Things did not improve when the individual who berated me for calling out "stop!" began the chant, "Whose street? OUR STREET!". Keeping an ever watchful eye on the police escorting us, I again noted a discernible change in their demeanor. They didn't like the chant and, frankly, neither did I. It is too proprietary. These aren't Occupy's streets--they are streets that belong to the public at large from the shoppers and restaurant goers to the street musicians on the corners. Furthermore, this was a march in protest of the NDAA--not an Occupy march per se. "Whose streets? Our streets" do not inform the public as to what is wrong with our country and it certainly has absolutely nothing to do with the NDAA. It is no wonder that people are muddled about what Occupy represents. The blame does not solely fall upon poor media representation but rests upon the protesters who begin that particular chant. This isn't about streets. It's about corruption. Last night was certainly not about streets, it was about the threat of indefinite detainment.
Not long after that particular chant began, word started spreading through the march that we were taking a bridge. Again, I balked. What the hell is the point of taking a bridge? Again, it's too proprietary, has nothing to do with the NDAA, and only distances our voices from people that can actually hear what we were supposed to be down in Portland talking about. There was no way in hell that I would be "taking a bridge". In my mind, civil disobedience has its place only when it definitely can be related to the cause for dissent. When, soon after, word came through the marchers that someone had been "unlawfully arrested", I knew it was time to leave. I carefully leaned my friend, Mary's, NDAA sign against a building and glided out of the march without getting a second glance from the officers watching the protesters. It's rather sad that I didn't even get a second glance. To them, I was not one of the marchers. I was just some graceful, clearly well bred woman walking down the street. My mother raised me with books on my head just for that purpose.
That I left the march without issue or second glance from the police should indicate that the police have already stereotyped just who is an "Occupy protester". On October 6th, there were upwards of 10,000 people marching in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Last night, I would say that there was perhaps 100 marching in protest for the preservation of our Constitution. That is not good. If I had to hazard a guess, Occupy has become alienated from moderates and, as I stated earlier, the blame does not solely fall upon poor media representation but also on Occupy, itself, for not doing better self policing. The more aggressive individuals that were the cause for police response went unchecked. I would clearly identify them as provocateurs, who are not being paid by some corporation to defame a protest group, but instead, are hell bent on shooting themselves in the foot by directly undermining the people who are willing to make a stand for them. These individuals feel abandoned by Occupy Portland and I would state that they are working against it in retaliation. I would say that they are winning.
This is something that Occupy Portland really needs to consider and deal with. I am a moderate across the board. The only other time I have ever protested anything was alongside my mother for a bill that threatened Roe v. Wade possibly 20 years ago. I am not normally an activist. However, the issues that are raised by Occupy are very real and serious issues within our country. The NDAA is frightening. These factors promoted the motivation within me to become activist again. However, it is wholly disheartening to see that Occupy has let itself be undermined by provocateurs and that moderates, like myself, have abandoned it probably due to that very reason. Just as damning is the abandonment of Occupy by moderates like myself so that the protesters left have allowed police to stereotype in the first place. Would these provocateurs have nearly as much voice or power within the movement if they were outnumbered 100 to 1? I don't think so. Occupy Portland has itself stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place and saying "oh just ignore Metal", one of these provocateurs, isn't going to get them out of it. Aggression brings discomfort, a question of safety, and embarrassment. Yes, the issues are extraordinarily important but when the voice of the protest becomes polluted, then it's not airing those issues appropriately. It is no longer a place where people who are deeply concerned about those issues feel comfortable or well represented.
Not everyone can overlook these things simply because of patriotism. I would call myself a strong patriot. One branch of my family ancestry dates back to Jamestown. We're pre-Mayflower. The number of my ancestors who have served my country from its inception is staggering and a sacrifice of blood that does not get overlooked by me. When I marched last night, it was an acknowledgement of my ancestor's sacrifices in the name of freedom. I would not shame them by fearing my own security at the expense of liberty. However, if the medium is rendered ineffectual or has become polluted or gets diverted (whose streets? our streets), then it's back to choosing my battles. I want to protect our Constitution that so many have died for. I want to protect my government and legislation from the money that has allowed the rampant corruption of it. Just give me a medium from which to do so--pure and to the point.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The Nizhoni Diné
In 2001, I made a move that changed my life. I left the city that I had lived in for 25 years and moved out to the Navajo Reservation. Moving from the clean, hectic and brightly lit city with its malls, street lights and miles and miles of homes to the austere lands of the Diné, where the communities may have had one small strip mall and were comprised of small clusters of homes lightly peppered around it, was a stark change. A few may know that living on a reservation is hard, having some awareness of the distinct poverty that many of the tribal nations face. As much as I learned to somewhat deal with the frequently grisly scenes of dead wild dogs strewn across roadways, the poverty surrounding me was something that never ceased to move me. While I lived there, the average income per family was a little over $6000 a year. Long before homelessness due to the 2007-8 financial collapse occurred in the rest of the nation, the Diné struggled with their own housing crisis with estimates of a shelter shortfall being as high as 100,000 homes needed on the Navajo Reservation.
Now you may think that the level of homelessness on the Navajo Reservation because of these figures would have been atrocious. If this was the average state in my own city, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine slews of people sleeping, huddled in dirty sleeping bags along the streets. Not out there, never out there. In my 7 years of living on the Navajo Reservation, I only ever saw one homeless person--just one. It wasn't active policing that kept people from sleeping alongside the sparse buildings. It was simply that the Diné did not normally allow people to go homeless in the first place. The one homeless man that I met was an exception, not the rule, and for him to be homeless out there was an unequivocally strong testimony to the likelihood that he had done something truly terrible. For the Diné, the sentiment is that you take care of your own, regardless of mental stability, alcoholism, drug use, or physical violence. These were all things that the Diné families grappled with, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively. If a family member should lose his job and home, then there was no question of that person becoming homeless. They would be moved directly in with another family member, regardless of room to spare. In my own experience, I lived for 3 months in a three bedroom home with 5 adults and two children. Some similarly sized homes that I knew of had upwards to a dozen living within them. Homelessness was not something that you allowed family to encounter. Homelessness within the family was shameful for the family as a whole. Instead of focusing on the homeless person, the anger and blame would fall on the family--how could you let your brother, sister, mother, niece or nephew live out in the open? What is wrong with you that you would be so cold?
On the Navajo Reservation, even for families whose homes had been filled to their maximum capacity, there were still solutions. I knew of families that lived in shacks or hogans without heat, electricity, or running water. During the job slump after 9/11, I personally knew a fellow bilagaana--white man, Dave, and his Navajo family that lived for two years in a dirt floor hogan on his wife's family property. Dave had been a systems administrator up until he lost his job and then, his employer owned home. With jobs normally at a shortage out there, it had taken him nearly a year to find another. Unemployment on the Navajo Reservation and within its surrounding border towns was huge. When an Applebees restaurant opened up in relatively nearby Gallup, NM, the manager was swamped with thousands of applications on the first day alone. My friend Dave was competing with thousands for the rare job while he, his wife and two children lived in that dirt floor hogan. I remember him saying once to me that it was unbelievably hard. That if it had been simply up to him, he would've tried finding a job elsewhere but this was where his wife's family was. This was where his children's tribe was. Even when he had looked regardless of these motives to stay, there had been nothing. He had no choice but to stay and comfort himself with a dim awareness that this was once the norm for us all. If they could do it, so could he and he did. He was grateful that he had the shelter of the hogan and a stove to build a fire in. If he had been anywhere else, he and his children would have been living out of a car. He was grateful for having shelter, that he was living someplace where people cared.
In contrast, we walk through city streets, ignoring children and old alike huddled for warmth during the winter months against buildings and on sidewalks. We willfully look away to ignore the old man sleeping on a park bench. Perhaps somewhere the reality of their existence rattles our cages and makes us wonder, where is your family? Most of the time, I think we just largely shun them as if their homelessness was an infectious disease. We live in times of nearly unprecedented homelessness due to years of job loss and years of foreclosures. We are confronted with an issue that the Diné have long struggled with as the number of homes foreclosed tops 1,000,000 in the last few years. Families, children, adults, individuals, the elderly--these, too, now comprise the homeless, not simply drug addicts, the mentally ill or alcoholic. Unlike the Diné, we leave them on the streets. We turn our backs as we watch them evicted from their homes. We provide no shelter while their shelter is taken away. Why is it that we cannot stop ourselves for one moment and see them for the people that they are? Cannot we not find another way instead of condemn them to an even worse struggle from which they may not be able to survive to climb out of? Why is it that we have empty homes and yet so many without a place to live when the Diné had so few homes and nearly everyone had a place to live?
Dinehtah. The land of the Diné. The land of the people with its abject poverty and grisly scenes of roadway carnage. Austere, dry, and at times painful to see, their world is far more beautiful than our own. With no concept of property, they provide shelter. With no concept of property and all the concepts of love and what it means to be a family or a community, they provide shelter while we turn our backs. Nizhoni Diné, beautiful people in comparison to our own greedy ugliness. I would never return to Dinehtah for reasons personal and all my own. Yet, if I could, I would bring this little part of Dinehtah here with me for I cannot, with moral conscience, look away. Looking through the eyes of the Diné has unalterably changed my worldview. No longer simply bilagaana, not quite Diné, I can only hope that somewhere within my own people, we find our way back to being nizhoni Diné--beautiful people.
Now you may think that the level of homelessness on the Navajo Reservation because of these figures would have been atrocious. If this was the average state in my own city, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine slews of people sleeping, huddled in dirty sleeping bags along the streets. Not out there, never out there. In my 7 years of living on the Navajo Reservation, I only ever saw one homeless person--just one. It wasn't active policing that kept people from sleeping alongside the sparse buildings. It was simply that the Diné did not normally allow people to go homeless in the first place. The one homeless man that I met was an exception, not the rule, and for him to be homeless out there was an unequivocally strong testimony to the likelihood that he had done something truly terrible. For the Diné, the sentiment is that you take care of your own, regardless of mental stability, alcoholism, drug use, or physical violence. These were all things that the Diné families grappled with, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively. If a family member should lose his job and home, then there was no question of that person becoming homeless. They would be moved directly in with another family member, regardless of room to spare. In my own experience, I lived for 3 months in a three bedroom home with 5 adults and two children. Some similarly sized homes that I knew of had upwards to a dozen living within them. Homelessness was not something that you allowed family to encounter. Homelessness within the family was shameful for the family as a whole. Instead of focusing on the homeless person, the anger and blame would fall on the family--how could you let your brother, sister, mother, niece or nephew live out in the open? What is wrong with you that you would be so cold?
On the Navajo Reservation, even for families whose homes had been filled to their maximum capacity, there were still solutions. I knew of families that lived in shacks or hogans without heat, electricity, or running water. During the job slump after 9/11, I personally knew a fellow bilagaana--white man, Dave, and his Navajo family that lived for two years in a dirt floor hogan on his wife's family property. Dave had been a systems administrator up until he lost his job and then, his employer owned home. With jobs normally at a shortage out there, it had taken him nearly a year to find another. Unemployment on the Navajo Reservation and within its surrounding border towns was huge. When an Applebees restaurant opened up in relatively nearby Gallup, NM, the manager was swamped with thousands of applications on the first day alone. My friend Dave was competing with thousands for the rare job while he, his wife and two children lived in that dirt floor hogan. I remember him saying once to me that it was unbelievably hard. That if it had been simply up to him, he would've tried finding a job elsewhere but this was where his wife's family was. This was where his children's tribe was. Even when he had looked regardless of these motives to stay, there had been nothing. He had no choice but to stay and comfort himself with a dim awareness that this was once the norm for us all. If they could do it, so could he and he did. He was grateful that he had the shelter of the hogan and a stove to build a fire in. If he had been anywhere else, he and his children would have been living out of a car. He was grateful for having shelter, that he was living someplace where people cared.
In contrast, we walk through city streets, ignoring children and old alike huddled for warmth during the winter months against buildings and on sidewalks. We willfully look away to ignore the old man sleeping on a park bench. Perhaps somewhere the reality of their existence rattles our cages and makes us wonder, where is your family? Most of the time, I think we just largely shun them as if their homelessness was an infectious disease. We live in times of nearly unprecedented homelessness due to years of job loss and years of foreclosures. We are confronted with an issue that the Diné have long struggled with as the number of homes foreclosed tops 1,000,000 in the last few years. Families, children, adults, individuals, the elderly--these, too, now comprise the homeless, not simply drug addicts, the mentally ill or alcoholic. Unlike the Diné, we leave them on the streets. We turn our backs as we watch them evicted from their homes. We provide no shelter while their shelter is taken away. Why is it that we cannot stop ourselves for one moment and see them for the people that they are? Cannot we not find another way instead of condemn them to an even worse struggle from which they may not be able to survive to climb out of? Why is it that we have empty homes and yet so many without a place to live when the Diné had so few homes and nearly everyone had a place to live?
Dinehtah. The land of the Diné. The land of the people with its abject poverty and grisly scenes of roadway carnage. Austere, dry, and at times painful to see, their world is far more beautiful than our own. With no concept of property, they provide shelter. With no concept of property and all the concepts of love and what it means to be a family or a community, they provide shelter while we turn our backs. Nizhoni Diné, beautiful people in comparison to our own greedy ugliness. I would never return to Dinehtah for reasons personal and all my own. Yet, if I could, I would bring this little part of Dinehtah here with me for I cannot, with moral conscience, look away. Looking through the eyes of the Diné has unalterably changed my worldview. No longer simply bilagaana, not quite Diné, I can only hope that somewhere within my own people, we find our way back to being nizhoni Diné--beautiful people.
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me, I walk
With beauty behind me, I walk
With beauty above me, I walk
With beauty around me, I walk
It has become beauty again
Hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo
T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo
Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo
T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen, may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
From Russia With Love
I kind of laugh thinking about how idealistic I was when I was just 17 years old. I'll never forget the look on my retired USAF colonel grandfather's face when he asked me which political party I was going to choose and I gamely replied "the socialist party". Luckily, my grandfather loved me and instead of disowning me, he chose to send me to Europe as a graduation present with one simple criteria. I had to travel to the USSR and East Germany. He told me that, before I made my choice of political party of which he was certain would immediately flag me to be followed for the remainder of my days by FBI or CIA, he wanted me to go to countries that were the extreme form of socialism so I can better judge my choice. My grandpa knew what he was doing. He, himself, had traveled in the USSR in the 1970's after the Yom Kippur War. I was going to the USSR in its decline. The year was 1987.
When I did finally arrive in the USSR, I found it all very comical. The people all looked so poor except for a couple kids bedecked in Mickey Mouse clothing and Levi's and whose primary interest in the tour group I was in was black market trading in the former Leningrad. Things took an almost spy like feeling when we realized that we were followed by someone clinging to the shadows and then, when we secretly met with a larger black market trader who was offering us "anything", including Russian military uniforms in exchange for whatever we had brought in our suitcases. The black market was so big that even little kids engaged in their own miniature version of it, trading us pins with Lenin's bust on it or the hammer and sickle for bubble gum or a cigarette. It was all a game to us. We were like spies in our Cold War enemy's land. Like spoiled little kids, we messed with our designer suited and beautiful tour guide from Ukraine, Julia, when it came to our bus in the USSR. Our bus in the rest of Europe was a brand new Mercedes. Yes, Mercedes makes buses and very nice ones at that. Poor Julia changed our bus every day after hearing our vocal criticisms of the day's latest attempt at "bus approval". In any other country, we were just simple tourists, a few of the thousands visiting the Eiffel Tower or St. Paul's Cathedral. In the USSR, we were less tourist and more regarded as important guests. The infrequency of tourism because of the Cold War was such that an American tourist was kept in the best of hotels, given ringside seats at the Russian Circus, and, for discussion, the top students from the around the USSR were brought to join us for dinner. The Soviet government left little doubt in our minds that impressing us was petite, pretty Julia's number one task.
As such, we were not frequently given opportunity to wander. Our tours of the former Leningrad and Moscow were strictly regimented. We still wandered the cities for hours, a luxury afforded by being in the USSR during white nights. This was when we were approached by non-juvenile black marketers. One of our first after dinner excursions was to walk down to see what was clearly a church down the road from our hotel. My hotel room had a beautiful view of its deep sky blue dome rising above the tops of soft green trees. A few within my group talked about its beauty over dinner and imagined it to be glorious. By the end of dinner, it was decided that we would see this building for ourselves. When we got to the church, we found it surrounded by barbed wire fence and people had dumped their garbage within. The windows were boarded over by huge sheets of plywood while the the windows higher up and unguarded had been broken out. To see this magnificently beautiful building in such a state put us all in a deeply somber mood. I realized that I was in a country where this once beautiful building was treated like nothing better than a garbage dump.
At that moment right there, we were altered. It was the point at which things no longer ceased to be as fun, where we could no longer giggle about the possibility of being followed by KGB. We were in the USSR. A country where stories of people disappearing for being too outspoken were rampant from those who were able to defect. A country with a nearly closed wall and an iron fist. Day by day, we were still the spoiled little brats from the U.S. whining about our bus but every time they changed the bus to a better one, it became less funny and more unnerving. By the time we arrived in Moscow, so jaded and despondent were we that we limply noted that our bus was driving in circles for three hours straight. After dinner, we no longer ventured out into the city. We were too afraid. Instead, we went to the bar housed in our hotel to sullenly drink god awful beer, surrounded by high ranking military officials of what we figured to be probable enemies of our country.
It was here that I met Maria. I had gone to buy another beer when one of these military men approached me. He tried speaking to me in Russian and when I responded, he just smiled and made a rude hand gesture implying that I should sleep with him upstairs in the hotel above. Knowing that he was inferring that I was a high priced call girl, I angrily retorted back in the most indignant voice a 17 year old could muster. A girl sitting alone in a booth watched the exchange with great amusement and laughed heartily at my response. After I had walked away, still in my indignant huff, the girl approached me, still laughing. She was rather short and slightly chubby with dark blonde hair cut in a wispy pixy. Her clothes were skimpier and make up was heavier than anything that I would have ever worn. She looked only a little older than me. In hindsight and with the wisdom of an additional 25 years, I am pretty sure now that she was probably an actual prostitute. At the time, it didn't matter. We hit it off instantly and within a couple hours, we were nothing but a couple of giggling teenage girls, gossiping about all the "old men" in the bar. I told Maria about our having to take a night train into Moscow (she explained that it was because the poverty in the country was so bad, they did not want us to see it) and how our tour bus always circled the same path (that was all they wanted us to see, according to Maria). As I was walking her outside of the hotel, she offered to take me on a real tour of Moscow the next day. I agreed.
I am still not sure how I got away with it. Perhaps it was the fear of what I was about to do that has made it so that I have no idea how I did it or whether I even entirely got away with doing it. That afternoon, however, I was riding a public streetcar with Maria through Moscow. She didn't show me the pretty palaces of the former Russian imperial family. She showed me the ghettos of Moscow. They were slums to rival probably the worst slums in the US but, in Moscow, most of the population lived in these areas. The palaces that she did show me were not immense but still beautiful, with green flower filled and iron gated gardens distancing them from the streets. This, Maria said, is where the government officials live. The import of her words did not miss their mark. See how poor the people of Moscow were and how finely the government officials live. This is what Maria wanted me to see and I saw it with open eyes. With mirth and laughter, she showed me the monstrously huge battleship of a building that was our US Embassy in Moscow, whispering that the USSR had forced the US to use only Russian builders and that the entire building was unusable because of bugs for the purpose of espionage. Between Maria's chosen "sites", we talked about all that I was seeing on the streets. The long lines along the street that stretched down several blocks were people waiting for toilet paper. There had been a shortage of toilet paper for several weeks.
Then we had the conversation that never left me and kept Maria in my mind for all these years. We were talking about the ghettos of Moscow and Maria had told me how crime was terrible there. Her own apartment had been broken into just a few days prior. I asked her if the police had caught them yet and she looked at me with such shock. She didn't understand what I meant. Why would I call the police if my apartment had been broken into? I explained to her that that is what we do in the US when someone does such a thing. She couldn't imagine it. In the USSR, she explained, everyone was too afraid to call the police to report a crime. If the police came and decided that they didn't like you, they would take you away and no one would ever see you again. It was my turn to be shocked. I could not imagine living in a country where, on a whim, you could be taken away, forever locked up, for whatever reason. I couldn't imagine living in a country where the people were afraid of the police to the extent that they would prefer to be victims of crimes unreported than perhaps a victim of a government.
When we returned back to our hotel, I gave Maria the most valuable prized thing that I could. I gave her the two rolls of toilet paper from the bathroom of my hotel room. She was so grateful that she cried. I never saw her again. We flew out to Copenhagen the next day and were greeted at the airport by a grinning bearded man with a handwritten sign that said "Welcome back to the free world!!". It was our turn for tears. People might think it strange but so happy we were to be out of the USSR with, its pervasive control and fear, that we kissed the ground. A few kissed the Mercedes symbol, too, on our bus. Freedom was something that we had so dreadfully missed and could taste in the air through the noisy chatter and neon lights of Copenhagen.
The Senate just passed the National Defense Authority Act, which includes language that allows for the indefinite imprisonment of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without charge or trial today. The vote was 93-7. President Obama has stated that he may veto the act should it pass in the House of Representatives. Please contact your representative and urge them to vote "no" so we do not have to rely on presidential veto that may not come.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
The Aesthetics of Consumption
Growing up as the daughter of a "small" business owner, I was thrust into work the moment I turned the legal working age. It might surprise a few that have known me for a long time to know that my first job wasn't a secretarial position in the office of my dad's company. My dad was a firm believer in what he called "the school of hard knocks". My first job was as a janitor and maintenance worker for his 22 service stations. My duties were to clean the restrooms, windows, mop floors, dust the interiors and paint curbs. Initially, I was appalled that my dad was having me do this. My other "day job" was as a high school student who frequently wore designer clothes to school. Cleaning a gas station bathroom? Disgusting. Not going to lie. It was one of the grossest things that I ever had to do. I still clearly remember the gas station that always smelled appallingly like dirty diapers. However, the more that I did this job, the more it struck me as to why he had me doing it. It wasn't to put me in my place or ground me in reality. It was to teach me the lesson that a clean gas station with neatly painted curbs was important for business. Whenever I was done with the whole process, I would step back and see the difference in appearance. The stations always looked so much better after the fact and consumers were more likely to buy from that which looked good.
My dad always acknowledged this in his own business. I'll never forget the time when a station supervisor, after being told to repaint a bathroom, chose to repaint it in a deep red. My dad nearly came unglued with rage, saying that it looked more like a bordello than a bathroom. The supervisor, duly scolded, repainted the bathroom to a grey tone. It took a lot of paint to cover that deep red. How something looked was more important than the cost of the additional gallons upon gallons of paint that it took to cover that red. I remember buying gas one time from a well maintained little gas station who had taken the time to fill wooden barrels with flowers. I complimented the attendant on how good the station looked and how much I liked the flowers. Turned out to be the owner of the station and he realized who I was. The compliment made him so happy because it came from me. It made him even happier when I told him that I was going to suggest his idea to my dad. He was gushing gratitude that I had noticed and liked it that much. To a 17 year old girl, it was incredibly embarrassing, but I did tell my dad about what I had seen and, ever thereafter, we had flowers at all of our stations. Despite my embarrassment, I had learned the lesson that looking good meant more business.
Unlike a lot of mom and pops back then, we had the money to do this. I'm not even sure how much money our stations generated though I worked in the office. I never bothered to find out because my dad, although a brilliant businessman, was a horrible accountant. My dad's degree was in marketing and that served him quite well for a very long time. When he and I were at a station which was backed up, we both knew that popping out of our nice cars and pumping gas in our very nice clothes would blow away customers. They absolutely loved it that we would pump their gas and clean their windshields without a care for our clothing. It showed that we cared more about them. That little appearance turned what would've been an annoyed customer into an amazed one. As my dad often said, "appearances mean everything".
What people don't realize is that this was nothing unique to my dad. Other companies did the same sort of thing. If you were branded as a retailer or switched brands, the first thing that had to be done was re-painting. When Chevron was trying to get my dad to switch brands, they offered him $4 million to do so. This included re-painting all of the stations into the "Chevron colors" and replacing signage. Every major oil retail brand has its own colors. When my dad went "un-branded" in an attempt to save his business from the big oil companies' predations, he was sued by Chevron for trademark infringement. I can tell you that the suit wasn't because the signage was similar and there's a reason why my dad ended up painting his stations purple and green. A trademark included specific colors. If he had Texaco grey up on the building and was operating as a Chevron, he would've been in big trouble. It would've been trademark infringement. Purple and green were probably the safest colors that coordinated that he could choose. In the world of business, looks are a very serious matter.
The reason is simple. People want to be in a business establishment that is clean, neat, and well designed. It makes us feel good about where we're at and maybe even who we are. You see the same thing in the shopping malls. Marble or wooden floors, expensive lighting, plants, fountains--they are all there. Looking good sells and with big retailers behind them, they have the money to out compete the mom and pops of the nation. Who wants to shop in a dress shop or book store that may be overcrowded and cluttered when they can shop in a store that is neat, decorated by an interior designer, and aesthetically pleasing? Give a consumer two options of similar pricing and service and that consumer will almost always gravitate to the one which is aesthetically pleasing. The average consumer probably doesn't ask themselves where their money is going to end up at the end of the day and who its benefiting. It could go to the salary of a major corporation's CEO instead of a small business owner in their own local community simply because of aesthetic.
With Black Friday approaching, this is something that we should try to keep in mind as we begin our Christmas shopping. The idea of checking out my own area's local mom and pop shops really appeals to me this season. It reminds me of the connection I felt whenever I pumped a customer's gas and washed their windshield. They loved meeting the person behind the business and I loved meeting them. It's a good feeling. This Christmas, I want to feel that again but, this time, it's me that is going to be the customer.
My dad always acknowledged this in his own business. I'll never forget the time when a station supervisor, after being told to repaint a bathroom, chose to repaint it in a deep red. My dad nearly came unglued with rage, saying that it looked more like a bordello than a bathroom. The supervisor, duly scolded, repainted the bathroom to a grey tone. It took a lot of paint to cover that deep red. How something looked was more important than the cost of the additional gallons upon gallons of paint that it took to cover that red. I remember buying gas one time from a well maintained little gas station who had taken the time to fill wooden barrels with flowers. I complimented the attendant on how good the station looked and how much I liked the flowers. Turned out to be the owner of the station and he realized who I was. The compliment made him so happy because it came from me. It made him even happier when I told him that I was going to suggest his idea to my dad. He was gushing gratitude that I had noticed and liked it that much. To a 17 year old girl, it was incredibly embarrassing, but I did tell my dad about what I had seen and, ever thereafter, we had flowers at all of our stations. Despite my embarrassment, I had learned the lesson that looking good meant more business.
Unlike a lot of mom and pops back then, we had the money to do this. I'm not even sure how much money our stations generated though I worked in the office. I never bothered to find out because my dad, although a brilliant businessman, was a horrible accountant. My dad's degree was in marketing and that served him quite well for a very long time. When he and I were at a station which was backed up, we both knew that popping out of our nice cars and pumping gas in our very nice clothes would blow away customers. They absolutely loved it that we would pump their gas and clean their windshields without a care for our clothing. It showed that we cared more about them. That little appearance turned what would've been an annoyed customer into an amazed one. As my dad often said, "appearances mean everything".
What people don't realize is that this was nothing unique to my dad. Other companies did the same sort of thing. If you were branded as a retailer or switched brands, the first thing that had to be done was re-painting. When Chevron was trying to get my dad to switch brands, they offered him $4 million to do so. This included re-painting all of the stations into the "Chevron colors" and replacing signage. Every major oil retail brand has its own colors. When my dad went "un-branded" in an attempt to save his business from the big oil companies' predations, he was sued by Chevron for trademark infringement. I can tell you that the suit wasn't because the signage was similar and there's a reason why my dad ended up painting his stations purple and green. A trademark included specific colors. If he had Texaco grey up on the building and was operating as a Chevron, he would've been in big trouble. It would've been trademark infringement. Purple and green were probably the safest colors that coordinated that he could choose. In the world of business, looks are a very serious matter.
The reason is simple. People want to be in a business establishment that is clean, neat, and well designed. It makes us feel good about where we're at and maybe even who we are. You see the same thing in the shopping malls. Marble or wooden floors, expensive lighting, plants, fountains--they are all there. Looking good sells and with big retailers behind them, they have the money to out compete the mom and pops of the nation. Who wants to shop in a dress shop or book store that may be overcrowded and cluttered when they can shop in a store that is neat, decorated by an interior designer, and aesthetically pleasing? Give a consumer two options of similar pricing and service and that consumer will almost always gravitate to the one which is aesthetically pleasing. The average consumer probably doesn't ask themselves where their money is going to end up at the end of the day and who its benefiting. It could go to the salary of a major corporation's CEO instead of a small business owner in their own local community simply because of aesthetic.
With Black Friday approaching, this is something that we should try to keep in mind as we begin our Christmas shopping. The idea of checking out my own area's local mom and pop shops really appeals to me this season. It reminds me of the connection I felt whenever I pumped a customer's gas and washed their windshield. They loved meeting the person behind the business and I loved meeting them. It's a good feeling. This Christmas, I want to feel that again but, this time, it's me that is going to be the customer.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
The symbol of inhumanity and a future lost
The news of the first fatality of the Occupy Movement passed today in relative silence. The deceased was not a homeless druggie who had overdosed or a a suicide, where those lives were taken by their own hands. Surely if it had been another one of those, then it would have been shouted across the nation in every paper and on every news channel and website. Not this death, no. This death is still relatively obscure in news reports. This first fatality was an unborn child.
The baby's mother was a 19 year old homeless woman, three months pregnant when she arrived at Occupy Seattle. Probably like many other homeless drawn to Occupies around the nation, she, too, came in search of food, shelter, and support. When the riot police began to arrive to evict Occupy Seattle, she tried to leave the area, telling the police that she was pregnant and needed to get out of there as any reasonable mother would feel with the threat of imminent danger. Instead of letting her pass safely through, she was instead hit with batons and kicked in the stomach as she screamed that she was pregnant and finally pepper sprayed full in the face. An ambulance took her to the hospital where things seemed like it would be okay. Five days later, she began to have sharp abdominal pains and felt sick. Like any pregnant mother would, she went to the hospital and there, the doctors performed yet another ultrasound. I know what it is like to see that bright star of a heartbeat disappear. I cannot imagine what she felt when she saw her own baby's heartbeat now gone. A victim of involuntary abortion by the hands of the Seattle Police.
People question what possessed her, yet not in such kind terms, as to why she was at the protest in the first place. A protest is no place for a pregnant woman. Indeed, after watching what had been happening at the Occupy protests nationwide at night, I would agree. However, they are forgetting that this girl was homeless. Occupy Seattle with its food and shelter was probably like a beacon of hope for her and her baby. Far safer than being a 19 year old girl living on the streets where, if raped or beaten, the odds of someone coming to help were slim. Occupy Seattle, from this girl's perspective, was the safest place she could be. At the Occupy, she was taken in with open arms something that, based on her homelessness, not even her family bothered to do. A peaceful protest will always be far safer than being homeless. Those who cannot grasp that haven't spent enough time observing and talking to the homeless themselves.
The question that I would ask is why should a pregnant woman be at risk for losing her baby simply for using her voice? Our First Amendment promotes the use of peaceful, free speech by our people. There is no where in the First Amendment that says that these protesters will be beaten with batons or pepper sprayed in exchange for the right to speak. What kind of country is it that we live in where we equate the expression of free speech as something dangerous? What kind of country is that that we live in where we make the expression of free speech dangerous? If this same young girl had been jumped in the streets and had the same thing happen to her, we'd probably not even hear about it. If we had, then what kind of outpouring of sympathy would we offer her collectively? A young homeless girl lost her baby. Is that not terrible enough on its own or must we vilify her because of her circumstance to bore in hatred to mix with her grief?
How did she even come to be in such a situation? Homeless, alone, pregnant--from my perspective, hardly more than a child herself. Where were the services that should have come to her rescue? Where were her family, friends, or even community when she needed help the most? With probably not a thought in her head, this young woman and her unborn baby have become an almost perfect yet abominable symbol of all that is wrong with our nation. In the effort to create a change, a more equitable and assured environment for our children, both born and unborn, a baby has died in an act of brutality. As we bicker about who should pay more taxes, parks and the price of gas, a young girl, pregnant and alone, was wandering the cold streets, looking for food and shelter. And when she finds it, in an almost horrific form of destiny, she is beaten by police and sprayed in the face with a chemical known to cause spontaneous abortions. How can this girl and her unborn child's death not make our hearts hurt? Or have we become so callous and stripped of our humanity that we no longer feel pity, empathy or even share the pain of a loss of life taken so needlessly?
Where has our humanity gone that we let this slip by so silently? A fatality occurred today for our nation. An unborn child's life was snuffed out like it was nothing in an attack by a few police officers, who should carry the weight of their actions with them for the rest of their lives. If there is anyone to blame for this, it is not the baby's mother and though it was police batons, boot and spray that did the deed, it's not the police either. It's our own fault for letting our country become this way in the first place. It's our own fault that we have allowed our voice to be drowned out as the number of homeless and impoverished grows. It's our own fault that we, while we are so busy with our nothing activities, let our nation's strength and humanity slip away. Who created the culture of fear and hate? We all did.
Update: Seattle Police are investigating. Personally, am hoping that she wasn't pregnant because of how grotesque losing a baby in such a way would be. However, the fact that the girl was screaming that she was pregnant while police were assaulting her did occur and that it did not give them pause is bad enough as it is.
The baby's mother was a 19 year old homeless woman, three months pregnant when she arrived at Occupy Seattle. Probably like many other homeless drawn to Occupies around the nation, she, too, came in search of food, shelter, and support. When the riot police began to arrive to evict Occupy Seattle, she tried to leave the area, telling the police that she was pregnant and needed to get out of there as any reasonable mother would feel with the threat of imminent danger. Instead of letting her pass safely through, she was instead hit with batons and kicked in the stomach as she screamed that she was pregnant and finally pepper sprayed full in the face. An ambulance took her to the hospital where things seemed like it would be okay. Five days later, she began to have sharp abdominal pains and felt sick. Like any pregnant mother would, she went to the hospital and there, the doctors performed yet another ultrasound. I know what it is like to see that bright star of a heartbeat disappear. I cannot imagine what she felt when she saw her own baby's heartbeat now gone. A victim of involuntary abortion by the hands of the Seattle Police.
People question what possessed her, yet not in such kind terms, as to why she was at the protest in the first place. A protest is no place for a pregnant woman. Indeed, after watching what had been happening at the Occupy protests nationwide at night, I would agree. However, they are forgetting that this girl was homeless. Occupy Seattle with its food and shelter was probably like a beacon of hope for her and her baby. Far safer than being a 19 year old girl living on the streets where, if raped or beaten, the odds of someone coming to help were slim. Occupy Seattle, from this girl's perspective, was the safest place she could be. At the Occupy, she was taken in with open arms something that, based on her homelessness, not even her family bothered to do. A peaceful protest will always be far safer than being homeless. Those who cannot grasp that haven't spent enough time observing and talking to the homeless themselves.
The question that I would ask is why should a pregnant woman be at risk for losing her baby simply for using her voice? Our First Amendment promotes the use of peaceful, free speech by our people. There is no where in the First Amendment that says that these protesters will be beaten with batons or pepper sprayed in exchange for the right to speak. What kind of country is it that we live in where we equate the expression of free speech as something dangerous? What kind of country is that that we live in where we make the expression of free speech dangerous? If this same young girl had been jumped in the streets and had the same thing happen to her, we'd probably not even hear about it. If we had, then what kind of outpouring of sympathy would we offer her collectively? A young homeless girl lost her baby. Is that not terrible enough on its own or must we vilify her because of her circumstance to bore in hatred to mix with her grief?
How did she even come to be in such a situation? Homeless, alone, pregnant--from my perspective, hardly more than a child herself. Where were the services that should have come to her rescue? Where were her family, friends, or even community when she needed help the most? With probably not a thought in her head, this young woman and her unborn baby have become an almost perfect yet abominable symbol of all that is wrong with our nation. In the effort to create a change, a more equitable and assured environment for our children, both born and unborn, a baby has died in an act of brutality. As we bicker about who should pay more taxes, parks and the price of gas, a young girl, pregnant and alone, was wandering the cold streets, looking for food and shelter. And when she finds it, in an almost horrific form of destiny, she is beaten by police and sprayed in the face with a chemical known to cause spontaneous abortions. How can this girl and her unborn child's death not make our hearts hurt? Or have we become so callous and stripped of our humanity that we no longer feel pity, empathy or even share the pain of a loss of life taken so needlessly?
Where has our humanity gone that we let this slip by so silently? A fatality occurred today for our nation. An unborn child's life was snuffed out like it was nothing in an attack by a few police officers, who should carry the weight of their actions with them for the rest of their lives. If there is anyone to blame for this, it is not the baby's mother and though it was police batons, boot and spray that did the deed, it's not the police either. It's our own fault for letting our country become this way in the first place. It's our own fault that we have allowed our voice to be drowned out as the number of homeless and impoverished grows. It's our own fault that we, while we are so busy with our nothing activities, let our nation's strength and humanity slip away. Who created the culture of fear and hate? We all did.
Update: Seattle Police are investigating. Personally, am hoping that she wasn't pregnant because of how grotesque losing a baby in such a way would be. However, the fact that the girl was screaming that she was pregnant while police were assaulting her did occur and that it did not give them pause is bad enough as it is.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
The Culture of Fear and Hate
When I wrote my blog post, "Who owns the media?", my intention was to lay a foundation on which, I had hoped, people could begin to critically think. My intention of the blog post was to illustrate how we, here in the US, have what can only be seen as a fairly tight knit techno-oligarchy of media. The implications of such the existence of a thing should give us immediate and direct pause for consideration of the possibility that the power that these 6 corporations wield over public opinion, ideologies, and the spread of information is astronomical.
All too often when I have brought this subject up, the most frequent response is that I am simply targeting Fox news. Nothing could be further from the truth. News Corporation is probably the most open about what they are doing with the American public. Unlike other media corporations, Fox will very clearly state their opinions regardless of how extreme they may be. Other media sources are sneakier about their activities, relying on what I would say is a subtle implantation of ideas. CNN may not say something so direct as "The Tea Party is nothing but a bunch of racist secessionists" but, by reporting on the existence of actual racist Tea Party members, they were propagating the idea within the reader that the Tea Party are nothing but a bunch of racists.
When I took a course in persuasive writing, it wasn't the direct statement that was encouraged but instead, what was cited by the professor for this course was deliberately leading the reader of the piece, through implantation of thoughts, to seemingly develop the desired opinion by the end of the piece. This falls under what the other news corporations generally do with their readers and viewers, engaging in what is a subtle reinforcement of opinion. Fox, itself, also engages in a persuasive writing technique. The first example I can think of that highlights what Fox does is actually what President Obama did himself in his acceptance speech on the night of his election. Nothing is so powerful as repetition of statement--"yes, we can". The greater the frequency of repetition in specific phrases causes the reader or listener to essentially affiliate themselves with the statement. What's even more interesting about this kind of persuasive methodology is that the reader may actually forget the actual source of the statement as it becomes embedded. The reader may attribute the opinion as their own without even realizing it. Time and time again, I see evidence of source amnesia among my friends and among total strangers who are commenting in response to various things on the internet.
I find it incredibly strange that people don't note this nearly word for word repetition and I think I comprehend the reason why. As viewers and readers, we naturally gravitate to those who are expressing opinions that complement our own. In the case of source amnesia and repetition, the more like minded individuals state those words, the more it confirms the statement within ourselves. One of the frequently repeated statements that I have seen time and time again has been the remark, "Get a job" in response to Occupy. The level to which this particular statement has been used is prolific and every time that it's used, it creates what is called a confirmation bias. The Occupy movement itself is unique in that the embedding of ideas and repetitions have been nearly unanimously against the Occupy movement. On Fox, the protesters are equated to be "commie hippy rapists" and on CNN, their subtle implications have been that they are dirty and unfocused hippies. Neither of these two corporations were forthcoming on information that contradicted these ideas. This is the point where I ask the reader to recall that there are only 6 corporations in control of the majority of our media. Occupy is as much a threat to them as it is to the Koch Brothers or any other Occupy target.
The ramifications of the usage of persuasive writing techniques shouldn't be limited, however, to populist protests. I remember when I was younger and first learning about journalism, I was in awe. Here were these individuals with the important task of sharing information without bias to the public on which the public go ahead and draw their own conclusions on political matters. To me, the awe inspiring aspect was the intention of a journalist to strip one's own political beliefs out of the equation when reporting. Over the years, however, we have developed within our mainstream media something else entirely--political commentators. There is nothing more endangering to our political system and the intended unbiased nature of news reporting than these political commentators such as the likes of Ed Schultz and Sean Hannity. For listeners and viewers of a like mind that may affiliate themselves with a particular political party, these commentators set up a barrier between people. A democrat listening to the hate-filled rhetoric of Sean Hannity will be repelled just as much as a republican would be listening to the hate-filled rhetoric of Ed Schultz. Instead of the free exchange of ideas that the press is supposed to be, it is nothing more than a beast that creates a culture of hate and fear with the American public. It becomes not an issue of the American people as a whole but a separatist movement of us vs. them. It is nothing more than propaganda but not in support of any specific government or war. I would hazard that, in light of things--particularly the tight knit nature of the techno-oligarchy--that the intentions of this propaganda technique is to keep the American people divided. From this base, we are spoon fed our talking points from which our politicians in Congress and our Presidential candidates feeds.
Left vs. right, democrats vs. republicans. Dirty commie hippies. Racist Secessionist Treason Tea Party. How many times have you, my reader, heard these kind of statements? How many times have you been stunned by the culture of fear and hate that we live in? Fear and hate have become such a divisive element within our country that if we make a statement about police brutality, we are immediately dubbed "cop haters". If we question or support a specific political group, how many times have base assumptions about one's character and beliefs been leveled? Labels do nothing beyond strip the humanity from others. I have seen so much hate and encouragement of harm to police officers and protesters that it has forced me to wonder when did people forget that others are human, too? In the words of Patrick Henry, "Let us trust God, and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs."
United we stand, divided we fall. These words that we should all have embedded in us are the right words to be embedded. Let us not let hateful rhetoric endanger our political system. There is nothing more powerful than the sharing of ideas without fear, anger or hate. The open sharing of ideas is what created this country. Disagreement between ourselves is natural and from disagreement, consensus may arise but only if we are even allowed to talk to each other. If we instead repeat oft heard phrases that we no longer recall the original source of that do nothing beyond alienate each other, then there is no discourse and no hope for consensus.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
All too often when I have brought this subject up, the most frequent response is that I am simply targeting Fox news. Nothing could be further from the truth. News Corporation is probably the most open about what they are doing with the American public. Unlike other media corporations, Fox will very clearly state their opinions regardless of how extreme they may be. Other media sources are sneakier about their activities, relying on what I would say is a subtle implantation of ideas. CNN may not say something so direct as "The Tea Party is nothing but a bunch of racist secessionists" but, by reporting on the existence of actual racist Tea Party members, they were propagating the idea within the reader that the Tea Party are nothing but a bunch of racists.
When I took a course in persuasive writing, it wasn't the direct statement that was encouraged but instead, what was cited by the professor for this course was deliberately leading the reader of the piece, through implantation of thoughts, to seemingly develop the desired opinion by the end of the piece. This falls under what the other news corporations generally do with their readers and viewers, engaging in what is a subtle reinforcement of opinion. Fox, itself, also engages in a persuasive writing technique. The first example I can think of that highlights what Fox does is actually what President Obama did himself in his acceptance speech on the night of his election. Nothing is so powerful as repetition of statement--"yes, we can". The greater the frequency of repetition in specific phrases causes the reader or listener to essentially affiliate themselves with the statement. What's even more interesting about this kind of persuasive methodology is that the reader may actually forget the actual source of the statement as it becomes embedded. The reader may attribute the opinion as their own without even realizing it. Time and time again, I see evidence of source amnesia among my friends and among total strangers who are commenting in response to various things on the internet.
I find it incredibly strange that people don't note this nearly word for word repetition and I think I comprehend the reason why. As viewers and readers, we naturally gravitate to those who are expressing opinions that complement our own. In the case of source amnesia and repetition, the more like minded individuals state those words, the more it confirms the statement within ourselves. One of the frequently repeated statements that I have seen time and time again has been the remark, "Get a job" in response to Occupy. The level to which this particular statement has been used is prolific and every time that it's used, it creates what is called a confirmation bias. The Occupy movement itself is unique in that the embedding of ideas and repetitions have been nearly unanimously against the Occupy movement. On Fox, the protesters are equated to be "commie hippy rapists" and on CNN, their subtle implications have been that they are dirty and unfocused hippies. Neither of these two corporations were forthcoming on information that contradicted these ideas. This is the point where I ask the reader to recall that there are only 6 corporations in control of the majority of our media. Occupy is as much a threat to them as it is to the Koch Brothers or any other Occupy target.
The ramifications of the usage of persuasive writing techniques shouldn't be limited, however, to populist protests. I remember when I was younger and first learning about journalism, I was in awe. Here were these individuals with the important task of sharing information without bias to the public on which the public go ahead and draw their own conclusions on political matters. To me, the awe inspiring aspect was the intention of a journalist to strip one's own political beliefs out of the equation when reporting. Over the years, however, we have developed within our mainstream media something else entirely--political commentators. There is nothing more endangering to our political system and the intended unbiased nature of news reporting than these political commentators such as the likes of Ed Schultz and Sean Hannity. For listeners and viewers of a like mind that may affiliate themselves with a particular political party, these commentators set up a barrier between people. A democrat listening to the hate-filled rhetoric of Sean Hannity will be repelled just as much as a republican would be listening to the hate-filled rhetoric of Ed Schultz. Instead of the free exchange of ideas that the press is supposed to be, it is nothing more than a beast that creates a culture of hate and fear with the American public. It becomes not an issue of the American people as a whole but a separatist movement of us vs. them. It is nothing more than propaganda but not in support of any specific government or war. I would hazard that, in light of things--particularly the tight knit nature of the techno-oligarchy--that the intentions of this propaganda technique is to keep the American people divided. From this base, we are spoon fed our talking points from which our politicians in Congress and our Presidential candidates feeds.
Left vs. right, democrats vs. republicans. Dirty commie hippies. Racist Secessionist Treason Tea Party. How many times have you, my reader, heard these kind of statements? How many times have you been stunned by the culture of fear and hate that we live in? Fear and hate have become such a divisive element within our country that if we make a statement about police brutality, we are immediately dubbed "cop haters". If we question or support a specific political group, how many times have base assumptions about one's character and beliefs been leveled? Labels do nothing beyond strip the humanity from others. I have seen so much hate and encouragement of harm to police officers and protesters that it has forced me to wonder when did people forget that others are human, too? In the words of Patrick Henry, "Let us trust God, and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs."
United we stand, divided we fall. These words that we should all have embedded in us are the right words to be embedded. Let us not let hateful rhetoric endanger our political system. There is nothing more powerful than the sharing of ideas without fear, anger or hate. The open sharing of ideas is what created this country. Disagreement between ourselves is natural and from disagreement, consensus may arise but only if we are even allowed to talk to each other. If we instead repeat oft heard phrases that we no longer recall the original source of that do nothing beyond alienate each other, then there is no discourse and no hope for consensus.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
The Illusion of Choice
The majority of the world's economy is based on some form of capitalism. The idea behind capitalism, especially in its laissez-faire form, is that competitive markets of privately owned industries work to increase the growth of our economy and act to control prices through competition and supply and demand. The strength of such an economy lies in the diversity of its participants, just as diversity is the strength of an ecosystem. Competition is incredibly important in promoting the health of the economy and, frequently, the people and environment. Theoretically, as consumers, we can essentially choose between those producers based on their price, quality, and even behavior within society. We vote with our dollars as to whom is going to succeed and who is going to fail. The higher the number of competitors, the higher the impact of with whom we choose to spend as market share is spread in reasonable quantities amongst the products of that segment of the industry. A problem arises, however, when the number of competitors decrease as our options of with whom to "vote with our dollars" has diminished impact. Called an oligopoly, this kind of market can either create fierce competition or collusion.
Oligopolies have other effects beyond fierce competition and collusion. In an oligopoly, a mere handful of companies control the market in which they participate. This creates, in itself, very powerful entities with extreme economic power that create a barrier to entry for a new producer to join the market. In a sense, it's like imagining a fight between a pit bull and a chihuahua. Although there may be the unique instance where a chihuahua may win, most of the time the bigger dog is going to be successful. In an oligopoly, a winning chihuahua is more likely to be acquired and absorbed into the larger competitor. In fact, one of the most common and frequently used corporate strategies is acquisition. Regardless of whether the acquired companies succeeds or fails post-acquisition, it still acts in the parent corporation's best interest by eliminating competition. This is, essentially, the death of the "American Dream".
My father was one of those dreamers. In 1976 with a mere $10,000, he became a service station dealer. By around 1999, his $10,000 investment had grown into a corporation that was valued at $32 million in capital assets. According to one of Texaco's marketing representatives at the time, my father's sales constituted 50% of all gasoline sales west of the Willamette River and was the largest volume gasoline dealer in the entire Pacific Northwest. Thinking back to the pit bull vs. chihuahua analogy, it's not surprising what happened to his business. Just a year later, Texaco, his host brand, attempted to acquire his company for $30 million. My father refused and for a variety of reasons, some of which Texaco itself had a large hand in, his company is no more. No matter what tactic my father tried, Shell-Texaco's control of the gasoline market followed him until his business was no more. I do not think that my father's own experience is something novel or unique. Instead, it is simply par for the course and something that occurs in nearly every industry.
To prove my theory that the power of oligopolies and their acquisition strategies have put a relatively unseen stranglehold on competition and an entry barrier, I did what anyone has to do on an at least once a week basis--I went grocery shopping. I headed down to Safeway (yet another large corporate entity) and grabbed a cart. My goal for my shopping trip wasn't simply to pick up the Throwback Pepsi that I adore. It was to actually start looking at what was lining the shelves themselves. As a mom, I can probably list off at least a hundred different food brands from Frito-Lay to Kraft Mac and Cheese to Progresso soups. I have considered myself to be a fairly ethical consumer who tends to purchase the less commonly known brands in an effort to at least give what I perceive as "chihuahuas" a bit of chance for my economic "vote". We don't eat Ball Park or Oscar Meyer hot dogs--we eat Hebrew National. I only buy Oroweat because I know that Oroweat has bakeries in the area and I want to support my local community. Just like I am more likely to buy a Reser's brand food item than say Mission because it is in support of my local economy. Walking through a grocery store, we seemingly have at our disposal a veritable smorgasbord of brands to choose from. It isn't true.
Starting in the produce section, who is selling what is really hard to glean but I am aware that a number of farms have been accumulated into super farms of a sort. I'm not going to even try to figure out who grew the lettuce I bought yesterday. It's simply too hard but the moment I started passing through the rest of the aisles and actually looking at labels on some of the foods randomly, I began seeing a common theme. It became almost poignant in the cereal aisle where the mass majority of that particular aisle consisted of either three brands--Kellogg's, Post, or General Mills. Even what appeared to be small brand less familiar cereals generally fell under the blanket of one of those three. It was with near desperation that I finally found a cereal that was not affiliated with one of those three companies--Barbara's cereal. In the basket, it went alongside the two heads of lettuce probably grown on a super farm.
From product to product as I, with increasing panic, examined labels of what I perceived to be various brands, I discovered that a massive percentage of the food stocking the shelves at Safeway and probably any other grocery store--even locally owned--ended up going to one of 4 major food industry producers--ConAgra, General Mills, Kelloggs, or Kraft. My estimate is that at least 75% of the total shelf space within a grocery store is being utilized by one of these four companies. I had always known on some level that many of our products lining our grocery store shelves probably were part of a larger corporation but I had never really considered just how extensive it was. By the time I left the grocery store, I was in a state of shock. It was far worse than I had ever imagined. When I got home, I was frantically scouring the labels of the products that lined my own shelves. ConAgra, General Mills, Kelloggs or Kraft--nearly everything my children and I eat was manufactured by one of these four companies. Even my ethical choice, my beloved "Hebrew National" hotdogs were merely yet another brand owned by ConAgra. My beloved Oroweat? Well that turns out to be a brand under Bimbo Bakeries. They are apparently one of the world's largest bakeries and also make Wonderbread.
When we walk into a grocery store, we think we have so much choice when it comes to who is going to be the recipient of our voting dollar. Unless we want to make everything from scratch, what we face as we go through the aisles isn't really freedom of choice. It's the illusion of choice. It's sad and ironic that the only areas where there seemed to be more diversity of choice in Safeway was in the beer and wine departments and on the dog food shelves. Some of you may not think that this is necessarily a bad thing but it's actually a breathtakingly, horrifying situation that we find ourselves in. Thinking back upon what I have previously said in regards to the importance of diversity within a market to not only promote growth within the economy but also assure the health of both people and the environment, it is absolutely disturbing that the companies who are feeding us the majority of our foodstuffs are in fact an oligopoly. We are talking about the sustenance of our lives. That's chilling and no matter how hard you try to find an alternative, odds are what you are going to eat, what you're going to feed your children will most likely still go to those four companies.
We wonder how the hell we got into this economic situation where economic wealth has been piling up towards the top 1%. This is part of the reason how. We think we have all these differing choices and, in actuality, it's all an illusion--magic trick of different product name and fine print. Below are links to the product listings of ConAgra, General Mills, Kellogg's and Kraft. See for yourself the reality of your choice.
ConAgra
General Mills
Kellogg's
Kraft
Oligopolies have other effects beyond fierce competition and collusion. In an oligopoly, a mere handful of companies control the market in which they participate. This creates, in itself, very powerful entities with extreme economic power that create a barrier to entry for a new producer to join the market. In a sense, it's like imagining a fight between a pit bull and a chihuahua. Although there may be the unique instance where a chihuahua may win, most of the time the bigger dog is going to be successful. In an oligopoly, a winning chihuahua is more likely to be acquired and absorbed into the larger competitor. In fact, one of the most common and frequently used corporate strategies is acquisition. Regardless of whether the acquired companies succeeds or fails post-acquisition, it still acts in the parent corporation's best interest by eliminating competition. This is, essentially, the death of the "American Dream".
My father was one of those dreamers. In 1976 with a mere $10,000, he became a service station dealer. By around 1999, his $10,000 investment had grown into a corporation that was valued at $32 million in capital assets. According to one of Texaco's marketing representatives at the time, my father's sales constituted 50% of all gasoline sales west of the Willamette River and was the largest volume gasoline dealer in the entire Pacific Northwest. Thinking back to the pit bull vs. chihuahua analogy, it's not surprising what happened to his business. Just a year later, Texaco, his host brand, attempted to acquire his company for $30 million. My father refused and for a variety of reasons, some of which Texaco itself had a large hand in, his company is no more. No matter what tactic my father tried, Shell-Texaco's control of the gasoline market followed him until his business was no more. I do not think that my father's own experience is something novel or unique. Instead, it is simply par for the course and something that occurs in nearly every industry.
To prove my theory that the power of oligopolies and their acquisition strategies have put a relatively unseen stranglehold on competition and an entry barrier, I did what anyone has to do on an at least once a week basis--I went grocery shopping. I headed down to Safeway (yet another large corporate entity) and grabbed a cart. My goal for my shopping trip wasn't simply to pick up the Throwback Pepsi that I adore. It was to actually start looking at what was lining the shelves themselves. As a mom, I can probably list off at least a hundred different food brands from Frito-Lay to Kraft Mac and Cheese to Progresso soups. I have considered myself to be a fairly ethical consumer who tends to purchase the less commonly known brands in an effort to at least give what I perceive as "chihuahuas" a bit of chance for my economic "vote". We don't eat Ball Park or Oscar Meyer hot dogs--we eat Hebrew National. I only buy Oroweat because I know that Oroweat has bakeries in the area and I want to support my local community. Just like I am more likely to buy a Reser's brand food item than say Mission because it is in support of my local economy. Walking through a grocery store, we seemingly have at our disposal a veritable smorgasbord of brands to choose from. It isn't true.
Starting in the produce section, who is selling what is really hard to glean but I am aware that a number of farms have been accumulated into super farms of a sort. I'm not going to even try to figure out who grew the lettuce I bought yesterday. It's simply too hard but the moment I started passing through the rest of the aisles and actually looking at labels on some of the foods randomly, I began seeing a common theme. It became almost poignant in the cereal aisle where the mass majority of that particular aisle consisted of either three brands--Kellogg's, Post, or General Mills. Even what appeared to be small brand less familiar cereals generally fell under the blanket of one of those three. It was with near desperation that I finally found a cereal that was not affiliated with one of those three companies--Barbara's cereal. In the basket, it went alongside the two heads of lettuce probably grown on a super farm.
From product to product as I, with increasing panic, examined labels of what I perceived to be various brands, I discovered that a massive percentage of the food stocking the shelves at Safeway and probably any other grocery store--even locally owned--ended up going to one of 4 major food industry producers--ConAgra, General Mills, Kelloggs, or Kraft. My estimate is that at least 75% of the total shelf space within a grocery store is being utilized by one of these four companies. I had always known on some level that many of our products lining our grocery store shelves probably were part of a larger corporation but I had never really considered just how extensive it was. By the time I left the grocery store, I was in a state of shock. It was far worse than I had ever imagined. When I got home, I was frantically scouring the labels of the products that lined my own shelves. ConAgra, General Mills, Kelloggs or Kraft--nearly everything my children and I eat was manufactured by one of these four companies. Even my ethical choice, my beloved "Hebrew National" hotdogs were merely yet another brand owned by ConAgra. My beloved Oroweat? Well that turns out to be a brand under Bimbo Bakeries. They are apparently one of the world's largest bakeries and also make Wonderbread.
When we walk into a grocery store, we think we have so much choice when it comes to who is going to be the recipient of our voting dollar. Unless we want to make everything from scratch, what we face as we go through the aisles isn't really freedom of choice. It's the illusion of choice. It's sad and ironic that the only areas where there seemed to be more diversity of choice in Safeway was in the beer and wine departments and on the dog food shelves. Some of you may not think that this is necessarily a bad thing but it's actually a breathtakingly, horrifying situation that we find ourselves in. Thinking back upon what I have previously said in regards to the importance of diversity within a market to not only promote growth within the economy but also assure the health of both people and the environment, it is absolutely disturbing that the companies who are feeding us the majority of our foodstuffs are in fact an oligopoly. We are talking about the sustenance of our lives. That's chilling and no matter how hard you try to find an alternative, odds are what you are going to eat, what you're going to feed your children will most likely still go to those four companies.
We wonder how the hell we got into this economic situation where economic wealth has been piling up towards the top 1%. This is part of the reason how. We think we have all these differing choices and, in actuality, it's all an illusion--magic trick of different product name and fine print. Below are links to the product listings of ConAgra, General Mills, Kellogg's and Kraft. See for yourself the reality of your choice.
ConAgra
General Mills
Kellogg's
Kraft
Monday, October 31, 2011
Under the Cover of Night
Part of being a School of Business and Administration student in a post-Enron world consists of a mandatory course in Business Ethics. I, myself, took this a step further and chose to take a morality cluster as my senior capstone. This included three additional courses in philosophy and I chose an introduction to philosophy course, an additional ethics course and environmental ethics. I felt that these three courses would assist me in rounding out my worldviews before entering into a system that can seem to be frequently neglectful in both social and environmental ethics. Of all the ethics tests that I was taught, however, there was one specific test of making an ethical choice that has been pervasive in my memory. When confronted with an ethical dilemma and one is about to make a choice, one should ask themselves, "is this something that I wouldn't want my family, friends and neighbors to know about?". To me, the reality of the impact of making a tough ethical choice is driven home with this question. Who would know better than Bernie Madoff what it is like to see the impact of a choice and its often profound effect on one's loved ones? For those who aren't familiar with the particulars of Bernie Madoff, he was the man who was a founder of NASDAQ and also of a monumental Ponzi Scheme, for which two of his own sons turned him in to the authorities for. One of his sons killed himself just a few years ago. Madoff's story illustrates the power of an unethical choice and its tragic effect. Our choices impact our loved ones without question and asking the question, "would I want them to know?", forces the questioner to understand the choice and all of its ramifications that they are about to make.
If we are attempting to hide our choice, does that mean that the choice that we have made is the wrong one? In late September in New York City, peaceful protesters were attempting to march up to the New York Stock Exchange. The New York Police Department blocked their way and began corralling them with orange nets. Then, shockingly, a few of the members of the NYPD chose to, what I would unequivocally describe as, assault some of these protesters. The now perhaps overplayed video clip of several young women being sprayed in the face by pepper spray was broadcast over a couple national news channels and went viral on Youtube. The identity of the police inspector was revealed and he and his family promptly went into hiding due to the level and frequency of angry threats in response to his actions.
Call me strange, but over watching the events unfold over the course of the past month, I almost respect Inspector Bologna for making his choice so visible to the public. Did he realize the impact of his actions? Who is to say but, considering how many people have cellphones with video cameras on them, he had to at least know that perhaps someone would make a video. He made no attempt to hide his actions, pepper spraying those young women in broad daylight. He even went so far as to state that he felt that he had done nothing wrong. While I could list out a dozen counters as to why I personally feel like what he did was inhumane and most definitely morally reprehensible, I can still afford him respect for letting his action occur in the light of day. If only all of our police departments were so forthcoming and open about their own actions as Inspector Bologna.
What has been taking place over the course of this last month has been nothing but actions taking place in the middle of the night or very early, dark morning hours. Seattle, Oakland, Boston, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Austin, Richmond, Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, St. Louis, Denver, and more have been sites of police actions that aren't taking place in broad daylight. They take place at night between the hours of midnight and 5 am. They take place in darkened streets where cell phones have difficulty filming what is taking place. On the night of the Oakland raid on the march in protest of what had occurred early that morning to the Occupy camp, the Oakland Police went so far as to turn off the streetlights as they threw tear gas into the crowd. The action temporarily eliminated even the aerial view being streamed by a Fox news helicopter.
Countless times, I have heard news media ordered away before riot police entered these camps. Countless times, I've heard the cries of distressed outrage from protesters being arrested when they felt protected by the First Amendment. Too many times, I have heard screams. I have seen dark images of veterans being dragged to the ground and protesters being hit by batons. Despite the cover of night, I have seen too much. This cannot be my beloved country where such things are happening. I often wonder if this is just a bad nightmare and wish that I'll wake up to the way things were before I saw and heard these things. Unfortunately, this is no bad dream and this is my beloved country. As such, I have no choice but to ask of our government officials and police departments, why in the cover of night?
If you are going to make a choice, then make that choice in broad daylight. Be confident of the choice that you make and all choices thereafter by making the choice in broad daylight. Using the cover night, ordering media away--these are the actions of those who feel as if they have something to hide. If one's choice is truly ethical and based on sound reasoning, then there would be no need for any of this. Removal of camps and arrests of protesters would take place during the day where all can be witness to what has occurred. It all returns back to that question that should be asked when confronted with an ethical dilemma--would I want my family, friends and neighbors to know what choice I have made? What actions have I done? If the answer is that one doesn't want them to know, then the choice about to be made does not stand up to the light of day. Just like for thieves and murders, those choices are made under the cover of night.
If we are attempting to hide our choice, does that mean that the choice that we have made is the wrong one? In late September in New York City, peaceful protesters were attempting to march up to the New York Stock Exchange. The New York Police Department blocked their way and began corralling them with orange nets. Then, shockingly, a few of the members of the NYPD chose to, what I would unequivocally describe as, assault some of these protesters. The now perhaps overplayed video clip of several young women being sprayed in the face by pepper spray was broadcast over a couple national news channels and went viral on Youtube. The identity of the police inspector was revealed and he and his family promptly went into hiding due to the level and frequency of angry threats in response to his actions.
Call me strange, but over watching the events unfold over the course of the past month, I almost respect Inspector Bologna for making his choice so visible to the public. Did he realize the impact of his actions? Who is to say but, considering how many people have cellphones with video cameras on them, he had to at least know that perhaps someone would make a video. He made no attempt to hide his actions, pepper spraying those young women in broad daylight. He even went so far as to state that he felt that he had done nothing wrong. While I could list out a dozen counters as to why I personally feel like what he did was inhumane and most definitely morally reprehensible, I can still afford him respect for letting his action occur in the light of day. If only all of our police departments were so forthcoming and open about their own actions as Inspector Bologna.
What has been taking place over the course of this last month has been nothing but actions taking place in the middle of the night or very early, dark morning hours. Seattle, Oakland, Boston, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Austin, Richmond, Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, St. Louis, Denver, and more have been sites of police actions that aren't taking place in broad daylight. They take place at night between the hours of midnight and 5 am. They take place in darkened streets where cell phones have difficulty filming what is taking place. On the night of the Oakland raid on the march in protest of what had occurred early that morning to the Occupy camp, the Oakland Police went so far as to turn off the streetlights as they threw tear gas into the crowd. The action temporarily eliminated even the aerial view being streamed by a Fox news helicopter.
Countless times, I have heard news media ordered away before riot police entered these camps. Countless times, I've heard the cries of distressed outrage from protesters being arrested when they felt protected by the First Amendment. Too many times, I have heard screams. I have seen dark images of veterans being dragged to the ground and protesters being hit by batons. Despite the cover of night, I have seen too much. This cannot be my beloved country where such things are happening. I often wonder if this is just a bad nightmare and wish that I'll wake up to the way things were before I saw and heard these things. Unfortunately, this is no bad dream and this is my beloved country. As such, I have no choice but to ask of our government officials and police departments, why in the cover of night?
If you are going to make a choice, then make that choice in broad daylight. Be confident of the choice that you make and all choices thereafter by making the choice in broad daylight. Using the cover night, ordering media away--these are the actions of those who feel as if they have something to hide. If one's choice is truly ethical and based on sound reasoning, then there would be no need for any of this. Removal of camps and arrests of protesters would take place during the day where all can be witness to what has occurred. It all returns back to that question that should be asked when confronted with an ethical dilemma--would I want my family, friends and neighbors to know what choice I have made? What actions have I done? If the answer is that one doesn't want them to know, then the choice about to be made does not stand up to the light of day. Just like for thieves and murders, those choices are made under the cover of night.
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