Rep. Agema and proposed legislation on teaching US History
On Saturday, the Grand Rapids Press ran a brief article about State Representative Dave Agema’s latest legislative proposal.
Agema, the term limited State Representative from Grandville, wants the State of Michigan to pass legislation that would require what Agema refers to as the core government documents – US Constitution, Federalist Papers, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
In addition, Agema wants in mandatory that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited in public schools daily. The Press reporter cites only Agema who comments that he hopes Tea Party members would put pressure on the State government to make such legislation official.
Press reporter Jim Harger doesn’t verify if Michigan public schools already teach such documents nor does he provide any response from a different perspective.
The Press reporter also doesn’t mention that this legislation is just one more example of Agema’s extremist proposals. Agema over the years has proposed numerous pieces of legislation that demonizes and criminalizes immigrants. The Grandville legislator has also supported Governor Snyder’s austerity measures that attack unionized public sector workers and working families in general. Agema is a proponent of making Michigan a Right to Work state and has proposed legislation that promotes Islamophobia. Agema’s most recent attack on working people was to eliminated domestic partner benefits for those who are state employees, an action that is widely understood to be an attack against the LGBT community in Michigan.
Having said that I would support the teaching of US government documents that Agema mentions. We all should be familiar with this history and we should be educated to take a critical look at the significance of documents such as the Bill of Rights. Michigan schools should also expose students to the writings of Thomas Paine and other dissidents who challenged the failure of the founding fathers to take such documents seriously.
For instance, it should be known to children in Michigan public schools that the only people who could vote after the country was founded were White men who owned property. In addition, it should be taught that many of the founding fathers owned slaves and would not support efforts to abolish chattel slavery in the early years of this nation.
Michigan children should be taught about the Sedition Act of 1798. The Sedition Act fundamentally made it illegal to publicly oppose any measure of the federal government, legislation that was targeted at dissidents.
One additional part of Michigan’s education could be the statement inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which was written by Emma Lazarus is 1883:
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame. With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Such a statement flies in the face of the position that Representative Agema takes towards immigrants.
Then there is the matter of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The original pledge was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In 1924 the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution lobbied to change the Pledge’s words, ‘my Flag,’ to ‘the Flag of the United States of America. It wasn’t until 1954, during the height of the McCarthy hearings that the words “under God” were added to the Pledge, a campaign initiated by the Catholic group the Knights of Columbus.
Representative Agema continues to push his far right agenda on the people of Michigan and the news media continues to give him a pass by not asking reasonable questions to challenge his proposed legislation.
The continued sanitizing of Dr. King by the local press
As the country prepares to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, everyone with their own agendas tends to come out and use the memory of the slain civil rights leader for their own purposes.
A few years ago Glen Beck organized an event on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and many social conservatives will often misuse Dr. King’s comment about judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
However, social conservatives are not the only ones who misuse the memory of Dr. King. We often see social liberals use King in very sanitized, self-serving ways.
Such was the case in a January 15 story on MLive. The article focuses on what three local African Americans have to say about how to achieve Dr. King’s dream of equality. The Press reporter never really clarifies what was meant by King in terms of equality and presents each of the three responses as in step with what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.
What is particularly problematic about the article was the focus on black businesses, being entrepreneurs, development and preparing youth to “survive in the work world.” The comment about black businesses came from the head of the Black Chamber of Commerce, the statement about development came from a City Commissioner and the comment about youth surviving in the work world was from the acting superintendent of Grand Rapids Public Schools.
While one could certainly argue that King supported more Black economic autonomy and independence, he more often spoke about economic justice and against poverty. This is not the focus of the Grand Rapids Black Chamber of Commerce, as we noted in an article in September.
Ironically, although much of the emphasis is on economics, not much of what was said reflects the analysis that Dr. King provided during his life, particularly during the last few years of his life.
First, King recognized that the poverty that befell Americans, particularly Black Americans, is based on a history of exploitation.
“No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures, which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. I am proposing, therefore, that just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial.” (Why We Can’t Wait)
In addition to King’s version of reparations, the slain civil rights leader was also critical of free market capitalism:
“We are now making demands that will cost the nation something. You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with the captains of industry….Now this means that we are treading in difficult waters, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong…with capitalism…here must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a Democratic Socialism.”
King’s critique of capitalism and the growing wealth gap in the US led him to support worker rights campaigns, which is well documented in Michael Honey’s recent book, “All Labor Has Dignity.” This support for workers led him to Memphis in April of 1968 to support sanitation workers who were striking for better work conditions and pay. King was also in the midst of an organizing effort to confront the federal government’s failure to defend American families it what was known as the Poor People’s Campaign.
None of this kind of analysis and advocacy on behalf of the poor is reflected in the comments by those cited in the MLive story. The lack of substantive commentary is disappointing as is the failure of the Press reporter to question how the sources comments were consistent with Dr. King’s notion of equality.
Lastly, it should be noted that the group United for a Fair Economy has just come out with their annual State of the Dream Report. In the 2012 report, which looks at the wealth divide in the US along racial lines, the authors identify four roadblocks to achieving Dr. King’s Dream.
- Disparities in income perpetuate poverty in communities of color and will continue to do so unless change is made.
- Increasing wealth inequality entrenches the racial economic divide.
- Education is one of the most important tools we have for increasing social mobility, yet dramatic disparities in education perpetuate inequality.
- The mass incarceration of people of color is historically unprecedented.
Imagine if the Press reporter had known about this report or familiarized herself with what Dr. King really stood for. How would that have changed the content and what would be the benefit to the West Michigan community?
This article by Anthony DiMaggio is re-posted from ZNet.
The Obama administration becomes a more worthy successor to the neoconservatives’ criminal agenda as every day passes. The parallels between the Bush and Obama administrations are so striking as to make me wonder, is there any difference between these administrations at all? The answer, sadly, seems to be a resounding no. In terms of public opinion, there appears to be a large difference in how the administrations are perceived, with Obama-noids among liberal segments of the population worshipping Obama for allegedly restoring honor to the American presidency and pushing for a more multilateral foreign policy. Such celebration is nonsense, considering the reckless criminality with which Obama has carried himself. The most recent example is seen in the newly emerged video depicting American soldiers urinating on a number of dead Afghans; whether they are civilians or Taliban “insurgents” is not ultimately known.
If nothing else, this act is flagrantly illegal under the rules of war, as described in the Geneva Conventions – which are legally binding upon U.S. military forces acting abroad. As the Guardian reports, the recent surfacing of the urination video compounds feelings of anger toward the U.S., in light of previous military transgressions in Afghanistan:
“The US military command in Kabul, which was severely embarrassed last year by revelations that Americans soldiers were running a ‘kill squad’ murdering Afghan civilians, said it would investigate the undated video, and that if it proved to be authentic, desecration of corpses would be regarded as a serious crime. Despoiling of the dead is illegal under the Geneva conventions as well as under US military law.”
The video depicts behavior that is unquestionably illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention requires parties to an armed conflict to take steps “to search for the killed and wounded,” while the First Geneva Convention (Article 15) and the Second Geneva Convention (Article 18) state explicitly that occupying powers’ responsibilities with regard to those killed in combat are to “prevent their being despoiled.” Urination on the bodies of the dead (whether they are civilians or military personnel) clearly constitutes a violation of the rules of war, as agreed to by the United States. Such protections under the Geneva Conventions hold the force of national law in the United States, as the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution states that foreign treaties enjoy protected status as the highest law of the land.
The Obama administration is trying to distance itself from the disturbing behavior in question, releasing a series of statements depicting these acts as the vulgar acts of a vicious few, and with buck passing directed at those in the field who engaged in this behavior. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called the act “deplorable,” and that “this conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military.” Panetta refrained from referring to the behavior as criminal, however, similarly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who expressed “total dismay” at the video, but also explained that the behavior ran contradictory to the alleged standards that “the vast, vast majority of our personnel – particularly our marines – hold themselves to.”
The harsh reality surrounding recent events in Afghanistan – when taken in conjunction with other behaviors of the U.S. – suggest that the Obama administration is guilty of the very same criminality and thuggery that characterized the Bush-neocon agenda. This is ultimately Obama’s war, and all the criminal and terrorist acts undertaken by foot soldiers on the ground ultimately fall on Obama’s shoulders. Obama may not have ordered soldiers to urinate on the Afghan dead, but he – like Bush – has created a system of criminality and impunity in which the United States flouts national and international law while contemptuously wagging its finger at the rest of the world. U.S. paternalism and aggression, it turns out, didn’t end with Bush. Democrats and faithful liberals will shudder at these thoughts, but their rose-colored glasses looking back at Obama’s first term are the product of their own indoctrination and willful ignorance concerning the reality of U.S. foreign policy.
Little distinguishes the foreign policy agendas of the past three presidents – Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Those who question this claim should review Clinton’s national security strategy, which reads like a carbon copy of the Bush administration’s strategy – articulated only a few years later. Clinton, like Bush, spoke in his security strategy about the importance of using military force to further U.S. military power and secure key natural resources around the globe. Clinton’s strategy similarly focused on the issues of radical Islamists and terrorism, while also stressing the alleged dangers of weapons of mass destruction and their supposed proliferation among Arab and Muslim states throughout the Middle East. Clinton was a gleeful supporter of murderous sanctions and the military siege directed against Iraq; his administration was long concerned with overthrowing Saddam Hussein through the use of military force. The only real difference between the Clinton and Bush administration was tactical; Clinton recognized that a long, protracted military occupation of Iraq would be toxic to his presidential legacy, whereas Bush stumbled incompetently through a war that destroyed his presidency’s credibility.
Obama’s behavior as commander in chief is identical in most respects to that of the Bush regime, as he’s displayed a fundamental contempt for the rule of law, for the sovereignty of foreign nations, and for the basic securities of the people of the Middle East and surrounding regions. His escalation of the war in Afghanistan led to the widespread destruction and destabilization of a society already left in ruins after decades of war. According to the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, estimates suggest that 1,462 civilians were killed in the first half of 2011 alone, an increase of 15 percent from 2010. The UN documented another 2,677 civilian deaths in 2010, following Obama’s surge in Afghanistan, translating into a total of 4,239 for the first year and a half of Obama’s Afghan campaign. This total represents a significantly larger death toll than that seen in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in which 2,966 were murdered. In total, various estimates suggest that somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 Afghan civilian lives were lost since 2001, between six to 13 times as many lives as those lost on 9/11. This pattern of killings is tantamount to dramatically escalating terrorism in the name of “fighting terror.”
Obama is continuing Bush’s reckless contempt for the law, state sovereignty, and elementary principles of democracy in many other ways. Most recently, he signed Congressional legislation illegally allowing the government to indefinitely detain American citizens who are merely suspected of supporting or engaging in terrorism (court proceedings used to determine whether such charges were legitimate). A list of other transgressions from this administration is extensive, and includes the following:
– A contempt for open public access to information, most clearly seen in the sadistic punishment directed at Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. While Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg successfully avoided incarceration following his exposure of official lies used to justify the Vietnam War, and is now celebrated as an anti-war hero, Manning has been held in solitary confinement – a punitive practice in which civil liberties lawyer Glenn Greenwald correctly refers to as “cruel and inhumane treatment.” As Greenwald argues, such confinement – and the accompanying deprivation of social contact that solitary confinement necessitates, “create[s] long term psychological injuries…For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he [Manning] sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.”
– The Obama administration’s invocation of the state secrets doctrine. In late 2010, Obama invoked this doctrine in order to prohibit a federal judge from obtaining information in relation to the CIA’s criminal targeting of U.S. citizens for assassination. The case in question involved U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi (who was believed to be residing in Yemen) for his alleged role in attempting to bomb a Detroit bound airliner. In encouraging the federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit over the targeted assassination, Obama claimed that the case would reveal information that would threaten U.S. national security. The state secrets doctrine is based on a long discredited and dubious justification for refusing to share information with other branches of government that reaches back to the 1950s. In 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government had the right to classify information that would endanger national security in relation to the widows of three engineers who were killed in a military airplane crash. The widows, who had sued the government for negligence, were denied remuneration after the court allowed the government to refrain from sharing information about the deaths. Declassified government documents made available decades later definitively refuted the notion that classifying information on the accident had anything to do with national security. Rather, the documents revealed embarrassing information exposing government negligence in relation to the crash. The government’s bogus state secrets justification didn’t stop the Obama administration from declaring its “right” to refusing to share information about its illegal assassination program (in terms of illegality, the 5th amendment explicitly states that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”). The state secrets declaration was rightly condemned by even the neoconservative elements of the establishment media such as the Washington Post, which complained that “there is something utterly un-American about saying that the executive branch can simply tell the judicial branch to butt out of a matter for national security reasons – and there’s no recourse.”
– Obama’s engagement in illegal attacks against a variety of sovereign states, including Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. All three have been targeted in various predator drone strikes, to the dismay of political leaders in those countries. These strikes were undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism, but clearly violate the United Nations Charter, which allows force only with either Security Council authorization or in the case of an act of self-defense against an ongoing attack. Obama would no doubt cite the 9/11 attacks as justifying predator drone strikes in the name of self-defense, but there’s little to take seriously in such a claim. The U.N. Charter (Article 51) states that any acts of self defense must be immediately reported to the Security Council (a stipulation in which the Obama administration has not fulfilled, since many of these attacks were secret and information about them was classified). The Charter also states that self defense includes only actions taken “if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.” The 9/11 terrorist attacks do not represent an ongoing attack on the United States (especially since the Obama administration already declared an end to the “War on Terror”), and this point is important to establish in light of the stipulation, referred to in Article 51 U.N. Charter, that military force used must be to repel an attack that is occurring in the present, rather than in an increasingly distant past. If the 9/11 attacks can be used to legally justify the use of force against any alleged terrorist threat, at any time, in any place that the U.S. chooses through the foreseeable future, then international law becomes vacuous – a tragic farce.
– The Obama administration’s complete contempt for law in the case of its vicious attacks on the rule of law, as related to due process and the rights of the detained. Obama notoriously succumbed to Democratic Congressional opposition to the closing of Guantanamo and the movement of detainees to U.S. federal prisons where they could await trial. Obama folded on closing Guantanamo, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that detainees festering there have to be granted full due process rights, as required under the Geneva Conventions and the Bill of Rights. Obama also continued the rendition torture program began under Bush, despite the fact that the use of rendition and torture for intelligence gathering is blatantly illegal under the Geneva Conventions and the 8th amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Obama announced this month that he will be moving forward with the lifting of the ban on military tribunals, in direct violation of the Supreme Court ruling, which declared such tribunals illegal. The Supreme Court declared in 2004 that military tribunals violate the normal proceedings that accompany domestic U.S. trials, since they grant a far lower standard of protection to the accused (tribunals allow hearsay to be admitted into court, allow convictions based on majority, rather than unanimous voting, and allow the government to monitor attorney client communications). Obama’s decision to ignore the Supreme Court’s outlawing of military tribunals (which violate the Geneva Conventions’ requirement that court proceeding provide normal protections for the accused) reveals just how far this administration has come in its criminality and contempt for the law.
Obama’s assault on basic principles of liberal democracy is an affront to our basic dignity. He’s helped institutionalize fundamental attacks on the American legal and political system that were the hallmark of an imperial Bush presidency. That Obama’s been able to pursue essentially identical policies to the Bush administration, while liberals praise the president for restoring respectability to the White House, is a testament to the powers of Orwellian propaganda and liberal delusion. Fortunately, most Americans reject such propaganda. As of November 2011, CNN polling found that Americans were twice as likely to oppose the Afghan war than to support it. Three-quarters want a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Strong majorities oppose rendition and the denial of due process to detainees. Most are suspicious of the notion that the president (or any political leader) can refuse to provide basic information to other branches of government or to the public. Sadly, the many transgressions of the Obama administration are largely ignored by a political-media system that obsessed over Bush’s crimes, but is all too happy to ignore them when they’re engaged in by a Democrat in the White House.
Occupy and home foreclosures
This video is re-posted from ZNet.
In recent weeks there has been an increasing shift on the part of some in the Occupy Movement, with emphasis on occupying vacant and foreclosed homes.
In December there was a national day against home foreclosures and in some communities people have moved from occupying public parks to occupying abandoned homes. There is great information and stories posted regularly at the facebook page Occupy Against Foreclosures.
The video below from the Real News Network features a man in Brooklyn who has occupied a foreclosed home and gain the support of the local Occupy Movement to keep and repair the home.
Take Action to stop deportation of young man from Oceana County
Over the past few years, the US government has increased its efforts to target and deport more and more political & economic refugees who have come to this country.
Many in the immigrant community and their allies have been alarmed at the rate at which these deportations have taken place. People have also organized to respond to this unjust policy of deportation through a variety of actions.
Last month we reported on efforts in southern Michigan to prevent the deportation of a mother of three that was successful, in part to the amount of people who objected to the deportation and the coalition of groups that came together to advocate on this woman’s behalf.
Now there is a campaign to prevent the deportation of a young man from Oceana County. The groups involved in the case provide the following background information:
On a November evening of last year 24-year-old Manuel Marron Marquez was relaxing at his home after work in Hart, a small town in Oceana County Michigan. Suddenly a group of armed Federal agents began banging on the front door.
The ICE agents demanded to be let in and claimed they were looking for a person who was on a wanted list as part of a Fugitive Operations detail. Manuel and his family felt they had no choice but to let them in but explained that the person they were looking for did not live there. In fact they honestly told the agents they did not even know who he was. The agents apparently did not believe them and insisted that Manuel and the others show their identity documents and submit to interrogations. The person they were searching for was not present and it is believed either never lived there or has not been at the address in years.
After determining that Manuel was not in US lawfully, Manuel was then arrested. Although he was not charged with any criminal charges he has been detained in Immigration custody at the Battle Creek jail ever since, including through the holidays, as if he was a grand criminal… Bond was denied by the judge because he does not qualify for any long term relief under current immigration laws. The legal arm of ICE who has been specifically authorized to use prosecutorial discretion particularly for Dream act youths also denied discretion although Manuel is a H.S graduate who has lived in the US almost his whole life.
This is another clear example of how our current immigration policies are not only flawed, but how they impact people and families.
People are being asked to sign an online petition created by One Michigan, a undocumented youth immigration rights group.
Three Years After the Bombs Fell on Gaza
This article by Ahmad Barqawi is re-posted from CounterPunch.
It’s exactly three years ago that the ins and outs of the overpopulated strip were sealed off by the Israeli military just as tightly as the entire “International Community” shut its eyes and ambivalently turned its back on a horrifying massacre that was in the making. And it’s three years ago that we’ve used up what little was left of our quota of sympathy and compassion towards the Palestinians and took our collective apathy to a whole new level.
Three years after the “unilateral cessation of military operations” on January 18th, 2009; and the Israeli apparatus of mass murder and annihilation is still roaring at the borders; ready to be initiated at a moment’s notice, the IOF is literally licking its lips, salivating at the chance of yet another vicious round of wholesale slaughter, its animalistic zeal for more bloodletting is as vigorous today as it was only three years ago –if not more-, Israeli political, diplomatic and military officials alike don’t seem to miss an opportunity to beat the war drums – and they do so with an almost reckless abandon.
The day starts and ends with the gloom of impending war amassing over Gaza; on December 27th, 2011 (third anniversary of the war on Gaza), Israeli army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz stated that another attack on the strip is “inevitable” while southern brigade commander Tal Hermoni was quoted by Haaretz newspaper as saying that another “varied and different military campaign” is being prepared, this is of course not counting the fact that targeted killings, aerial night raids and the occasional ground incursion have already become such horrible albeit daily realities in the strip.
Today, an entire population in Gaza is held hostage to dire living conditions and the Zionist state’s death grip, Israel’s heartless policy of meticulously calculating and determining the calorie-intake for Gazans is still the order of the day; university students are being robbed of their academic futures due to arbitrary travel restrictions, patients denied their right to treatment and systemic disregard for anything even resembling human rights still goes on apace.
Three years after the bombs fell; and Palestinians in Gaza –with so many cards stacked against them- are still trying to piece together the broken shards of their lives and entire families are still living through worn out photographs of their loved ones; those who lost their lives to Israel’s Casting Lead and the rest of the world’s self-incriminating silence.
Three years after the bombs fell; and new injustices heaped on top of ongoing ones. The piercing wail of sirens, keening voices of loss amongst the ruins of the strip still prevail till this very day in the little coastal enclave. Three years after the bombs fell; and the only justice the international community could afford to the people of Gaza was a meek report that was even disowned by its author.
Three years after the sky of Gaza was blanketed with all means of spiraling white phosphorous ammunitions; and the ground of the strip is still littered with leftover shells and unexploded bombs laying in wait for a second chance to claim yet more lives of Palestinian kids. Three years after the bombs fell; and living a normal childhood still remains such a rare feat for Gazan children as the sheer weight of life on Israel’s draconian terms takes its heavy toll on their fragile souls; deathly hues of the last war still take hold of their memories and the overcrowded makeshift classrooms are daily reminders of the horrors they’ve endured in that winter of 2008/2009.
Three years after Israeli “spectators” from nearby southern cities took to hilltops in groups to catch sight of the sky raining death and destruction on defenseless Palestinians, giggling, sharing laughs and passing their binoculars from one person to the next as they cheered enthusiastically for the “might” of the IOF as if the carnage unfolding right before their eyes was a mere sporting event; and killing is still a spectator sport for Israeli authorities, trigger-happy junior Israeli border officers still get their kicks from firing live rounds at Palestinian farmers attempting to harvest their crops near the “buffer zone” while hunting the Palestinians in their tunnels near the Rafah border with unmanned drones is still the “standard operating procedure”.
Three years after the bombs fell – almost one year after the dictatorship of Husni Mubarak was dissolved-; and the crushing weight of Israel’s blockade is still pressing hard against the chests of Gazans, the inhumane siege of Gaza –which has long outserved its theoretical usefulness, if there ever was any to begin with- has gradually morphed into this internationally condoned policy that the world has become, for all intents and purposes, far too comfortable to abandon; eventually this chronic passiveness has sadly maneuvered the Palestinians in Gaza into a seemingly unending life of siege and collective punishment, a life in which they have no choice but to literally tunnel their own way out.
Today “Operation Cast Lead” remains an open wound and a dark stain on the conscience of the world as its sense of morality and justice is rapidly waning and the value of a human life remains gravely skewed. Are Palestinian victims somehow not worthy of mass candle-lit vigils at dusk in honor of their memory? Will they ever have someone to recite each and every one of their names at their own “hallowed ground”? The images of the 22-day long massacre in Gaza are too strong to be forgotten; of grief stricken fathers digging the remains of their loved ones buried under the rubbles of what was once their house, of the injured wheeled into chaotic emergency rooms on office chairs, of unidentified bodies of dead children with the word “anonymous” scribbled in black markers across their tiny bellies at the morgue in the Adwan hospital and of doctors at al Shifa Hospital desperately performing CPR on little infants’ chests to no avail.
Unfortunately the media still has a blind spot when it comes to Gaza; screams of protest from Tunisia, Cairo, Benghazi and Sana’a have drowned out the incessant appeals to lift the blockade. Of course; plenty of exploits to be reaped from the Arab Spring nowadays, where -sadly enough- opportunism and gutter politics reign supreme, and so little time to do so.
Three years after the bombs fell; and it seems that Gaza will remain on the back-burner for a while; largely absent from our TV sets and daily dose of news bites, until perhaps Cast Lead II.
The speaker at today’s January Series lecture was for Bush policy advisor and speechwriter Micheal Gerson.
Gerson was introduced by Calvin President Gaylen Byker who acknowledged some of Gerson’s political background and his involvement with groups like the Council on Foreign Relations.
Gerson himself referred to his work with Prison Fellowship Ministries founder Chuck Colson and said of Colson that he would be “remembered as one of the great reformers of the 20th Century.” According to SourceWatch, Gerson has also been a policy advisor for the ultra conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
The former policy analyst also spoke a bit about his relationship with George W. Bush, in the most sanitized and superficial way. Gerson said the former President had a locker room humor he was not used to and that he found it difficult to just “hang out” with Bush. Gerson also mentioned his involvement with the pseudo justice group run by rock star Bono, ONE.
Gerson laid out his talk by wanting to identify the ways in which Christians can engage themselves in the world. He said that often the statements that public Christians make in the world today gives us an indication of their theology. He mentioned the various responses to the earthquake in Haiti, where some religious leaders would say it was an act of God against devil worshipers, while others chose to focus on relief work.
Gerson acknowledged that Jesus was an enemy of the state, “although he never espoused a political theology.” Gerson said that often those who mix religion with political power results in oppression, but he also said that the failure of Christians to response to contemporary politics, can also result in injustice.
The conservative Christian then went on to speak about the evolution of the Religious Right, beginning with their response the cultural revolution of the 1960s. He said they organized and became deeply involved in the political process.
Gerson says that one of the unexpected partnerships that occurred within the conservative sector was how evangelicals and Catholics came together, despite a history of mutual suspicion. Catholics such as Scalia and Pope John Paul II are highly respected in evangelical circles for their “principled stances.”
Gerson did acknowledge that the language of the Religious Right often was alienating and off-putting and that the issues they have got behind often made people view the religious right as merely a tool of partisan politics.
According to Gerson the most important manifestation of Christians in the world is to engage in justice. He then cites Dr. King and his letter from a Birmingham Jail. Up to this point there were mild contradictions in Gerson’s presentation, but referencing King was over the top. How could someone who has been connected to Washington powerbrokers, conservative think tanks and the Religious Right hold up this powerful statement from Dr. King? He said that what made King’s letter so powerful was the notion that those who are being oppressed can’t wait and cannot be patient.
What the former Bush speechwriter then said clarified both his notion of justice and it further exposed his true colors. Gerson said the best example of his experience of religion and politics was Bush’s decision to fight AIDS in Africa by passing legislation known as PEPFAR. Gerson talked about seeing the results of this US aide program and how it saved lives.
However, there are other perspectives on this matter, particularly African voices that take a different view. One such view is a criticism of the conditions imposed on African nations with the PEPFAR funds, such as an abstinence only policy, no use of condoms and denying African nations the ability to make their own genetic AIDS drugs.
These critiques cut through the cloud created by the justice rhetoric that Gerson used throughout his talk. The PERFAR funding is the best example of religion in politics, because it not only imposes one groups set of values on another, it maintains the status quo and never challenges systemic injustice by emphasizing personal responsibility. This is the relationship between religion and politics that Gerson embraces and we shouldn’t be fooled by his claims to love justice.
Occupy Wall Street joins Occupy The Dream: Is It Cooptation, or Growing the Movement?
This article by Glen Ford is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
The Democratic Party may have entered the Occupy Wall Street movement through the “Black door,” in the form of Occupy The Dream, the Black ministers’ group led by former NAACP chief and Million Man March national director Dr. Benjamin Chavis and Baltimore mega-church pastor Rev. Jamal Bryant. Both are fervent supporters of President Obama.
Occupy The Dream’s National Steering Committee is made up entirely of clergy, as are its Members at Large, but its secular inspiration comes from media mogul (and credit card purveyor) Russell Simmons, who was a frequent visitor to Manhattan’s occupied Zuccotti Park. Simmons is co-chairman, with Dr. Chavis, of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, whose website is now mainly dedicated to the Occupy The Dream project. It is through Simmons that the ministers hope to attract entertainers and athletes to Occupy The Dream events.
Occupy Wall Street organizer David DeGraw tied the knot with the Dream team at a Washington Press Club conference on December 14, invoking Dr. Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s campaign and the need to “penetrate deeper into the African American community.” Dr. Chavis said, “If Dr. King were alive today, he would be part of Occupy Wall Street,” and Rev. Bryant, pastor of Baltimore’s 10,000-member Empowerment Temple AME Church, pledged that Occupy The Dream will work “in lock-step” with OWS. The OWS/OTD alliance would begin, they announced, with a multi-city action at Federal Reserve Bank offices on MLK Day, January 16.
The very next Sunday, Rev. Bryant was at his pulpit exhorting his congregation to get out the vote for the president.
Dr. Chavis is also an active Obama booster. In his November 30 syndicated column for Black newspapers, titled “Brilliant First Lady Michelle Obama,” Chavis wrote:
“As we are about to enter into the heated national political debates and campaigns of the 2012 national election year, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be under intense pressures to maneuver through what may be one of the most difficult periods of time to maintain resilience and hope.
“I am encouraged and optimistic, however, that President Obama will be reelected if millions of us do what we are supposed to do and that is go out and vote in record numbers 12 months from now.”
Chavis followed with an even more direct appeal:
“All of us should be responding by lending a helping hand, giving of our time, energy and money, and to make our own contributions to push forward for more progress to ensure the reelection of President Barack Obama. Let’s determine the future by how we act today.”
It appears that Occupy Wall Street’s new Black affiliate is also in “lock-step” with the corporate Democrat in the White House, whose administration has funneled trillions of dollars to Wall Street and greatly expanded U.S. theaters of war.
There is, however, a certain historical logic at work, here. Dr. Martin King’s Poor People’s Campaign, disrupted by his assassination, is seen by many as a prime inspiration for OWS. But of course, King’s persona and the whole saga of the Sixties has been methodically co-opted over the intervening decades, most directly by Black ministers claiming to be acting in furtherance of his “Dream” while selling their congregants’ votes to one or the other of the two Rich Men’s Parties. President Obama and his operatives have attempted to draw a straight line between Dr. King’s “Dream” and Obama’s own political ascent ever since his “coming home” speech at a Selma, Alabama, church in March of 2007, where the candidate assumed the mantle of Joshua and asserted that Blacks had already come “90 percent of the way” towards equality (with the transparent implication that his entrance to the White House would complete the process.)
Perhaps the most historically and politically corrupt poster of the 2008 campaign superimposed Obama’s head on Malcolm X’s body in the only known picture of Dr. King and Malcolm, shaking hands. So, there is nothing novel about labeling a 2012 Black church-based, pro-Obama electoral campaign as “Occupying the Dream.” Black ministers in campaign mode routinely depict Obama’s political troubles as indistinguishable from threats to “The Dream,” whose embodiment is ensconced in the White House. That’s simply common currency among Black preachers pushing for Obama.
Russell Simmons brings bling to the mix. As the Occupy The Dream website states: “Teaming up with entertainers such as Bon Jovi, Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen, and Kanye West, Dr. Bryant encourages citizens of every race, color and creed to join Occupy the Dream.” Simmons is a genius at transforming social capital into the spendable kind – which is why he has been courting OWS so diligently. He is now fully “inside” the movement, flanked and buttressed by loyal Obama Black clergy.
It is highly unlikely – damn near inconceivable – that Occupy The Dream will do anything that might embarrass this president. Its ministers can be expected to electioneer for Obama at every opportunity. Their January 16 actions are directed at the Federal Reserve, which is technically independent from the executive branch of government – although, in practice, the Fed has been Obama’s principal mechanism for bailing out the banks. Will the ministers pretend, next Monday, that the president is somehow removed from the Fed’s massive transfers of the people’s credit and cash to Wall Street over the past three years? Is Obama to be absolved by clergymen wearing “Occupy” buttons?
Far from tamping their Obama fervor, the OWS brand equips the “Dream” ministers (and Simmons’ entertainment assets) to accomplish a special mission: to insulate the president from the Occupy movement and the national conversation on economic equality – or, better yet, to make him appear to be part of the solution. If they so choose.
OWS has, to date, been effective in warding off cooptation by Democratic Party fronts such as Rebuild The Dream and MoveOn.org. But, it seems their antennas were not so finely attuned to the political structures of Black America: who the players are, and how the game is run. The Obama campaign may have found its niche on “the Black-hand side” of OWS.
At this late stage, there is no antidote to the potential cooptation, except to rev up the movement’s confrontation with the oligarchic powers-that-be – including Wall Street’s guy in the White House. Let’s see what happens if OWS demonstrators join with Occupy The Dream at Federal Reserve sites on January 16 carrying placards unequivocally implicating Obama in the Fed’s bailouts of the banksters, as Occupy demonstrators have done so often in the past. Will the Dream’s leadership be in “lock-step” with that? Maybe so – I’ve heard that miracles sometimes do happen.
In his December 30 newspaper column, Dr. Chavis offered these thoughts:
“2012 will be a test for the United States. There will be a political test in terms of how millions of people will vote for the future. There will also be an economic test between the 99% and the 1% on the issues of income inequality and economic justice.”
We do, indeed, face a test in 2012: Will the Democratic Party be enabled to swallow up the Left – as it does every four years – including the fragile and tentative structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement? And, will the Democrats enter through the Black door?
Confronting Institutional Racism in the US and West Michigan: Michelle Alexander to speak on The New Jim Crow at GVSU
Next week Michelle Alexander, author of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, will be speaking at GVSU.
Alexander, a lawyer, will be giving two talks, both focusing on the thesis of her book. The thesis essentially says that there are more African Americans in the criminal justice system – prison, jail, probation and parole – right now in the US then there were slaves during the peak of chattel slavery.
This sobering reality flies in the face of all the daily punditry about how the US is now in a post-racial era. We here constantly that there is no need for affirmative action, no need for social welfare and certainly no need to even talk about racism in the US, especially since the election of Barack Obama. Alexander’s book not only challenges such claim, it smashed them with hard data and sharp analysis.
In Kent County, the most recent census data shows that African Americans make up only 9.7% of the population. While Blacks make up just under 10 percent of the areas population, they make up over a third of those in who have been arrested, are in jail or are on parole/probation.
In other words, Kent County is a microcosm of this new Jim Crow that Alexander speaks of. Other statistics also bear this out. According to the Kids Count 2011 data, African American children are seven times more likely to spend half or more time in poverty than White children.
The Kids Count data is supported by a 2010 Brookings Institute report from last year, which listed the Grand Rapids metro area as one of the top areas in terms of the growth in percentage of the population now living in poverty.
This kind of poverty has distinctive consequences such as the fact that, “The infant mortality rate among African American infants is almost triple that of white infants, 15.4 per 1,000 live births compared with 5.5 deaths per 1,000 for white babies.”
In addition, the Grand Rapids Public Schools, which serves a predominantly Black student population, has inadequate funds, resulting in disproportionately larger classroom sizes and low testing scores than the surrounding White suburban schools districts.
Poverty rates, the lack of quality education, and an unequal application of drug sentencing laws, means that Blacks are going to be disproportionately caught up in what Angela Davis refers to as the Prison Industrial Complex.
This kind of institutional racism is what plagues racial minorities within the US, but is not a reality that many white people are willing to acknowledge. This is often the case in Grand Rapids where the White community often becomes defensive when claims of institutional racism are raised, so much so that the most visible form of racial justice work is manifested in “Diversity workshops.”
However, diversity training does not alleviate Black poverty, it does not keep Black people out of jail/prison and it does not provide adequate funding for Black children to get a proper education. This is what Michelle Alexander means by mass incarceration in an age of colorblindness. White Americans disproportionately do not want to acknowledge the ways in which institutional racism is manifested in this country.
Michelle Alexander
Wednesday, January 18
5:00PM
Grand River Rm, Kirkhof Center, GVSU Allendale
Thursday, January 19
10:00AM
Cook-DeWitt Center, GVSU Allendale
Both talks are free and open to the public.
Channel 8 continues tradition of climate denial
As I write this posting we are being told that there will be a snow-storm coming to Wet Michigan sometime Thursday night. All the local weather people have made sure we are prepared for this.
However, today is yet another winter day of temperatures about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, a fact that WOOD TV 8 weather reporter Matt Kirkwood made during a Tuesday night forecast.
Kirkwood was reporting the weather standing at Rosa Parks Circle in his shorts to make a point about how many days the temperatures have been above average. Kirkwood stated that over the past 41 days of winter there have been 25 days of 40 degree plus temperatures.
At one point Kirkwood was holding both a shovel and a golf club to illustrate the point that people have been more likely to play golf than to shovel snow. Such an illustration reflects either what channel 8 personnel do in their free time or the kind of audience they want to appeal to.
More importantly, despite all the effort to tell viewers that it has been an extremely warm winter with minimal snow, Kirkwood did not attempt to offer any explanations as to why this might be happening. The WOOD TV weather reporter definitely did not suggest that maybe West Michigan has seen so many warm days in winter because of global warming.
This is not surprising from a station where other weather reporters have actually denied that global warming is a reality. In 2007, there was a posting on Media Mouse about former channel 8 weather reporter Craig James and his position on global warming.
In 2009, Media Mouse again noted that the most recent head meteorologist at WOOD TV, Bill Steffen, was also denying global warming. GRIID noted a year ago that Steffen went after Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell when the mayor mentioned global warming in his State of the City address.
The fact that WOOD TV weather reporter Matt Kirkwood did not mention global climate change as the reason that West Michigan has been experiencing such warm temperatures this winter doesn’t mean he is denying global warming. However, to not explore this issue does a tremendous disservice to the public.
Within the past year there have been numerous new reports how the impact of global warming. One report discussed how climate change was altering many plant species. Another report discussed the rate at which Arctic ice is melting and the International Energy Agency stated recently that the window for reversing human generated global warming is approaching nearly irreversible levels.
Considering that the global community of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been stating for years that global warming is a very serious problem and that it is caused by human activity, it is time that weather reporters treat unusual climate patterns as a serious matter.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 