What the Guns Are Saying: A Look at HB-4009 in Michigan
In mid-January, State Senator Mike Green sponsored House Bill 4009 into the Michigan Legislature. We have Green to thank for our concealed weapon laws in Michigan. Now he wants to take away “gun free zones” from the current state law. The new bill will allow people to carry concealed weapons into schools, bars, sports arenas, and churches.
Under the new law, gun owners will also be able carry guns into hospitals, college dormitories, casinos, and concert halls with capacities over 2,500 seats.
When Representative Gabrielle Giffords was gunned down in January along with eighteen other people, some pundits wondered if this might finally bring about tighter gun control regulations nationwide. It seems that, in Michigan, we’re having the exact opposite reaction. Just looking at the gun-free zones that might be going away makes the mind boggle: it’s easy to picture the consequences of guns at a rancorous sports event…in a college classroom where a professor’s grade just took away someone’s scholarship…in a hospital where a doctor failed to save the life of some outraged and grieving man’s partner or girlfriend.
But judging from reader comments at the Grand Rapids Press site, many people feel that they need guns with them at all times. They say they need them for protection. This even though Michigan ranks midway in gun deaths in the U.S., 27th out of 50 states, and gun violence in Michigan has dropped steadily throughout the 2000s.
Of course, gun owners will tell you the drop is due to more people carrying concealed weapons. These people routinely ignore studies that show that just owning a gun makes you more likely to become a victim of gun violence. They adamantly believe the opposite, in fact. As one person wrote on MLive, “An armed society is a polite society.”
There are well-known facts to counter that statement: The United States has more gun deaths than almost any other country in the world. We’re only lagging behind Columbia, South Africa, and Thailand. Current figures show that in a one-year period, there were 9 gun deaths in Chile, 12 in Ireland, 68 in Switzerland. Canada had 144, and Germany 296. El Salvador had 1,441 gun deaths, and Mexico had 2,606. Meanwhile, the United States had 9,369 gun deaths. An armed society is a killing society. Tighter gun controls obviously lead to less violence.
Still, it’s not a set of facts that sinks easily into the American consciousness. Why? Let’s start by thanking Buffalo Bill and the myth of the Wild West, the reason why little boys love to play cowboys. But it’s important to remember the real lure of the game. There are not just cowboys; there are also Indians.
There was plenty of real-life, wholesale slaughter of Indians during the 19th century in the battle for White supremacy in the Western states, but the image that most people hold in their minds of this violence is pure fiction. William Cody’s Wild West Show was the first to frame our familiar national tale: cowboys triumphantly shooting and killing hostile, menacing Indians who attacked wagon trains or military forts without provocation. Audiences in the stadium cheered the brave cowboys and booed the Indians.
By the 1930s, cowboy movies such as “Dodge City” and “Red River” were presenting the same myth—that Indians were always the attackers, and that cowboys, with deadly accuracy and perfect aim, always successfully gunned them down, protecting grateful women and children as they did so. In other words, in this story White people act solely in self-defense, putting them on the side of the angels.
This theme of defending against the aggression of “the Other,” the terrifying element bent on the destruction of American hard work and blocking American imperialism, has now carried over into action films—where the protagonist fends off the foreign enemy du jour (Russians, Vietnamese, Saudis). And it’s found in science fiction films, where alien invaders bent on taking everything away from us are destroyed by scrappy heroes who not only save their wives and children, but the entire planet.
Most people who want to carry concealed weapons into places like sports arenas, hospitals, and even churches aren’t usually planning to gun down random victims. Instead, fortified by these embedded myths in the male culture, they are sure that they will use these weapons in self defense—always successfully, just like any lawful cowboy.
What’s interesting is that you can actually hear these themes in the comments about HB 4009. “Gun free zones should be called sitting duck zones,” wrote one reader, and another added, “There is no reason that law abiding citizens should be denied the right to defend themselves with a firearm if they choose to do so. These ‘gun free’ zones only mean one thing…everyone but criminals are unarmed.”
Another man wrote earnestly about defending his family, adding, “This [law] does help the people of Michigan. It gives anyone that has the good sense to handle their own self defense the ability to stay ready wherever they are.”
Not one person in the thread spoke about the poor, the unemployed, immigrants, or racial minorities. No one named their imagined adversaries. But Michael Moore deftly nailed this point recently on the Rachel Maddow Show:
“That imaginary person that’s going to break into your home and kill you, who does that person look like? It’s not freckle-faced Jimmy down the street. We never really want to talk about the racial or the class part of this in terms of how it’s the poor or it’s people of color that we imagine we’re afraid of.”
The proposed Michigan legislation seems to go hand-in-hand with a growing fear that immigrants are taking jobs away from “real Americans”…that Arabs and Arab-Americans are all secretly bound in a conspiracy to take down the United States…that Black people would rather be on welfare than have jobs and will drain the unemployment coffers. At any moment, one of these perceived enemies can attack. You can read comments expressing this fear on MLive and other sites daily. And a recurring theme for those favoring what the Tea Party calls “Second Amendment solutions” is that arming oneself is the first step toward holding all this “chaos” at bay…at saving what gun owners see as the very fabric of American life.
Let’s revisit that man who pictured himself defending his wife and children at, say, a shoot-out at his church. It’s guaranteed that he sees himself as a person with perfect aim as well as what he calls “good sense.” Somehow you just know that he pictures the attacker as whatever “Other” he fears the most. Just as you can be sure that it doesn’t occur to him that all the good sense in the world may not boot up fast enough to help him during an actual attack by someone with a semiautomatic weapon. Or that, because he is armed, he might actually draw fire to himself and his family if he draws a gun. It’s highly unlikely he’ll have time to fire that spectacular, John-Wayne shot that he’s fantasized about a hundred thousand times.
Senator Mike Green either has these same fantasies himself, or he is cynically feeding on them to grab more votes during his next election cycle. The idea of circling the wagons against threatening hostiles has always played well in American politics. We like our stories simple and, quite literally, drawn in black and white.
New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these books are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, by Paula Giddings – This book is part biography and part history lesson. If you have never read much about Ida B. Wells, then this book is a must. Giddings does a great job of providing insight into a woman who not only challenged the White Supremacist practice of lynching she challenged the patriarchal norms of her day. Wells was an organizer, an agitator, a writer, a feminist and a deeply compassionate woman. After reading this book, Ida B. Wells has become one of my new heroes.
Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East, by Fred Jerome – Did you know that Albert Einstein was asked to be the leader of the State of Israel? I didn’t until I read Fred Jerome’s wonderful book about the very public position that one of the greatest scientist took on Israel and Zionism. This book makes clear that Einstein was not a supporter of Zionism or the State of Israel. Laid out in chronological order, the book mostly consists of letters, speeches and articles by Einstein beginning with his thoughts on anti-Semitism in 1919 all the way through til 1955. Einstein on Israel and Zionism gave me an even greater appreciation of the mind of a person who impacted the 20th Century in unimaginable ways.
Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women, featuring Jean Kilbourne (DVD) – In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes — images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne’s groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.
Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 (DVD) – This film brings to light one of the bloodiest tragedies of the Civil Rights era after four decades of deliberate denial. The killing of four white students at Kent State University in 1970 left an indelible stain on our national consciousness. But most Americans know nothing of the three black students killed at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg two years earlier. This scrupulously researched documentary finally offers the definitive account of that tragic incident and reveals the environment that allowed it to be buried for so long. It raises disturbing questions about how our country acknowledges its tortured racial past in order to make sense of its challenging present.
US Media Gloss Over American Role in Egyptian Repression
(This article is re-posted from the national media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.)
The political context of the current Egyptian uprising is clear: The United States has steadfastly supported dictator Hosni Mubarak, whose rule has been marked by sham elections and the jailing and torture of dissidents, propping up his regime since 1981 with some $60 billion in aid, most of it military.
But since U.S. corporate media are accustomed to viewing international affairs through the lens of U.S. elite interests, much of the current coverage elides Washington’s role, or presents it as a “tightrope” balancing act for the Obama administration.
As one New York Times story (1/26/11) put it, “The administration has tried to balance its ties to Mr. Mubarak with expressions of concern about rigged elections and jailed dissidents in his country.” USA Today (2/1/11) announced: “The upheaval in Egypt has put the United States in a delicate diplomatic situation: pressing for a more democratic Egypt, but wary that too much change could threaten the stability that Egypt helps bring to the Middle East.”
On the PBS NewsHour, Margaret Warner (1/31/11) said, “The chaos in Egypt posed a delicate diplomatic challenge for the United States: appealing for democracy without alienating an ally.” Or as NBC Nightly News anchor Kate Snow (1/29/11) asked: “Is it a bit of a tightrope that the U.S. has to walk here, though, in terms of wanting to promote democracy on the one hand, but being a longtime ally of the Mubarak administration?”
An L.A. Times editorial (1/28/11) implausibly argued that the U.S. record of support for Mubarak would assist efforts to promote democracy: “As an ally and benefactor, the United States has helped prop up the 82-year-old strongman since he took power 30 years ago, and today it is in a unique position to impress upon him the importance of democracy.”
Some of the recently released WikiLeaks cables on Egypt provided another window into media thinking on the issue. The January 28 New York Times story was headlined, “Cables Show Delicate U.S. Dealings With Egypt’s Leaders.” The same day, the London Guardian had a very different headline: “WikiLeaks Cables Show Close U.S. Relationship With Egyptian President.” The Times account buried some of the more damning details, which make clear that U.S. officials are keenly aware of the prevalence of torture and brutality under Mubarak (FAIR Blog, 1/28/11). ABC‘s Christiane Amanpour offered what amounted to a rationalization of U.S. support for Egypt, explaining (1/26/11) that the implications are really big because this is very fundamental. Egypt receives the most American aid, more than $1 billion a year. It has the same goals as the United States against radicalization and terrorism, pro the Israeli peace process. But the United States, many people are saying, needs to get ahead of the curve, because otherwise it might be left behind as the people demonstrate their will.
Some outlets saw a distinct shift in the Obama administration’s position–well ahead of any evidence to that effect. The Washington Post published a January 27 piece headlined “As Arabs Protest, U.S. Speaks Up,” which declared that the White House was “openly supporting the anti-government demonstrations shaking the Arab Middle East,” adding that the administration had “thrown U.S. support clearly behind the protesters, speaking daily in favor of free speech and assembly even when the protests target longtime U.S. allies such as Egypt.”
The Post‘s evidence, however, was thin: a quote from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stating that the Mubarak government should “respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” The strongest support for the notion that the U.S. was backing the street protests came from an anonymous administration official–hardly an indication of “speak[ing] up” in “open support.”
Another Post article tried to make the case again on January 31:
The Obama administration firmly aligned itself on Sunday with the protest movement that has overtaken Egypt, calling for an “orderly transition” to a more representative government amid rising U.S. concern that the demonstrations are turning violent and that unrest could spread across the Arab world.
Several paragraphs later, though, the Post added that the “shift in message had no visible effect in Cairo and other Egyptian cities,” and reported that prominent activist Mohamed ElBaradei’s assessment was that the rhetoric “had landed ‘like lead” in the Egyptian capital.”
It would seem that Egyptians have a clearer view of U.S. policy than many pundits and mainstream journalists. That point was driven home when NBC reporter Richard Engel, to his credit, brandished a tear gas canister that had been fired at protesters (1/28/11):
These were the tear gas canisters that were fired by all those riot police today. And if you look at them closely, they say clearly in English, “Made in the USA.” Egyptians have been picking them up, they’ve been looking them over.
But then, as if this straightforward illustration of the U.S. role in Egyptian repression was too revealing, Engel qualified his observation: “And from an Egyptian perspective, it does seem like Mubarak and the United States are working together. So the U.S. is walking a fine line here.”
It does not, in fact, take an “Egyptian perspective” to appreciate how crucial U.S. support has been to the Mubarak dictatorship. One only needs to look at the history of the past three decades–a history U.S. media would prefer that we overlook, or treat as part of a delicate “balancing act.”
Partnering with Polluters
In this week’s MiBiz Michigan Loves Manufacturing e-blast there was news of a collaboration between Dow Chemical and the Nature Conservancy.
The e-blast news brief stated, “Dow Chemical and its foundation are committing $10 million over five years to a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, to evaluate Dow’s environmental impacts.” For those wanting more details there was a link to Environmental Leader, which identifies itself as Energy and Environmental News for Business.
The article on Environmental Leader states, “The chemical company and environmental non-profit will apply scientific knowledge to examine how Dow’s operations affect nature, and how to factor the role of nature into global business decisions, the two organizations said.”
The article goes on to say that Dow and the American Chemistry Council worked to defeat an effort in Seattle to put a 20-cent price tag on plastic bags and a legislative proposal in California that would have eliminated plastic bags. This information is puzzling since it reflects to this writer an anti-environmental position, where Dow fought to keep plastic bag use the norm on the west coast.
The article then states, “The Nature Conservancy and Dow Chemical are both members of the United States Climate Action Partnership, which lobbies the government on the need for greenhouse gas reduction legislation.” However, according to Sourcewatch the US Climate Action Partnership is made up of major global polluters like Shell, GM, DuPont and Alcoa. In addition, there is no evidence that the group lobbies for greenhouse reduction, rather many of the partner groups are actually involved in opposing greenhouse-gas regulations.
In addition, the article does not raise any issues around the partnership between Dow and the Nature Conservancy. Why would a national environmental organization partner with a company that has a long track record of disregard for negative environmental and health consequences?
For some sectors of the environmental movement this partnership between a known polluter and the Nature Conservancy seems quite natural. Environmental reporter Jeffrey St. Clair notes in a recent series of stories that are critical of many of the national eco-organizations that the Nature Conservancy is “the most unapologetically pro-corporate of all environmental groups.”
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has a history if supporting corporate friendly policies, with the recent example of their support for a water diversion canal in California that would benefit agri-business. In May of 2010, the Washington Post wrote a story about TNC’s long-time relationship with BP, in which the organization’s CEO defended this partnership.
TNC argues that it is better to develop partnerships with huge corporate polluters than to just see them as the enemy. This kind of relationship has been financially very lucrative, but does it compromise on real environmental protection? Is the decision by Dow to hire The Nature Conservancy merely a PR move to win over public support for their claims of practicing sustainability?
These are important questions that we should all demand that news sources ask when reporting on partnerships between large corporations and environmental groups. It is not enough to assume that real sustainability will be practiced just because the groups involved make such a claim.
Media Bites – Axe sells Sexualized Gender norms for Charity
In this week’s Media Bites we look at a new Axe body products commercial, which passes as a promotional piece for a new Axe charity challenge for college students.
The video invites colleges to participate in a competition to donate clothing, but the images continue to normalize sexualized gender roles and male fantasy. The reality for college campuses is less about sex and more about sexual assault, a fact which will not sell scented body spray.
(This article by Devon G. Pena is re-posted from Dissident Voice.)
Let us begin with a “defining moment,” courtesy of the Oxford World Dictionary:
Commissariat (kɒmɪˈsɛːrɪət)
Definition: chiefly Military department for the supply of food and equipment.
Origin: late 16th century (as a Scots legal term denoting the jurisdiction of a commissary, often spelled commissariot): from French commissariat, reinforced by medieval Latin commissariatus, both from medieval Latin commissarius ‘person in charge’, from Latin committere ‘entrust’
How does this relate to the news cycle? Well, on January 20, Wal-Mart announced plans to reformulate the ingredients of their in-house or private brand processed foods. An estimated 60 percent of the company’s annual grocery revenues are currently tied to the sale of processed food items. It is therefore expected that this formula change will place pressure on other private suppliers to follow suit.
This is perhaps the single most significant news story emerging in the corporate agrifood business sector with implications for food sovereignty and food justice movements across the world. Indeed, the company is touting its plan as a response to Michelle Obama’s call on the agrifood industry to clean-up its act of poisoning our nation’s children with highly processed foods. She has specifically called on companies to reformulate processed foods by reducing sugar, sodium, and fat content. Apparently, the company is making much of its efforts to listen to critics.
Wal-Mart executives announced they plan to reduce the sodium content of processed foods by a quarter and eliminate all added sugars across many selected items in their private brand lines of processed foods by 2015. They also announced a plan to eliminate all remaining trans-fats in their private brand lines. These would include items like luncheon meat, yogurt, salad dressing, and juice and soda products. Of course, critics — including Marion Nestle — already note that these reductions will still largely result in unhealthy amounts of sodium and sugar in processed foods. The reformulations will still exceed the recommended daily intake of these additives by 50 to 70 percent when seen in the context of three meals per day.
The First Lady has also been calling for increased access by all consumers to fresh fruits and vegetables. This is widely seen as representing an effort to mobilize support to address the role that “food deserts” play in the nation’s unequal geography of hunger and malnutrition in both urban and rural areas. The social science community has been studying food deserts at least since Robert Gottlieb first used the term in a 1996 report prepared for the University of California Transportation Center on strategies for food-related transportation in low-income, transit-dependent communities. Food deserts can be defined as residential areas that lack grocery stores, farmers’ markets, or other places where residents may shop for – or grow their own – fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and other unprocessed foods. Food deserts are characterized by a preponderance of cheap and unhealthy fast foods or mini-market and convenience stores that sell processed foods at inflated prices. Finally, food deserts are also typified by a lack of privately-owned cars and limited public transportation. There is no easy way to get fresh healthy food to the mouths of the people living in a food desert.
Wal-Mart’s plan includes changes in new store locations that would allow it to operate in urban core or inner-city neighborhoods that are currently harmed by food desert conditions. There has been widespread opposition, at least in Southern California, to the opening of ‘mega-stores’ in the inner-city. The ecological footprint would have to be greatly down-sized for these stores to become acceptable in many communities. The Wal-Mart supply chain would seek to source and stock more local fruits and vegetables. How it will do this and also address social justice concerns of farm workers and the protection of endangered small farms with heritage and heirloom crops remains unclear.
Wal-Mart stores are predominantly located in suburban or rural areas and, according to my own estimates, their current revenue from sales of fresh fruits and vegetables relies on national or globalized commodity chains for at least 80 percent of all perishable fresh foods on their shelves. Over the past 2 to 3 years, Wal-Mart has featured ‘local foods’ as seasonal niche products in some stores including one in Alamosa, Colorado that I have personally visited. The past two summers (in 2009 and 2010), that store was selling English peas produced and supplied by organic acequia farmers from the San Luis, Colorado area located about 45 miles away. Locally-sourced corn, potatoes, Mexican calabacitas, and other seasonal vegetables are also sold at the Alamosa store.
Wal-Mart executives clearly want us to see their plan as an honest and thoughtful effort to address the geography of environmental racism in the agrifood system while turning as much as possible to local sources and suppliers. They claim to recognize the disparate nature of the conditions in food deserts and thus aim for policies tempered by the fact that food deserts are predominantly located in low-income and/or people of color communities.
Several critical issues are at stake in making sense of the Wal-Mart plan to reformulate processed foods and transform its supply chain toward more local sourcing of fruits and vegetables as well as meat and fish. One issue is differential access to fresh food and commodity prices. Marion Nestle noted in a recent NPR interview that the price of processed food has decreased by 40 percent since 1980 while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent during the same period.
How Wal-Mart goes about cutting prices for fruits and vegetables, reversing the trends of the past thirty years of marketing and sourcing, is also a puzzle. What will this mean for small farmers? What is local? What about social justice? None of the proposals in the plan addressed the continued exploitation and suffering of marginalized farm worker communities or the survival of small family farmers. Moreover, no matter how serious and honest Wal-Mart may be in pursuit of this initiative, the sort of change required will have to occur in other organizations that shape, constrain, and control the agrifood system. First and foremost is the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which must expand its commitment to shifting from global to local food systems. This would require radical restructuring of the subsidy, research, rural development, resource conservation, credit market, and other facilities in its purview that will be reauthorized in the 2012 Farm Bill.
Yet even this is not the end of the story. Food and nutrition are important, but eating and dietary practices are constrained and shaped by cultural practice and social class position. We need, in short, a paradigm shift — one that recognizes that having access to fresh fruits and vegetables will not mean much if no one is around to prepare, serve, and share the food. We may do well to recall that so-called ‘convenience’, ‘processed’, and ‘fast’ foods were developed because capitalism intensified and expanded the labor time it demands from workers and consumers. ‘Power’ lunches are not a proletarian perk. Like a black hole, capital bends and warps the gravity of our living time, converting as much of it into working time that produces profit. Capital seeks to trap all our time inside the singularity of work time. Escaping that singularity must be a principle of a well-grounded movement for food sovereignty.
There are many reasons to remain constructively engaged yet skeptical of these efforts. Wal-Mart’s plan in the long term must eliminate processed foods altogether and it must downsize individual store footprints. My strongest objection, frankly, is that the last thing the democratic and grassroots food sovereignty movement needs is for Wal-Mart to become the centralized Local Food Commissariat. Local sourcing of food is a good principle, but it matters who controls the process. It also matters how the process is organized; namely, whether it is top-down or bottom-up. Increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables in food deserts and low-income communities is also a good principle, but many of these are working-poor families in which parents have to work two or three jobs just to avoid homelessness.
Lacking living-wage jobs and affordable transit options, when are working poor parents to find time and resources to shop for fresh ingredients when they still can’t afford to prepare wholesome meals for their families on a daily basis? Too many of these are single-parent families, mostly headed by women in such circumstances with multiple jobs and marginal earnings. The demands of the local food movement are insufficient as the basis for any sort of deeply transforming and wider reorganization of the nation’s political economy of food and agriculture. We need to be asking ourselves: How do we create an economy where people do not live to work but work to live? In other words, how do we create an economy where people have the option to work less and play, pray, learn, cook, and share the table to eat together more?
Living-wage and 35-hour work week laws may help to resolve this problem by making it possible for people to work at single well-paid jobs instead of wasting their lives trapped in 60+ hours a week spread over three menial part-time and low-paying jobs that still keep families at bare subsistence. If people can earn a just, living wage, this may reduce the length of the work day and week, creating more free time and opportunities for people, including those families trapped in food deserts, to enjoy local shopping, cooking, and conviviality. Is not freedom from work the necessary precondition for people to enjoy sharing wholesome food at the dinner table with their loved ones and friends?
The path away from food deserts must also run along the road toward economic justice and workplace democracy. The goal of food sovereignty is ultimately not possible without these other values. Wal-Mart’s plans to moderately improve their food quality and become the Local Food Commissariat may yield some benefits, but they do not appear poised to achieve genuine food sovereignty.
The local branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is calling for solidarity with farm workers this Friday by supporting the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) campaign.
FLOC has been engaged in a campaign to get people to divest from JP Morgan Chase banks because of their financial support for the tobacco giant RJ Reynolds. The campaign is based upon the working conditions and wages of workers who are employed on tobacco farms in North Carolina.
According to FLOC the work conditions are horrendous, where workers are subjected to long hours, harassment at work, abject poverty, miserable housing in the labor camps and denial of basic labor and human rights conditions. FLOC also states, “Adequate shower and laundry facilities are often lacking, making it difficult to wash off pesticide residue. Each year, thousands of workers suffer from Green Tobacco Sickness (GTS), which is caused by a high level of nicotine absorption through the skin. Short term effects include dizziness, nausea, and dehydration, which can lead to more serious health problems such as heat stroke.”
Tobacco giant RJ Reynolds makes at least $2 billion a year in profits, but those profits do not translate into just wages for migrant workers who pick the tobacco. FLOC has been pressuring the company for over a year, with a campaign that includes targeting the tobacco giant’s largest financial lender, JP Morgan Chase.
We reported last June at the US Social Forum about a protest march in Detroit where members of FLOC and supporters went to the main branch of JP Morgan Chase to demand that they discontinue doing business with RJ Reynolds until the workers demands are met. JP Morgan Chase bank is the lead bank in a consortium of Reynolds American creditors, lending Reynolds American $489 million in funds.
The divestment campaign that FLOC initiated on Labor Day of 2010 is asking people to not bank with JP Morgan Chase bank. Many people have already pulled their accounts with JP Morgan Chase bank, but FLOC states that more people need to divest from the bank in order to put enough pressure on Reynolds America.
The Grand Rapids branch of the IWW will be one of 200 actions across the country this Friday, February 4 as a show of solidarity with farmworkers fighting for justice in North Carolina. IWW spokesperson Shannon Williams said, “We are participating in this action because the IWW believes that an injury to one is an injury to all. It is important for workers to act in solidarity with other workers when they are being exploited.”
The IWW plans on being at the 1100 Michigan Avenue branch of the JP Morgan Chase bank in Grand Rapids from 4:00pm til 5:30pm this Friday. They are inviting anyone to join them with signs and they will be handing out an informational flyer to bank customers during their solidarity action.
Indy News & Analysis on popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia
What is happening in Egypt and Tunisia is both inspiring and instructive for those of us who live in the US. It is inspiring in that is shows the power of social movements and political struggle from the ground up.
People in Egypt and Tunisia are taking great risk to challenge both the current power structures and to advocate for what kind of a future they want for themselves and their children.
These social uprisings are instructive in that this is a moment in which people in this country must come to terms with US policy in the Middle East. Is it common knowledge that the US has provided Egypt with $2 billion dollars in military aid every year since 1979 (making Egypt the 2nd largest recipient of US aid behind Israel)? Do we know that the US government has been supporting the Mubarak regime in Egypt for decades, despite consistent human rights violations?
These kinds of basic questions or background information are not part of the reporting from most commercial news agencies in the US. In fact, these same media outlets often defend the dictatorship in Egypt and the US support for that dictatorship.
However, the amount of independent reporting from both Tunisia and Egypt has been amazing. Independent journalist Robert Fisk, who has been doing some of the best reporting from the Middle East for 30 years, is reporting daily from the streets of Cairo. His most recent article is entitled Egypt: Death throes of a Dictatorship.
Democracy Now! has been providing sound analysis for several days now and also has a reporter on the ground in Cairo, with an excellent report entitled The Rebellion Grows Stronger. Al Jazeera has also been provided excellent up to the minute coverage of the uprising in Egypt, despite the efforts of the Egyptian government to shut them down. The Institute for Public Accuracy has also compiled a list of good online resources, particularly Facebook and twitter feeds.
Al Jazeera reports that the Egyptians are calling for a million people to come to Cairo to protest the government regime. These kinds of actions are infectious and are providing inspiration to people around the world.
GVSU Student Organized Solidarity Action this Wednesday!
Locally, students at GVSU have organized a solidarity action at the Allendale campus on Wednesday, February 2nd from 10am – 2pm. The students write, “A free Egypt is the key to justice throughout the Arab world. Come join students and stand in solidarity with Egypt and other countries in political unrest to raise awareness about the international and historical significance of the struggles of the Arab world.”
For some good analysis of US Policy and the current uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia watch this interview with Phyllis Bennis on The Real News Network.
The Importance of Relational Organizing: a workshop at GVSU
Yesterday Suzanne Pharr & Paulina Hernandez facilitated two sessions on importance of organizing as part of a series of workshops and forums that the LGBT Resource Center at GVSU is hosting over the next several months.
Both of the women talked about coming from 2 different places and histories of the south. Paulina, who is an immigrant from Mexico and Suzanne, who grew up in the rural south both work with Southerners on New Ground (SONG). Both of them talked about how they identify in terms of race, gender and sexuality and why that is important for doing organizing work.
SONG originated in 1992 at an LGBT conference and began with an emphasis on inter-sectionality. Inter-sectionality is the idea that issues like race, gender, sexual orientation and class inter-sect and that people who organize for social justice need to constantly understand this and make the connection apparent in order to deepen the transformative power of social justice work.
One of the first questions that SONG tackled was around economics and class issues, because people felt like there was too casual of an assumption about LGBT folks when it came to economic issues.
When they started there were 3 White and 3 Black lesbians. You could not be a part of the leadership of the leadership team as a White lesbian unless you had a history and track record of anti-racist work. They decided early on that they did not want to just work on homophobia, but to include racism, classism and other anti-oppression factors.
This work had two main strategies. First, they would bring people into the conversation in order to prepare people for doing organizing work, within the LGBT community. Part two of their strategy was to then work with civil rights groups to get them to partner on and work towards LGBT justice, which would not only transform those organizations, but create a greater possibility of larger alliances and movement building.
Some of this work involved the making of music and art, since they believed that you can’t do social justice organizing without cultural organizing. Part of their work was to fight against the propaganda of a film from the Right that was trying to divide the LGBT community and the Black community, claiming that the LGBT community was asking for “special rights” that were won beyond the black community.
When Clinton was elected in 1992, they began to explore the issues of economic justice in the south, which they knew very little of. They brought in people to do some training and then began to do cross border education by taking people to see the maquiladoras in northern Mexico near the US border.
The next project was held at the Highlander Center to see what the LGBT community saw as primary issues. What they discovered is that gay marriage was way down the list and issues like jobs and other economic justice issues were more of a priority for most people.
As they were planning for their future, the Katrina disaster happened, which radically changed where their emphasis would be. They asked themselves a question, which was what do you all wish that SONG had in place the day before Katrina? Overwhelmingly, people said that they wished they had 100 organizers. Thus the rebuilding of their organization began.
Paulina said that one thing the organization realized is that what has happened with Katrina and the BP oil spill is that disaster capitalism takes advantage of undermining the economic structures of the south. In contrast, what people in the south are increasingly desiring is for groups and organizations to develop as autonomous entities. One manifestation of the autonomy is for people to organize where they are instead of migrating to the cultural centers of power such as Atlanta.
The demographic changes in the south have determined some new focus and strategic work around the idea of space. The first space that SONG identified is Capitalism. They believe this is where we all are no matter what we do, we are all living in the midst of a Capitalistic system and all of its negative consequences. The second space is doing the anti-oppression work that reacts to the realities of this system of Capitalism. However, it is not enough that we just fight this system. We can’t remain in a reactionary mode. Therefore, the third space that Paulina and Suzanne talked about is asking the question of what do we want, what is our vision of the world we want to live in. This third space incorporates new language and ideas about what we want and what we are going to do, especially around long-term movement building strategies.
The other main area that was discussed was looking at organizing models. Suzanne presented four models: Alinsky style organizing, electoral organizing, moral organizing and relational organizing.
Many people are familiar with the Alinsky style of organizing, which can be confrontational but very effective in terms of organizing people who are most disaffected with the current economic system. Another model of organizing is Electoral organizing, where the goal is to mobilize as many people as possible to turn out and vote. The problem with model is that after people vote they are often left with little direction and in many ways encouraged to just go about their business and let the politicians take care of things.
A third model of organizing is what they called Moral organizing. Moral organizing is when people organize around the principle of trying to get others to change by appealing to a sense of morality. People even use moral organizing in order to appeal to people in power such as CEOs and politicians with the thinking that if you can get them to see the moral wisdom of their actions that can get them to change.
The final model that the presenters discussed was what they called Relational organizing. Relational organizing comes out of movements such as the anti-rape movements, where people who have been victims of rape came together to challenge male violence against women because of their common experience. These women would tell their stories about oppression as a means to connect.
Once those relationships are established people can then identify commonalities and analyze root causes of their oppression. People will then identify where change might be possible, do education and outreach and eventually develop a strategy. Once a strategy is developed people will share skills to meet those strategies and take collective action. The presenters also emphasized the importance of evaluating the group actions, reflect on those actions and talk about what worked and what didn’t work and why. Once evaluations have been done the group can then move to the next strategy.
Both Suzaane and Paulina shared with the group that we need to do this work outside of the traditional non-profit models, since these models are too connected to Capitalism and often has those of us at the grassroots level competing for the same limited financial resources.
More importantly, the presenters stressed that in doing anti-oppression work we need to do it with a sense of joy and love. Suzanne cited Dr. King’s essay The Beloved Community and the importance on doing this work with a sense of joy and love for each other. She also cautioned us against political purity and said that it is important to see that none of us are perfect and that every step we take towards liberation is a liberating step.
The Grand Rapids Press Editorial Board’s Position on Haiti and Other “Unwelcome Distractions”
It seems there is a possibility someone on the Grand Rapids Press’ Editorial Board read this writer’s recent article on the mainstream media’s terrible coverage of recent events in Haiti, and mistook the list of criticisms for a how-to manual. This writer is well aware the obvious middle-school come back to this is “Don’t flatter yourself, Joe.” The obvious response is “I guess it is asking a lot of a newspaper to research an editorial before they publish it when ads don’t sell themselves.”
If the few responses on MLive’s message board are at all indicative of the level of real information the Press is able to convey to its readers, it is clear the editorial piece published on January 26, titled “What we need to do to help Haiti recover” is just the latest in a legacy of misrepresenting the situation in Haiti; this type of misrepresentation contributes to a media chorus supporting American apathy and ambivalence to tragedies in places lake Haiti that range from desecration of democracy to economic degradation to a degree that forces terrifying habits like diets dedicated to geophagy.
Before earthquakes or hurricanes even enter the picture, Haiti and discussions concerning it all have real and potentially terrifying consequences for the Haitian people. Answering questions about Haiti’s economy can effect how many Haitians starve to death while eating cakes of dirt to not feel their insides eating themselves. Talking about who is allowed in the country’s borders and what parties are allowed to run in elections ultimately will determine whether or not the world’s first successful nation-wide slave revolution has been reversed.
With so much at stake it is disconcerting to see Mlive.com’s commenters posting things like :
“They” the Haitians need to learn to help theirselves and quit begging like dogs for a handout…that doesn’t do anything but go to a bunch of corrupt mobsters running things in that country. “
and:
“Personally, I would withhold all aid until Haiti changes its constitution to aid a resolute protection of private property rights. With a strong protection of private property, Haiti will eventually climb out of its poverty and be able to fund hospitals and culturally-specific schools all on its own.”
The Grand Rapids Press is not solely responsible for either the ignorance or the borderline to blatant racism displayed by the people that comment on MLive’s forums, but the tragedy lies in the realization that these opinions are not far from the narrative the mainstream media has been spinning since Baby Doc’s return brought Haiti back into the news cycle’s spotlight. The easy story for the media to perpetuate is all Haitian Presidents are kleptocrats, that all aid to Haiti is tossed into a furnace of corruption, and that the free market and privatization can save the country. The problem is not all Haitian Presidents are created equal, neither is all aid, and parceling up the land and selling it off only results in foreign corporations owning all of the land and expropriating all of Haiti’s goods and resources at the expense of the already poor Haitian people.
Upon Jean-Claude Duvalier’s return to Haiti less than two weeks ago, this writer analyzed some of the initial media coverage available concerning this event. While that article is linked here, the quick version is the media has made some crucial mistakes in its overall coverage of Baby Doc’s return. The Media treats Haiti like it did not exist before the Earthquake. The Grand Rapids Press demonstrates this in the most cliché way imaginable in the first line of their editorial: “A year after a massive 7.0 earthquake, pain, suffering and death remain realities for Haitian children and families.“
As a corollary to the media’s story of Haiti’s non-existence prior to last year, Baby Doc’s history as a promoter of torture, rape, murder, drug running, intimidation, thuggery, and stealing from aid marked for the poor gets glossed over as he is simply referred to as a “dictator” or “ex-president.” If his crimes are at all mentioned, they are in terms of him stealing money from aid funded by U.S. and European interests, or delivering drugs that harmed American streets. The G.R. Press calls Duvalier a “dictator” and an “unwelcome distraction.” Calling the return to Haiti of a man who ordered the Ton-ton Macoute to execute hundreds if not thousands an “unwelcome distraction” is an unwelcome moral disgrace. Glossing over the crimes he committed is an attempt to avoid uncomfortable questions concerning the support given to him and his father by the Nixon and Reagan Administrations under the guise of combating global communism.
The other corollary is former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide gets either ignored, or grouped with Jean-Claude Duvalier and rapidly dismissed. The G.R. Press does the latter and calls Aristide’s potential return an “unwelcome distraction” as well. This helps the Press ignore over a decade of U.S. meddling in Haiti that at every point championed the interest of corporations and global Capitalism at the expense of real democracy and the lives of the poorest citizens of one of the poorest countries in the world. Baby Doc is not Aristide. Aristide is widely popular among almost all Haitians, and was democratically elected in fair elections multiple times, yet the U.S. is blocking his return to Haiti, while giving the murderer, Duvalier, a wink and a nod. This writer can not determine which is worse, the fact that the G.R. Press used the phrase “unwelcome distraction” as a euphemism for “rape, murder, drug running, and torture,” or the fact that the Press grouped a democratically elected liberation theologian with that torturing, drug running, murderer.
When the editorial board declares: “The (Haitian) people deserve a legitimate, effective government to ensure a better future.” immediately after blowing off any chance at Aristide’s return, they are ignoring events that happened less then a decade ago, like the 2004 removal of Aristide from the Presidency at gunpoint by U.S. agents authorized by the Bush Administration. (See Getting Haiti Right This Time: The U.S. and the Coup) This writer can think of no reason why the Editorial Board of the Grand Rapids Press would find it necessary to comment on a situation in a foreign country like Haiti, but lack the will to follow through with a total reporting of the facts.
Yes, it goes against the mainstream media narrative to say a Haitian leader like Aristide was actually a force that promoted wonderful things like democracy, and the U.S. hasn’t always been the best help to the people of Haiti in terms of their human rights and economic well-being. But, the job of an independent press, especially in an editorial situation where more leeway is given to express an individual (and, ideally, well-informed) opinion, is not to continually go over the same knots on the counting rope. Those who get their news from independent media have no problem getting access to knowledge like the enormous differences between Baby Doc and Aristide. Why does the Press’ Editorial Board refuse to present those easily obtainable facts to its readers?
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 