3rd Congressional Race – Follow the Money
It has been nearly 4 weeks since the Primary Election and not much attention has been given to 3rd Congressional District race. There is just over 2 months left before the November 2nd vote and it is worth looking at the race to replace Congressman Vern Ehlers.
There are five candidates running for the 3rd Congressional District: Justin Amash (Republican), Pat Miles (Democrat), Charlie Shick (Green), Theodore Gerrard (US Taxpayers) and James Rogers (Libertarian).
If people are relying on the mainstream commercial media in the Grand Rapids area they would be somewhat familiar with both Miles and Amash, but the other three candidates are virtually unknown to most voters. The first time we noted any coverage of the other three candidates was in yesterday’s Grand Rapids Press, which mentioned that Charlie Shick was the Green Party candidate for the 3rd Congressional District in the Political Polpourri section.
This lack of local news exposure of candidates outside of the Republican and Democratic Party will no doubt continue until Election Day and local political debates are likely to exclude those candidates as well. Lack of exposure is also due to limited campaign funds. As of the last required campaign finance filing in late July, no money had been raised by Shick, Gerrard or Rogers. Money dictates attention in political races and it also can tell us a great deal about whom candidates give their allegiance to.
Follow the Money
When it comes to money raised so far Amash and Miles are pretty even, with Amash having raised $379,373 by July 14th and Miles $318,251, according to OpenSecrets.org. These number will increase tremendously between now and November 2nd, but for now lets look at who the major donors have been.
The single largest campaign contributor to date for Amash has been Michigan Industrial Tools ($25,250), which is owned by Amash’s family. The second largest contributor has been Amway/Alticor ($15,700), but if you included any and all DeVos connected entities you would have to add Windquest Group ($4,400) and DP Fox Ventures ($2,400). In fact, virtually everyone in the DeVos clan is endorsing Justin Amash, from Amway founder Richard DeVos to son’s Doug and Dick and even Artprize guru Rick DeVos.
Other major contributors to Amash’s campaign are Club for Growth ($14,200), which is a national ultra-conservative group committed to getting Republicans elected to Congress. Then there are several local businesses whom have contributed significantly to Amash’s campaign, such as Savory Foods ($9,600), Preusser Jewelers ($7,200) and local insurance company Coleman, Dugan & Hughes ($4,800). Other notable donors are S. Abraham & Sons ($3,500), Ellis Parking ($2,700) and the law firm of Warner, Norcross & Judd ($3,400).
For Pat Miles the biggest campaign contributor to date has been Dickinson Wright Llc ($9,500), a law firm with a long list of corporate clients. Besides the $9,500 they are listed as contributing they also have given another $5,500 listed as Dickinson Wright Pllc and another $4,650 listed as Dickinson, Wright et al., according to OpenSecrets.org. This would put that law firms total campaign contributions to Pat Miles at $19,650 as of July 14.
Other major contributor’s to Miles campaign are the law firm of Varnum ($8,250), Yesterdog ($4,500), the Wege Foundation ($4,000), Crystal Flash Energy ($2,400), Steelcase Inc. ($2,400) and the Microsoft Corporation ($2,400.) to name a few.
Clearly, a good percentage of the funds raised by both Amash and Miles to date are disproportionately from the elite sectors of West Michigan, which should be an indication to us about whom their allegiance will be to if elected.
Body Image: Loving your self, not the lie
Body Image Potluck Discussion
6 – 8 p.m. Thursday Sept 2
The Bloom Collective
Steepletown Center
671 Davis NW
(Corner of 5th & Davis)
This coming Thursday, Sept. 2, The Bloom Collective hosts a potluck discussion on Body Image. Men and women are invited to join the conversation which will touch on topics including how the media instills false, unrealistic standards of beauty and perfection and how advertisers profit from American’s universal low self-image to sell products we do not need.
When our body image is skewed, our entire lives can be impacted. Eating disorders, exercise addiction, depression and inability to function confidently in life can break down our mental health and our relationships with family and friends at home, school and work.
How do we deconstruct the media message of perfect beauty and no longer take it personally? How can we learn to love and accept our bodies when they don’t live up to the standards advertisers constantly throw in our faces?
This potluck discussion may not bring participants to that ultimate goal but hopefully an honest discussion about these dishonest standards will help each of us move forward towards loving the body we live in.
The Bloom Collective will provide vegan options and asks guests to bring a dish to pass. For information, email bloomcollective@gmail.com or visit http://www.thebloomcollective.org.
On the Fifth Anniversary of Katrina, Displacement Continues
(This article by Jordan Flaherty is re-posted from ZNet.)
Poet Sunni Patterson is one of New Orleans’ most beloved artists. She has performed in nearly every venue in the city, toured the US, and frequently appears on television and radio, from Democracy Now to Def Poetry Jam. When she performs her poems in local venues, half the crowd recites the words along with her. But, like many who grew up here, she was forced to move away from the city she loves. She left as part of a wave of displacement that began with Katrina and still continues to this day. While hers is just one story, it is emblematic of the situation of many African Americans from New Orleanians, who no longer feel welcomed in the city they were born in.
Patterson comes from New Orleans’s Ninth Ward. Her family’s house was cut in half by the floodwaters and has since been demolished. Despite the loss of her home, she was soon back in the city, living in the Treme neighborhood. She spent much of the following years traveling the country, performing poetry and trying to raise awareness about the plight of New Orleans. But her income was not enough–her post-Katrina rent was twice what she had paid before the storm, and she was also putting up money to help her family rebuild as well as preparing for the birth of her son Jibril. “I wound up getting evicted from my apartment because we were still working on the house,” she said. “In the midst of it, you realize that you are not generating the amount of money you need to sustain a living.”
Patterson’s family had difficulty presenting the proper paperwork to receive federal rebuilding dollars–a problem shared by many New Orleanians. “We’re dealing with properties that have been passed down from generation to generation,” says Patterson. “The paperwork is not always available. A lot of elders are tired, they don’t know what to do.”
Just as the storm revealed racial inequalities, the recovery has also been shaped by systemic racism. According to a recent survey of New Orleanians by the Kaiser Family Foundation, forty-two percent of African Americans – versus just sixteen percent of whites – said they still have not recovered from Katrina. Thirty-one percent of African-American residents – versus eight percent of white respondents – said they had trouble paying for food or housing in the last year. Housing prices in New Orleans have gone up sixty-three percent just since 2009. Eleven billion federal dollars went into Louisiana’s Road Home program, which was meant to help the city rebuild. The payouts from this program went exclusively to homeowners, which cut out renters from the primary source of federal aid.
Even among homeowners, the program treated different populations in different ways. US District Judge Henry Kennedy recently found that the program was racially discriminatory in the formula it used to disperse funds. By partially basing payouts on home values instead of on damage to homes, the program favored properties in wealthier – often whiter – neighborhoods. However, the same judge found no legal obligation for the state to correct this discrimination for the 98% of applicants whose cases have been closed.
At approximately 355,000, the city’s population remains more than 100,000 lower than it’s pre-Katrina number, and many counted in the current population are among the tens of thousands who moved here post-Katrina. This puts the number of New Orleanians still displaced at well over 100,000 – perhaps 150,000 or more. A survey by the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps found that seventy-five percent of African Americans who were displaced wanted to return but were being kept out. Like Patterson, most of those surveyed said economic forces kept them from returning.
A Changed City
As New Orleans approaches the fifth anniversary of Katrina and begins a long recovery from the BP drilling disaster, the media has been searching for an uplifting angle. Stories of the city’s rebirth are everywhere, and there are reasons to feel good about New Orleans. The Saints’ Superbowl victory was a turning point for the city, and the HBO series Treme has gone a long way towards helping the story of the city’s vibrant culture and struggle for recovery get out to a wider audience. Music festivals like Jazz Fest and Essence Fest, which are so central to the city’s tourism-based economy, have brought in some of their largest crowds in recent years. Because of a combination of grassroots pressure, independent media, and federal investigations, the city’s corrupt police department seems to be on the cusp of real reform.
But despite positive developments in the city’s recovery, more than 100,000 New Orleanians received a one-way ticket out of town and still have received no help in coming back, and these voices are left out of most stories of the city. Many from this silenced population complain of post-Katrina decisions that placed obstacles in their path, such as the firing of 7,000 public school employees and canceling of their union contract shortly after the storm, or the tearing down of nearly 5,000 public housing units – two post-Katrina decisions that disproportionately affected Black residents.
Advocates have also noted that among those who are not counted in the statistics on displacement are the New Orleanians who are in the city, but not home. They fall into the category that international human rights organizations call internally displaced. The guiding principles of internal displacement call for more than return. UN principles number 28 and 29 call for, in part, “the full participation of internally displaced persons in the planning and management of their return or resettlement and reintegration.” They also state that, “They shall have the right to participate fully and equally in public affairs at all levels and have equal access to public services,” as well as to have their property and possessions replaced, or receive “appropriate compensation or another form of just reparation.”
In other words, these principles call for a return that includes restoration and reparations. As civil rights attorney Tracie Washington has said, “I’m still displaced, until the conditions that caused my displacement have been alleviated. I’m still displaced as long as Charity Hospital remains closed. I’m still displaced as long as rents remain unaffordable. I’m still displaced as long as schools are in such bad shape.” In the US, Katrina recovery has fallen under the Stafford Act, a law that specifically excludes many of these rights that international law guarantees.
Among those who are back in New Orleans but still displaced are members of the city’s large homeless population. In a report this week, UNITY of Greater New Orleans estimated from 3,000 to 6,000 persons are living in the city’s abandoned buildings. Seventy-five percent of these undercounted residents are Katrina survivors, most of whom had stable housing before the storm. Eighty-seven percent are disabled, and a disproportionate share are elderly.
Cultural Resistance
Sunni Patterson can’t remember a time when she wasn’t a poet. The words flow naturally and seemingly effortlessly from her. When she performs, it is like a divine presence speaking though her body. Her frame is small but she fills the room. Her voice conveys passion and love and pain and loss. Her words illuminate current events and history lessons – her topics ranging from the Black Panthers organizing in the Desire housing projects to domestic violence to injustice in Africa and war in the Middle East.
You can hear Sunni Patterson’s influence in the performances of many young poets in New Orleans. And in the work of Patterson, you can hear the history of community elders passed along, the chants of Mardi Gras Indians, and the knowledge and embrace of neighbors and family and friends. And Patterson is part of a large and thriving community of socially conscious culture workers. Since the late ’90s, you could find spoken word poetry being performed somewhere in New Orleans almost any night of the week. And many of these poets are also teachers, activists, and community organizers.
Now, like so many other former New Orleanians, she cannot afford to live in the city she loves. “I’m in Houston,” she says, seemingly stunned by her own words. “Houston. Houston. I can’t say that and make it sound right. It hurts me to my heart that my child’s birth certificate says Houston, Texas.”
One of the hardest aspects of leaving New Orleans has been the loss of her community. “In that same house that I grew up, my great grandmother and grandfather lived,” she says. “Everybody that lived around there, you knew. It was family. In New Orleans, even if you don’t know someone, you still speak and wave and say hello. In other cities, there’s something wrong with you if you speak to someone you don’t know.”
New Orleanians were displaced after the storm to 5,500 cities, spread across every US state. Although the vast majority of former New Orleanians are in nearby cities like Houston, Dallas, or Atlanta, many are still living in further locales from Utah to Maine. While she is sad to be gone from the city, Patterson wants to see the positive in the loss. “The good part is that New Orleans energy and culture is now dispersed all over the world,” she says. “You can’t kill it. Ain’t that something? That’s what I love about it. So we still gotta give thanks, even in the midst of the atrocity, that poetry is still being created.”
Commissioner White’s position on Urban Chickens
On Monday, Grand Rapids City Commissioner James White released a statement to clarify his position on the proposal to allow city residents to have chickens. White did not vote, since he was on vacation when the City Commission decided the matter, with a 3-3 tie.
Below is White’s response:
Introduction: After keeping an open mind to consider all sides; after conducting a site visit; after hearing from constituents, many of whom are only a half generation from farming; and after considering the role of our city in the region, I have concluded that chickens would not be appropriate for Grand Rapids. My reasoning is as follows:
Test one: In principle, a public policy should be applicable to all citizens. We can ask the test question: If everyone did it, would it be beneficial or detrimental? In my opinion, the chicken ordinance fails this test. As long as a few people have chickens, there is no detrimental impact. But if everyone got chickens, the city would be changed dramatically for the worse. Therefore, only a few people could benefit from the ordinance.
Test two: In principle, a public policy should be applicable to all similar cases. We can ask the test question: If someone wanted to have turkeys, on what logical ground would we deny them that right? In my opinion, the chicken ordinance fails this test. A chicken is a farm animal and so is a turkey. To apply an ordinance to one farm animal and not to another, could be criticized as subjective or inconsistent.
Test Three: In principle, a public policy should strengthen our city’s role as an urban core. We can ask the test question: Does the policy heighten or lessen our identity as an urban center? I believe the chicken ordinance fails this test because it lessens our identity as an urban core. Grand Rapids officially serves as the urban core for the federally designated Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) for our west Michigan region. The CBSA is used by the Office of Management and Budget in Washington and the Census Bureau and related agencies for developing the federal budget, for accounting and for economic analysis. Grand Rapids is also the county seat and our city collects taxes on behalf of other jurisdictions. It is Grand Rapids that causes Kent County to be officially designated a ‘Central County.’ While Kentwood and East Grand Rapids may have chicken ordinances, they do not play the same role as Grand Rapids.
Test Four: In principle, a public policy should have meaningful public support. I have been persuaded that my Third Ward constituents are opposed to a chicken ordinance.
Alternatives: Our city has at least three ways of getting farm fresh and organic foods.
1. Our retailers are increasing available organic foods.
2. We have a fine farmers market, which may become year round.
3. We can join or form a buying club that buys directly from a specific farm.
At one level it is refreshing to see a substantive response from an elected official on this matter. Having said that I would like to take issue with his points.
First, the idea that if everyone one had chickens in the city it would be detrimental to the city does not hold water. White provides no evidence or argument of how it would be detrimental to the city. It probably isn’t practical for everyone in the city to have chickens in that some people are not capable of taking care of them based on their health, abilities, and space available to raise them. So, even the idea of everyone having them is sort of a false argument.
If everyone in the city composted in would not be a detriment to Grand Rapids. There would be less waste going to the landfill, more organic fertilizer would be created, and even if everyone was not gardening the compost could benefit those who do garden or surrounding farmers. Thus, the idea that if everyone were doing it, it would be bad is a weak argument. On the flip side, if everyone in the city had a car would the city be better off is a question that is not asked. People need transportation, but more cars means more pollution, more traffic jams, more parking space, and more dependence on fossil fuels.
In his second point White argues that the city has to be consistent in its policy, so if people raised chickens, why not turkeys. Again, in some ways he is creating a false premise. People are advocating for raising chickens in the city, because they are chicken and not pigs or turkeys. People who raise chickens know what that means and how viable it is in terms of space and care, so you can’t paint a broad brush and say that it would be inconsistent for people to raise one animal and not another.
We have a zoo in this city. Bears are not urban animals, not big cats or most of the other animals kept at the John Ball Zoo. Zoo supporters would argue they are there for educational purposes, which isn’t questioned by residents or elected officials. Chickens in the city also provide educational opportunities and they would provide healthy food for people.
Commissioner White’s third test seems to be his weakest. Just because the city of Grand Rapids is the “seat of Kent County” doesn’t have any relevance in this case. In fact, the commissioner argues against himself by pointing out that other communities in the greater Grand Rapids area allow people to have chickens. This begs the question, why won’t Grand Rapids allow it?
White’s attempting to make distinctions between urban and rural in many ways are part of the problem around sustainability. We need to change this way of thinking and not place narrow perceptions on what is urban and rural. It would be more sustainable for the future to think about communities as eco-systems and how to improve them. We need to abandon the urban/rural dichotomy that is really just a product of the industrial revolution and no longer necessary, especially if we want to be serious about the future.
Commissioner White’s last point about listening to constituents is an important one, but his comment on it is incomplete. We would all be served better by knowing how many people in the third ward he heard from on this matter and what their arguments against having chickens in the city are. If people are opposed to something based on faulty information then one could argue that it is a misinformed opinion.
If people were not following this issue closely or just relying on the local news media for clarification, then they would not have all the facts. Elected officials need to do a better job at engaging their constituents on these matters if democracy is to prevail.
The suggestions that Commissioner White offers up at the end of his statement on ways for people to get alternative organic foods are all possible and points 2 and 3 would be important actions for people to take. However, people would have more power and more direct input on obtaining organic foods if they were growing gardens and/or raising chickens in their back yards. Giving people to opportunity and support to have more power to make these kinds of choices is what the city should endorse not deny.
Green buildings and Sustainability
Yesterday, the Grand Rapids Press ran a short article in their Business section entitled, “Region’s ‘green’ building set for showcase.”
The article is about an upcoming tour of “green” or LEED certified buildings in the Grand Rapids area. The West Michigan Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council is hosting the tour, which costs $60 a day or $100 for the 2-day tour on September 10-11. This “green” building tour is part of a weekend conference in Grand Rapids called GreenTown, something the Press article failed to mention.
The article does cite three different sources, a representative from Habitat for Humanity (Kent County), a CEO of a consulting firm and Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell. Heartwell is quoted as saying:
“Seven years ago, when I took office, members of the Chamber of Commerce were calling me a ‘tree hugger’ and were laughing about sustainability, (saying), ‘Ah, it’s a passing fad. It will be gone tomorrow. Well, in fact, now no more conservative body than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has totally embraced the concept of sustainability and has recognized the city as the most sustainable mid-size city in the nation.”
This is an interesting comment from the Mayor, but it is also misleading in that there is no clarification of what he means by the Chamber “embracing the concept of sustainability.” Even if it was clear to readers what sustainability meant “embracing a concept” and practicing sustainability are two very different things.
It is true, as we reported in May of this year, the Chamber of Commerce gave the City of Grand Rapids a sustainability award. What we also pointed out in that previous article is that the bulk of the work of the US Chamber of Commerce and its local chapters advocates for policies that are inherently unsustainable.
The US Chamber of Commerce is rife with contradictions, when comparing their politics to that of sustainable policies. First, the Chamber is dominated by oil, pharmaceutical, automobile and other major polluting industries. Second, the Chamber has aggressively opposed climate change legislation in the US, even though the proposed legislation has been very weak.
Third, the Chamber has opposed virtually all pro-worker initiatives in recent decades, most recently the Employee Free Choice Act. Lastly, it is worth noting that the US Chamber of Commerce has spent more money lobbying Congress than any other entity since 1998, spending over $638 million to influence policy. Receiving a sustainability award from these corporate entities is like receiving a peace award from the Pentagon.
(Editor’s note – GRIID plans to be at the Greentown event and report on the content of what is shared.)
The National Priorities Project (NPP) just released data on the cost of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based upon the Obama administration’s 2011 defense budget.
The NPP database allows you do determine how much money has left your community, your Congressional District and your State. The total amount of tax dollars leaving Grand Rapids to fund the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2011 is $83.9 Million.
Their database also allows you to determine what that kind of money could be spent on if it stayed in Garand Rapids. Here are some examples:
12,703 People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year – OR
74,470 Households with Renewable Electricity-Wind Power for One Year – OR
1,700 Firefighters for One Year – OR
7,657 Scholarships for University Students for One Year – OR
16,086 Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550 – OR
26,898 Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year – OR
12,572 Head Start Slots for Children for One Year – OR
27,926 Households with Renewable Electricity – Solar Photovoltaic for One Year – OR
1,249 Elementary School Teachers for One Year – OR
11,651 Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year
The brutal and bloody reality of the US occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan are reason enough to oppose such imperialist endeavors, but looking at the cost of these wars can be a useful educational and organizing tool.
For information on people organizing locally around this issue see the Facebook group Grand Rapids for Justice & Peace in Afghanistan.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Rouses GR Citizens
The Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke to a standing room only crowd at Grand Rapids’ New Life Church of God in Christ yesterday, as part of the Rainbow Push Coalition Jobs, Peace and Justice Tour. He began his speech by inviting the audience to join him for this Saturday’s march on Detroit.
Jackson referenced Martin Luther King’s march for freedom, jobs and justice as he began his remarks. “Here we are 47 years later marching together for jobs, justice and freedom,” he said. “Today we are all free but we are not all equal. The quest is to put America back to work, to even the playing field.”
Using a biblical allegory of building a wall, Jackson explained that the city-to-city tour’s intent is to build the Rainbow Push Coalition in Michigan by connecting people from across the state. The Jobs, Peace and Justice Tour includes stops in Detroit, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, East Lansing. Flint and Ann Arbor. “We came (here) in ’63. We were down but moving up. Today we are up but moving down.”
Jackson summarized the gains made by African Americans since the 60s as Jim Crow practices, such as denying service at restaurants and hotels, were made illegal and voting rights were extended to African Americans, 18- to 21- year-olds and college students living away from their hometowns. He said that had not reforms been made to the way delegates voted in presidential elections, Hillary Clinton would have taken the Democratic nomination in 2008 instead of Barack Obama. Referring to the 1984 presidential elections, he stated, “We found out during that season that our popular vote was much bigger than our delegate vote. We marched to ‘democracize’ democracy.”
Jackson went on to say that in spite of those “fundamental shifts,” things are not right in the US. “Native Americans cannot get three meals a day because they are food insecure―but we have food stored in warehouses. Americans cannot get a house. Millions work without health insurance. Most poor people are not on welfare. They work every day. They catch the early bus. They raise other peoples’ children. They drive cabs . . . They work in fast food restaurants . . . They work . . . cleaning bed pans but when they get sick they cannot get healthcare.”
Jackson said that even though we see people of color in The White House and legislatures, he sees plants closing and jobs leaving every city he visits. “We cannot compete with China’s labor; we cannot compete with slave labor. When they close your plant and take your job and give you that pink slip, turn the lights out and lock the gates, the issue is not black and white, it is dark and light. We need to turn the lights back on for the American worker.”
Jackson referred to the 2008 Olympics in China saying that Americans won medals along with contenders from other countries because the playing field was even. In today’s globalized economy, the playing field for labor is not even. “We have globalized capital without globalizing human rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights and children’s rights.”
He went on to blast the Wall Street bankers and bailouts; predatory lending practices that charge higher interest rates to people in need; and cuts to human services, education and mass transit. “Here we are today fighting two wars. . . . we’re building roads, bridges, schools, houses and hospitals in Afghanistan. We need the same thing in America . . . use the same plan for Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit and put us back to work.”
At this point, Jackson referenced the “American Dream” and shifted his emphasis from systemic issues to personal responsibility and faith. His powerful oratory energized the crowd to echo his admonishments to parents of schoolchildren. “Six things. One, you get up first. I may not be able to read or write or calculate, but I can take my child to school. Two, meet your child’s teachers. Teachers teach children differently when they know their parents . . . Three, exchange phone numbers. Then the teachers will call you, not the police. Four, turn off the TV. Five, pick up your child’s report card. Six, take your child to worship on the weekend . . . teach your child to read and write. Teach your child to pray.”
Jesse Jackson was able to lay out his excellent analysis of the US economy, continued racism and classism and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq with words that brought the message home to his audience. However, he failed to address the failures of a two-party neo-capitalist system that serves the interests of power and money. “Democracizing” democracy will take more than succeeding at school, working hard at our jobs, voting in elections and trusting in God. Historically, change has been seized in streets, not in the voting booth. Let’s hope Saturday’s march on Detroit takes steps in that direction.
Islamophobia and the Great “Ground Zero Mosque” Myth
(This article by Deric Shannon is re-posted from ZNet.)
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and following the “War on Terror”, “islamophobia” has become an increasingly familiar term in the United States—and with good reason. Crimes committed against Muslims because of their faith rose steadily from 2001 through 2005 according to studies, and they don’t seem to have dropped significantly since. Muslims in the US have reported attacks, racist slurs, police detentions and searches that were unprovoked, employment and housing discrimination, and so on. Since George W. Bush declared his “crusade” against terrorism (a particularly prescient turn of phrase) the xenophobia common in nations at war has amped up here in the United States.
The demonization of a people as if they are a monolithic mass during war time is as old as nation-states and their wars. In the US now, we are currently seeing this combined with another unsurprising and common set of events: A media and politician-generated hysteria close to campaign time. This is, after all, one of the ways that politicians swindle people into supporting them at the polls come voting time. And so, at the announcement of building an Islamic Center in Lower Manhattan, reports from political pundits started rolling in about the “Ground Zero Mosque”—continuing toward their November crescendo. Within the last few weeks, the hysteria has gotten louder and louder as a result of some high profile (and disturbing) protests and actions—some connected directly to the controversy in NYC, others apparently organized just from the sheer inertia of the rising anti-Muslim sentiment.
To name one example close to home for me personally, a group of right-wing Christians called “Operation Save America” descended on the Bridgeport Islamic Center here in Connecticut (where I live) a couple of weeks ago. One protestor there told reporters that “(t)here’s a war in America” and they “plan on taking it to the mosques around the country.” They were carrying placards reading things like “Islam is a Lie” and could be heard screaming “Jesus hates Muslims!” One protestor was even heard yelling “Murderers!” at young children leaving the center.
Given the public reaction, there are some rather serious problems with the “Ground Zero Mosque” myth that need to be stated (as often as possible)—some obvious and some not-so-obvious and perhaps even some lessons to be learned from it.
The first problem is that there isn’t really a “Ground Zero Mosque”. No, seriously. There isn’t one. There is a proposed Islamic Center a few blocks away. Plans were for there to be basketball courts, spaces for community education, a space for worship, and even a memorial for the victims of 9/11 in the building. Further, the building would not be visible from the site where the World Trade Center once stood. The discourse around the “Ground Zero Mosque” is so obviously a blatant deception that the AP has re-thought the ways it shaped the headlines and is now taking steps to stop using the phrase. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the political class and their pundit lackeys from using the term to describe their manufactured version of reality.
The second big problem with the Myth is the claim that the Islamic Center has some relationship with Jihadists who want to destroy America. Right-wing blogger, Pamela Geller, for example, refers to the Center as an “Islamic supremacist mosque at…hallowed ground” and suggests that Obama supports “Islamic Jihadists” by coming out in favor of building the center. Robert Spencer uses the even more grandiose “Islamic Supremacist Ground Zero Mega-mosque” to describe the center, bringing to mind the vast mega-churches common in the United States, but ostensibly being dedicated to a jihadist Islamicist faith that encourages killing innocents and wiping the USA off the map.
There are a couple of problems with this part of the politico-generated hysteria. First and foremost, the Imam of the proposed center, Feisal Abdul Rauf, speaks internationally on the dangers of extremism. As I write this piece, Rauf is touring the Middle East speaking out against terrorism. He was likewise seen as a State Department ally during the Bush presidency and funded for similar tours under G.W. He has condemned the 9/11 terrorist attacks as “un-Islamic” and gave a memorial speech for Daniel Pearl (the American journalist who was kidnapped and murdered by Islamic terrorists). Rauf is also a Sufi, a group of Muslims more known for their mysticism than their militancy. But “truth” is more an approximation in the media, particularly among liberal and conservative pundits when their candidates are running for office. In any case, Rauf is hardly a model for Islamic terrorism.
Further, peer-reviewed studies have shown that such Islamic Centers actually help to counter terrorism. And so in the twisted logic of political opportunism, a portion of the American public is manipulated into showing their outrage at Islamic terrorists by opposing something that would likely help prevent Islamic terrorists! One study, done by researchers for Duke and UNC, concluded by encouraging the creation of such community centers in order to help integrate Muslim youth into society and decrease feelings of isolation. Again, rather than a symbol for fundamentalism or a catalyst for extremism, these centers more often help stem Islamic terrorism (and weren’t we supposed to be at war with “terrorism”, anyway?).
Another problem with the discourse around the proposed center is the claim that it is “insensitive” to the victims of 9/11 or their families (though, as we’ve already seen, the rhetoric doesn’t always stop at “insensitive”). How could “Muslims” build this center at ground zero?—so the questions go—Don’t “they” know that “they’re” gonna offend the families of the victims of 9/11? Doesn’t it speak volumes about “these people” that “they’d” do this? And so on. In the last few weeks I’ve heard too many of these kinds of claims about “those people”, etc.
I was trained as a sociologist and, while a good part of what I learned in that training was to be suspicious of sociologists, one concept that comes from social scientists is pertinent here—the concept of “the Other.” Scholars as diverse as Sartre, Lacan, and de Beauvoir have written about how humans come to understand their “selves”, often in relation to other communities that we construct as “foreign” or “different” and, oftentimes, subordinate and “barbaric.” Through this process of creating a mythological and queer (in the sense of being strange) contrast, we come to construct (and understand) our selves. A part of this process is homogenizing groups that we have deemed “Other” and failing to see any differentiation within those groups.
This is where the discourse around “Muslims” being responsible for 9/11 and “them” knowing better than to put one of “their” social centers close to Ground Zero comes from. While we all know that it was fundamentalist Muslims who committed the terrorist attacks of 9/11—a subset of a fairly diverse Islam—it follows the homogenizing project of “Othering” to lump Muslims together as a single, monolithic group and to then hold them collectively responsible (particularly during war time and close to the political machinations so common during campaign time). For most Americans, Christianity is normal and Islam is “Other” because Christianity is common in our society. We make pledges on the Bible in our courts. Churches are a ubiquitous sight, where mosques are not. Many of us, our families, and our loved ones are Christians of one sort or another. So when we read about an abortion clinic being bombed, we know that “Christians” aren’t responsible for it, but Christian fundamentalists. When we hear about Catholics erecting a statue in honor of the victims of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, we don’t get offended because “Catholics” were responsible for the attack in the form of Timothy McVeigh. We differentiate between Christians because Christianity has become such an important part of how we see our selves. And so the entire idea of “Muslims” knowing better than to be so insensitive and build this Islamic center is problematic—it projects a collective guilt onto all Muslims who likely differentiate between themselves, while we fail to. And, again, these problems are compounded by the media circus near campaign time, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (two nations that never attacked the USA) and the xenophobic sentiment whipped up in order to manufacture the consent of the American people for these wars.
I might take a moment here, too, to explain that I’m not religious. I was brought up with a particularly virulent form of fundamentalist Christianity that was psychologically destructive, shaming, and often times just outright ridiculous (I remember one friend who was forbidden from watching the cartoon “The Smurfs” by his parents because they were “demonic”). I’m not a fan of religion in general, so I don’t want this to seem like advocacy for religious centers of any kind. However, I do recognize that not all forms of Christianity are the same—and neither are all forms of Islam—which is essentially what is being suggested here.
I think there are a couple of lessons in this manipulated hysteria for us too, even if they are lessons that we should already have learned. One is about the need for independent media of our own. Too often we allow for-profit news services to influence us in subtle ways. Our news sources are the media arm of politicians and the wealthy and they reflect a very narrow spectrum of political ideas. This is a very old insight, one impressively demonstrated in Herman and Chomsky’s famous book “Manufacturing Consent”. We need to be able to provide counter-narratives to their claims and support independent media that adds our voices to the media circus.
Secondly, we need to rise above the bait of our bosses and politicians. It serves the interests of our rulers for working people to be divided over superficial nonsense like the building of a community center. It is when exploited, oppressed, and ruled people come together and actively resist their rulers that change starts to happen. Throughout history, the dispossessed have found common cause in fighting the people that ruled over us. But we have only done so when we were able to wake up from the deep sleep eagerly provided to us by the people who rule us and largely own and operate the globe.
Finally, we might use this particular media-generated hysteria to think about the ways that we might best intervene in our social world. The economy is in crisis, so we’re told (for our natural environment, for disappearing species, and for billions of people throughout the world living in hunger and privation capitalism is always a crisis), and while masses of people are being laid off and evicted from their homes around us, many of us are arguing over a community center. The fact that our rulers wield this kind of ideological power over us, even in a time like this, is cause for critical reflection. How is it that liberals and conservatives have so captured the public mind? Why are we seeing this hard turn toward xenophobia and Othering at this particular historical juncture? In what ways might we substantively address the cultural divide being forced onto people from above?
I don’t think we have adequate answers to those questions. But I do think that through struggle and study we can learn together to dispel some of these illusions that are peddled to us.
The myth of the “Ground Zero Mosque” and the Islamophobia that surrounds it are media-generated products of a state at war during campaign time. The myth represents some of the worst kinds of “Othering” associated with the hyper-patriotism that followed 9/11 in the United States. At a recent protest against the proposed center in New York City, protestors could be seen jeering, yelling at, and threatening one dark-skinned worker for being “Muslim”—even after he explained to these (largely white) protestors that he was not. The problems here are obvious. We need to be countering these media-generated myths.
(This article by Bruce Dixon is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.)
It’s old news by now that the African American conversation, as heard on corporate media, throughout commercial black radio, is limited to what greedy corporations owning those stations want us to, or will allow us to talk about. When we listen to Warren Ballantine and Steve Harvey giving relationship advice, to Gale King interviewing celebrities, to gay-hating gospel entertainers like Donnie McClurkin, to Rev. Al Sharpton pitching predatory car title loans, or even Tom Joyner on the Morning Show himself, we are not hearing our conversation, or our news about our lives and concerns. We’re hearing the voice of our would-be masters.
Black communities are overwhelmingly against privatizing schools and public resources, and widely oppose the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and everywhere else, more so than any other constituency in the nation. But when was the last time you heard a whisper of this on black TV and radio. In black-oriented media? In the very places we ought to be able to hear our own voices, our collective political will is a political won’t, a corporate and commercial no-go zone.
On August 4, 2010 Tom Joyner had as guest on his nationally syndicated Morning Show one Julius Hollis, an African American former telecom exec who heads up the Alliance For Digital Equality (ADE), a corporate lobbying entity in blackface, widely believed to be funded largely by AT&T. We have included a link to the six minute segment in this article.
In it, Joyner strokes Hollis, first just for being “a good guy,” secondly for his supposed advocacy on extending “access to digital technology by minority communities”, and third for Hollis’s and ADE’s alleged philanthropy. Hollis asserts that he helped start an in-school and after-school program for fifty children in Atlanta which is now “accessible to” more than 2.1 million children. That’s a lot of children. BAR called ADE’s headquarters in Atlanta. We asked where those 2.1 million children were, and exactly what Hollis meant when he said his program was “accessible to” them. Despite repeated telephone inquiries over the course of a week nobody at ADE could tell us that. In fact, they took our calls politely, but never returned any.
We suspect that Hollis’s claim was misleading at least, and fraudulent at worst. If his program actually served 2.1 million children, ADE would be anxious to show the world, rather than hiding from legitimate inquiries. Besides, “accessible to” is a lawyerly weasel-word phrase calculated to sound very much like “our program actually serves 2.1 million children” while allowing whoever made the statement to say they really meant no such thing. Harvard Law School is theoretically “accessible to” everybody as well. Again, BAR gave ADE and Hollis a chance to explain what they mean, a chance they passed up. We won’t call Hollis a liar. But we wish he would explain “accessible to” and show us the 2.1 million children his program serves, if that’s the truth. Maybe Tom Joyner will invite him back to explain it all.
Is ADE really a charitable organization of high-level black and brown “entrepreneurs” all about “giving back” because they’re such good guys and girls? ADE does not disclose its budget, but to sourcewatch.org, the indispensable wiki on corporate front organizations,
“Its 2007 tax return (Form 990),” according to SourceWatch, “…had an operating budget of over $2 million, of which no money was allocated for fundraising, nor hiring of employees. In fact, the total compensation for board members exceeded the amount of all program-related expenses.”
Next time Hollis is on the Morning Show, Joyner can also ask about ADE’s supposed advocacy mission, for the expansion of broadband and technological opportunities to black and brown communities. Maybe he’ll point out that ADE is, under federal law, not a charitable outfit, but a 501c4, or lobbying nonprofit, created to advance its tax exempt purposes by influencing public officials. In the real world, Julius Hollis is a telecom lobbyist, and ADE is what’s called an “astroturf” organization, created to carry out the political will of its corporate funders while pretending to be a grassroots operation arising out of black and Latino communities.
ADE is apparently rolling in cash, and has no need of the fundraising appeals typical of do-gooder nonprofits. It has lots of money with which to buy new friends. Earlier this year ADE forked over a load of cash to assume co-sponsorship of Blogging While Brown, an annual gathering of black bloggers.
ADE has two faces. Public policy is made mostly inside the DC Beltway. In this place, safe from most public input or scrutiny, ADE and its corporate sponsors are everywhere, at every official and unofficial event, every congressional meet and greet, every hearing, every panel discussion, with well-paid black and brown ministers and spokespeople. ADE’s message is always the same. ADE, its board members, well-compensated staff and lackeys claim that black and brown communities don’t want publicly owned city or community wi-fi networks to compete with Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and the like. Black and brown people love the idea of Comcast merging with NBC, and bitterly oppose this thing called network neutrality, along with anything else that would “stifle innovation” by regulating the giant telecom monopolies and near-monopolies. The next time you want to see “entrepreneurial innovation” on the part of AT&T, look at your nearly incomprehensible phone bill. This is the face ADE would rather you didn’t see.
ADE’s other face is about corporate philanthropy, because as Joyner would have us believe, they’re “good guys, giving back”, and about its supposed “JET Agenda,” which stands for “jobs, education and technology.” Joyner makes quite a big deal, in the six minute segment, of the few dozen laptop computers ADE enables he and Roland Martin and some others to hand out to deserving minority children at public appearances. What Joyner, Martin and others don’t tell us is that these are the companies which invented, and which still profit from the digital divide.
Pressing for “jobs, education and technology” sounds nice too. Enabling net neutrality over cell phone networks, along with community-owned municipal wireless and cable networks would guarantee an exponentially greater number of jobs and entrepreneurial spaces in our communities. But these are the very things ADE brings black ministers to Washington and to its regional conferences to testify against. Their advocacy of black community access to jobs, education and technology is even less substantial than Hollis’s apparent claim to be the author of an educational program serving 2.1 million children.
ADE never really explains how preserving the rights AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and their peers to dictate our digital future will bring about its “jobs, education and technology,” any more than establishment economists explain how lower taxes on the rich will create trickle-down jobs for the rest of us. So when current AT&T execs like Cynthia Marshall use exactly the same talking points and language to describe AT&T’s “JET Agenda” of “jobs, education and technology” as Julius Hollis does, it’s hard not to believe that AT&T is speaking every time their lips move. Whether it’s posing as an agent of philanthropy, or hurling bogus accusations of racism at Free Press and other advocates of network neutrality, ADE is a black and brown sock puppet for the telecoms. As we wrote several months ago,
“…ADE’s policy positions and rhetorical poses, especially its opposition to network neutrality and specious claim to want to bridge the digital divide, fit the exact profile of a telecom-funded PR operation on the part of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time-Warner, with black and brown corporate execs on its board. The Alliance For Digital Equality is clearly a corporate-funded front organization pursuing corporate welfare, bailouts and preferential laws and rules for its funders disguised as some kind of benevolent public service. “
ADE is not in the business of public service, any more than Warren Ballentine, Gail King, Rev. Al and Donnie McClurkin are about the black conversation. To station owners and media personalities we are not a people or a polity. We are just a market, to be manipulated and sold to advertisers. Maybe Tom Joyner will invite his good buddy Julius Hollis back to explain himself. Maybe Tom will find a black advocate of network neutrality, community-owned cable and wi-fi, and have that person as a guest on the Morning Show. Maybe. Should we hold our breath?
BlueGreen Alliance Bus Tour Comes to West Michigan
Yesterday, the BlueGreen Alliance bus Tour stopped off in West Michigan on a 17 state road trip promoting clean energy and green jobs. The Press Conference was held in the parking lot of the Teamsters Local 406, where local people heard from several labor activists from around the country who were on the tour.
The main focus of those who spoke yesterday was to get Michigan residents to pressure Senator’s Stabenow and Levin to pass the Senate version of the Clean Energy Bill. Representatives from the construction workers union, the SEIU, and the steelworkers union spoke about the importance of creating green jobs and getting the Senate to pass this bill.
Several of these workers have been laid off in the past year and they stressed that if the Senate were to pas this bill it would not only help protect the environment, it would create needed jobs. According to the Press release sent out by the BlueGreen Alliance, the passage of the Senate bill would create up to as many as 42,000 green jobs in Michigan alone.
However, there has been much criticism, particularly from some in the environmental community that the House bill that has passed and the Senate version that is still to be decided still allows for too much pollution and might even weaken existing environmental protections.
In May, Friends of the Earth released a statement that read in part, “The bill described in these summaries would scrap crucial tools for solving the climate crisis while locking in billions in polluter payouts. It would be a step backward in the fight against climate disruption-great for polluters, but bad for people and the planet.” Last month in the Guardian it was reported that the Senate bill would not cap the amount of carbon emissions and that large polluters will not be held accountable.
Mark Mullholand, a worker from Ohio felt that the legislation would at least open the door to making some improvements and that it was better than doing nothing. After the press conference I interviewed Mark who has been on the tour from the very beginning.
It is worth noting that no local environmental groups were present at this event and the only other news media that attended was the Grand Valley Labor News and Fox 17, which didn’t send a reporter.
