Revitalization vs Gentrification in the Heartside area
Yesterday I attended a forum to discuss the issue of whether or not the revitalization of the Heartside district of downtown Grand Rapids has led to any gentrification.
The forum was hosted by the Grand Rapids Community Foundation and was attended by a variety of people in the community, including business owners, downtown property owners, politicians, political candidates, non-profit directors, representatives from the faith community and a few residents from the downtown area.
The event was promoted as Knotty Cocktails, which was meant to reflect the tension that such a topic might lend itself to. However, there were also cocktails, so people had the opportunity to have a drink and enjoy some of the finger foods provided.
Laurie Craft, with the Grand Rapids Community Foundation (GRCF), moderated the discussion. However, the GRCF decided upfront to have two people from Dwelling Place provide some background and analysis of the evolution of Heartside before any dialogue could take place. Jen Schaub, a staff member of Dwelling Place and a resident of Heartside, joined Denny Sturtevant, the CEO of Dwelling Place.
Both Schaub and Sturtevant addressed some of the history of the area, tensions between new development and long-term residents, and how land is used in the Heartside area. In fact, Dwelling Place was founded 30 years ago with the intent of trying to provide basic housing services to people who were poor, homeless or recently de-institutionalized.
Eventually a few questions were asked around issues of defining a healthy neighborhood, diversity, affordable housing and why there wasn’t a viable grocery store in the Heartside area. Sturtevant said that Dwelling Place did open and operate a grocery store in the 1990s, but was not able to make it work due to limited income diversity and the easy access to large grocery chains like Meijer, at least for those who own a car.
The issue of crime and loitering at the new Heartside Park on the corner of Division and Cherry St. was also brought up, especially since it was recently in the news. This became an issue as the weather warmed up and people in large numbers were congregating in the area. Representatives from Heartside Ministries and Degage said after the form that the GRPD was upset with their agencies for not doing more to monitor this activity.
Someone also asked the question about whether or not homelessness will ever stabilize or decrease over time. A representative of the Coalition to End Homelessness said that this was a goal, but considering the current economic trend and high levels of unemployment homelessness and access to affordable housing will continue to a major concern.
Near the end of the forum Rev. Charlotte with Heartside Ministries asked if there was a tipping point, where with all the new development people might be forced out of the neighborhood. Sturtevant responded by saying that he didn’t think that would happen and that he is not aware of anyone ever being forced out of the Heartside area due to new business or housing developments.
This writer stated that the problem with the conversation was that it was framed as reinvestment vs gentrification, when in fact both can happen. Gentrification can take forms, such as people feeling threatened, intimidated and marginalized and people need to recognize that these are real outcomes of “economic development.”
I also said that I was not directly invited, but was told about the forum by someone who was. I was grateful to be included in the discussion, but it seemed that most of those in attendance did not live in the Heartside area and that many of the long-term residents are often excluded from these kinds of discussions. I asked what criteria the foundation used to determine whom they would invite, but the question was never really addressed.
This last point is an important one, especially as new development projects are in process, as well as proposed projects like the “farmers market” are likely to happen. People who live in areas like Heartside need to be included in these kinds of conversations, especially when public funds are used, otherwise we should expect there to be ongoing tensions between developers and residents.
Will the Real Tea Party Movement Please Stand Up?
(This article is re-posted from the Center for Media & Democracy.)
Have you wondered how the Tea Party, portrayed as a “grassroots” movement, could possibly raise enough money in one year to procure a professionally-painted, luxury motor coach and send it on two highly-publicized national tours? Or how the Tea Party so quickly developed the expertise to plan, organize and execute the tours, and consistently draw major media attention to them?
The answer is that the Tea Party Express is not a “grassroots” effort. The Web site Politico.com obtained and posted a proposal (pdf) showing that long-time Republican party operatives are, in fact, directing the “Tea Party Express” portion of the movement. The “group” and its activities are the result of efforts by a Republican-affiliated political consulting and public relations firm, Russo Marsh & Rogers, based in Sacramento, California. PR executive Sal Russo of Russo, Marsh & Rogers is also the chief strategist for the Our Country Deserves Better, political action committee (PAC) formed in 2008 to oppose then-candidate Barack Obama.
A Visible “Brand”
The “Tea Party Express” is one of the more visible “brands” of the overall tea party movement. It is the faction that organized the highly publicized desert rally in Searchlight, Nevada last March to oppose Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), an event that cost around $1 million to pull off — a pretty big chunk of change for a real “grassroots” gathering.
Since forming in 2008, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC has taken in more than $4.5 million in donations, including major contributions from corporate executives and other wealthy supporters of conservative candidates, like the actor Chuck Norris. The PAC does not have to disclose who its big-name funders are.
“Tea Party Express” PR Proposal
The PR proposal obtained by Politico was written by Joe Wierzbicki, a principal at Russo Marsh & Rogers. In it, Wierzbicki suggests essentially taking over the Tea Party movement by rushing in with campaign-style event planning and advance work. He suggests obtaining a “proper luxury coach wrapped in ‘tea party’-themed graphical design,” and sending it out to “cross the nation, stopping in cities to conduct ‘tea parties.’ ” Wierzbicki suggests inviting local Tea Party leaders, talk radio hosts and fiscally-conservative political candidates to speak at each stop. Wierzbicki says a major fundraising effort would be needed “to ‘do this ‘right’ (have an awesome looking tour bus, getting the word out, having slick/persuasive/compelling advertising, paying for permits/insurance hotels, food, etc… ). He suggests that, to raise the money, “the bus tour rallies focus not on asking for funds to support the tour, but on the ” ‘Defeat Harry Reid’ or ‘Defeat Chris Dodd’ or ‘Defeat Arlen Specter’ political components to this effort.” In other words, Wierzbicki suggests exploiting the real Tea Partiers’ emotions to raise money, and take the focus off the PR project itself. He also suggests renting email lists from conservative news outlets like Newsmax, Human Events, WorldNetDaily, etc. to begin direct fundraising — again, not a cheap endeavor.
All of Wierzbicki’s ideas are professional-style campaign moves proposed by a GOP-affiliated, political PR firm. In fact, they bear a suspicious similarity to the strategy we saw in another big-funded, right-wing endeavor by Americans for Prosperity: the “Hands Off My Health Care Bus” and its tours around the nation. Clearly, none of this is the work of the kitchen-table set.
“Outsider” Sensitivity, “Buttressing Authenticity”
Wierzbicki expresses sensitivity to the issue of outsiders coming in and “working” the tea party theme. He says,
“We have to be very very careful about discussing amongst ourselves anyone we include ‘outside of the family’ because quite frankly, we are not only NOT part of the political establishment or conservative establishment, but we are also sadly not currently a part of the ‘tea party’ establishment …”
Wierzbicki acknowledges the difference between their big PR effort and “real” grassroots activists:
“We can probably pull off a phenomenally successful tour without these big-ego establishment types, provided that we do a good job in getting the word out to local tea party leaders and grass roots conservatives who operate in their local communities independently as is…”
He discusses “buttressing our authenticity” by featuring local supporters and donors in TV ads that target Harry Reid.
True Grassroots Buried
Most everything Wierzbicki put in his proposal has come to fruition. The Tea Party Express is successfully raking in money and garnering tons of media attention while the real grassroots faction of the movement, the Tea Party Patriots, struggles to raise money and get attention. The Patriots have said they do not want to support political parties or PACs, and have accused the “Tea Party Express” of being a “sham organization” and an “astroturf” outfit. They point out that Republican strategists are co-opting a true conservative movement to raise money to support the party’s agenda. The Patriots have even charged that Tea Party Express organizers dragoon real grassroots Tea Party activists into doing the grunt work for the professional campaign, like getting them to help set up stages and clean up rally sites after the bus leaves.
Even More Dubious Tea Party Factions
Other Tea Party factions are equally dubious: Tea Party Nation (the entity that organized the first official Tea Party convention last February in Nashville, Tennessee) is purely a for-profit business entity. Its official name, “Tea Party Nation Corporation,” is even registered with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture and Commerce, Division of Business Services. Its business is selling “tea party” merchandise, like bejeweled tea bag pins ($89.99 apiece), regular and decaffeinated “Freedom” coffee beans, trucker hats, coolers and other items at a Web site called Tea PartyEmporium.com. Tea Party Nation’s organizer, an attorney named Judson Phillips, was even alleged to have linked a PayPal account for Tea Party Nation merchandise to his wife’s bank account.
Corporate Backing
Reports indicate that the Tea Party movement benefits from millions of dollars in funding funneled to it from conservative foundations supported by mega-wealthy U.S. families and their business interests.
Money to organize and implement Tea Party activities flows primarily through two conservative groups: Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. In an April 9, 2009 article posted on ”ThinkProgress.org”, Lee Fang reported that the principal Tea Party movement organizers are Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, two “lobbyist-run think tanks” that are “well funded” and provide the logistics and organizing for the Tea Party movement from coast to coast. ”Media Matters” reported that FreedomWorks receives substantial funding from David Koch of Koch Industries, the largest privately-held energy company in the country, and the conservative Koch Family Foundations, which make substantial annual donations to conservative organizations (including FreedomWorks and other conservative think tanks advocacy groups). Media Matters reports that the Koch family has given more than $12 million to FreedomWorks and its predecessor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, between 1985 and 2002.
“Fox News Tea Parties”?
The Tea Party also gets substantial support in the form of promotion from the Fox News Channel and its talk show hosts, including Glenn Beck. Media Matters noted that “While discussing the April 15 protests on his April 6 program, Beck suggested that viewers could “[c]elebrate with Fox News” by either attending a protest or watching it on Fox News. Beck stated that in addition to himself, hosts Neil Cavuto, Greta Van Susteren, and Sean Hannity would be “live” at different protests. While Beck spoke, on-screen text labeled those protests as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”
The Real “Takeover” is by Corporate Interests
While tea partiers load their rifles and worry about a supposed “government takeover,” their nascent movement itself has, in fact, been taken over by GOP-affiliated PACs, professional PR operatives, wealthy corporate interests seeking a “grassroots” face and by individuals seeking to profit off of citizens’ honest concern about the country’s political direction. Like a human hand zooming in and animating an otherwise limp hand puppet, these entities have zoomed in and co-opted the tea party movement from the inside out, and have started using it to advance their own agendas.
The bright side is that this episode is instructive to people on both sides of the political spectrum about how entrenched corporate, media and political interests work together to co-opt real public sentiment, and harness it to advance their own goals. A “big government” takeover may seem like less of a threat when viewed through the prism of how all these big, professional political and corporate-level interests have siezed the tea party movement and started using it for their own gain.
GRPS Student opposition grows
Last night the Grand Rapids School Board cancelled their Monday meeting because too many people showed up at the Franklin Street Campus. The Grand Rapids Press reported that parents, students and teachers came to voice their opposition to the proposed educational changes.
The front-page story came with a headline that read, “Meeting cancelled; debate simmers,” with a subheading that said, “School Board refuses to discuss course changes with large, angry crowd.” The online version of the story says that the “meeting turned ugly.”
The Press story did point out the exchange between parents, teachers and some school board members. When it was announced that the meeting would be cancelled because of “overcapacity,” some people voiced their opposition. GRPS Board Chair Catherine Mueller “reminded the crowd that they are examples to children.” Such a comment did not endear Mrs. Mueller to the crowd, which began a chant of “Vote The Out.”
While the Press coverage did reflect an engaged community, they chose to frame the story around conflict instead of highlight the passion and organizing that went in to turning out 250 people for a school board meeting.
The GRPS Student Union can take a great deal of credit for this organizing, which you would not know from the Press article. The only student cited in the story was from City High and her comments do not give any indication that she represented an organized opposition to school administration policies.
A subsequent Press article does state that the meeting is rescheduled for next Monday at 6:30pm at Ottawa Hills High School, but there is no sense of what the organized opposition is protesting. The follow up Press article just states, “Staff, parents and students were hoping to engage the board on proposed changes in instruction.”
We received a message from the GRPS Student Union stating that they are in the process of “making plans to host a district-wide Walk Out, where students would walk out of their fourth hour and join their parents in a Sit-In in front of the school at every high school in the district. This idea is still in the planning stage but we are confident that it will happen during next month May.”
It seems clear that the students and parents are organized and will challenge the proposed changes of the school administration. Unfortunately, the local commercial news agencies are not reporting this important aspect of the story.
Last week the Grand Rapids Press announced that the founder of the private mercenary group Blackwater, Erik Prince, would be this year’s Tulip Time Festival keynote speaker (May 5).
The Press Release sent out by the festival planning committee states, “Prince will offer an engaging and motivational presentation sharing insights into his life experiences and how the value-based lessons of his childhood in Holland helped launch his life’s journey. His presentation will also touch on his family’s guiding principles of free enterprise and local philanthropy.”
I think a lot of people would like to know how his “value-based lessons of childhood in Holland” led him to starts one of the world’s largest private mercenary armies that has murdered innocent civilians, stole US weapons, and assisted US imperialism abroad. Maybe the lessons he learned from his father Edgar Prince, a supporter of far-right groups, taught him that the real value of the free enterprise system is to get millions in government contracts, which is just a fancy way of saying that the public has subsidized his wealth.
The Press Release continues by stating, “We are pleased that Erik is willing to join us for the Luncheon and provide us with his personal life stories,” says Tamra Bouman, Executive Director of Tulip Time Festival, Inc. “We sought out a speaker who has strong personal ties to our community. Erik has been on the world’s stage, and we’re very interested to hear how Holland’s educational, cultural and social environment influenced his life.”
Again, wouldn’t we all like to know the answer to these questions. I’m sure the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans would like to know as well.
The Tulip Time Festival Press Release goes out of its way to avoid any controversial content, mentioning that Prince is the founder of Blackwater, “a state of the art tactical training facility in North Carolina.” It will be interesting to see if any media covers this event and how they present Prince in light of everything we know about Blackwater.
Just this week, Jeremy Scahill, who has done more investigative work on Blackwater than anyone else, reveals that the Justice Department has brought new charges against Blackwater officials. According to Scahill:
“The Justice Department announced that a federal grand jury had returned a fifteen-count indictment against five current and former Blackwater officials, charging them with conspiracy to violate a series of federal gun laws, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Among those indicted were Blackwater owner Erik Prince’s longtime right-hand man, former company president Gary Jackson, Blackwater’s former legal counsel Andrew Howell and two former company vice presidents. Given Blackwater’s track record and the severity of other allegations against the company–including killing unarmed civilians–if the charges in this case stick, it would be somewhat akin to Al Capone going down for tax evasion. The one major difference being, the number-one man at Blackwater, Erik Prince, is evading prosecution and jail. Prince, who remains the Blackwater empire’s sole owner, was not indicted.”
Blake Krueger, President & CEO of Wolverine World Wide, was the keynote speaker at today’s Econ Club luncheon in downtown Grand Rapids. His presentation was a brief summary of a new “design initiative” involving Wolverine, Meijer, Steelcase and Amway.
The project is called GRiD70 and was presented as a way to have local corporations “collaborate, provide more economic growth opportunities for downtown Grand Rapids and attract and retain young professional talent.”
The Grand Rapids Press was so impressed with this idea that they ran a front-page top story on the corporate plan this past Saturday. The online pro-growth, pro-business blog Rapid Growth Media also ran a favorable piece as well.
Wolverine CEO Blake Krueger kept saying that Grand Rapids needed to attract the “creative class,” which seemed to be a euphemism for young professionals. Krueger stated that this young talent would be attracted by a vibrant urban environment with entertainment venues that are walkable.
At this point Krueger showed the audience a short video consisting of two parts. This first part was a brief interview with Carol Coletta, President of CEOs for Cities. Coletta was in Grand Rapids a year and a half ago to address the Business Policy Summit, which was advocating for a better tax climate for Michigan businesses and a right to work state policy.
The head of CEOs for Cities said in the video that she was impressed with the urban initiatives that Grand Rapids has already begun and cited the success of last year’s ArtPrize and the newly proposed “urban farmers market.” It was interesting that she mentioned the market idea, since this was a produced video and the market idea was only announced a few weeks ago.
In addition to the hype around this corporate collaboration there will be a Masters degree program offered through the Illinois Institute of Technology. This business program is called a Master of Design Methods program to help students not just design products but to better understand how consumers use these products.
The project begins next week and staff from the four companies mentioned earlier will be renting space in a Rockford Construction owned property in downtown Grand Rapids.
None of the media coverage we have seen so far has asked any serious questions about what kind of economic development this “design initiative” would look like and who would be the beneficiaries. There has also been no discussion about the contrast of wanting to bring young professionals to the area, when there are thousands of unemployed workers. Does this mean that these companies are only interested in the “creative class” and not the working class?
Earth Day is coming – let’s look to corporations for help?
Today the Grand Rapids Press features a, “Guide to helping save the planet,” in preparation for the 40th Anniversary this week. The “guide” not only emphasizes personal behavior, which has been the growing trend, it also advocates personal behavior that will not threatened the current business as usual destruction of the planet’s eco-systems.
The Press article begins by asking readers if they kept lights on this morning, were recycling or drinking water out of plastic bottles. The article then goes on to say that Earth Day is coming, “it’s time to take saving the planet a little more seriously.” Ok, so what does the Press mean by getting “serious?”
Getting serious about the planet for the Press is participating in a park clean up in Kent County or attend some educational events that look at invasive species. The next suggestion is for readers to buy an Uncle Goose toy, because this toy manufacturer makes toys out of wood and doesn’t use lead paint. The Press even provides a link to local retailers who sell this line of products.
The Press also encourages readers to shop for the planet and buy educational toys or go to a screening of the Disney film Oceans. Everyone known’s what a commitment the Disney corporation has to the environment, with all the plastic products they sell, which are made in China. Disney also demonstrates their commitment to sustainability with their expensive, hyper-consumer theme parks. Oh, and lets not forget the commitment that the Disney-owned network ABC has to environmental protection.
The Press Earth Day Guide also has a section called Eat Green, which sounds like we might be getting serious about saving the planet. Maybe you are thinking that there is information from local farmers who participate in Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) or maybe there would be a tutorial on how to grow your own food. Instead, this section has a few “tips” on eating green from the international home products retailer IKEA. Yes, you read that correctly. The Grand Rapids Press Guide for saving the planet offers green eating tips from a multinational corporation that has nothing to do with sustainable agriculture and everything to do with convincing us to buy stuff we don’t need.
If you respond to such weak reformist tips with some sense of disgust, then you have not bought into the Green Capitalist mantra that buying the right products will save us. However, at some point we have to ask ourselves why does the GR Press promote these kinds of eco-friendly actions?
It is important to recognize that the Press is owned by Advance Publications, a large corporation whose primary purpose is to make money. A significant percentage of the money they make is from advertisers, most of which are part of an economic system, which by its very nature exploits the planet. This would explain why the Press’s Earth Day Guide does not include campaigns to stop new coal powered plants from being built in Michigan, information about efforts to stop the diversion of water from the Great Lakes for private profits or any other efforts to seriously reduce carbon emissions that will be necessary to avoid a global catastrophe due to global warming. These sorts of tips might not make us feel as good as buying “green” toys for our kids.
OKT hosts a “How to Plant a Garden” workshop
(This article was submitted by Christy Mello, who is a member of OKT.)
Twenty people stood in near 40-degree weather for almost two hours on Saturday morning in order to learn “How to Plant a Food Garden.” This workshop was hosted by Our Kitchen Table (OKT) and took place at the Barefoot Victory Garden located at 1350 Wealthy Street.
A group of nearby residents have built twenty nine raised beds for this community garden, which is open for anyone who wants to plant, tend to it, hang out, join in on the soon to be scheduled activities, and—best of all—feast on the harvest regardless if you worked in the garden. Unlike other community gardens, it is not segregated into individual plots but is open to all including those who cannot afford fresh produce. Both of these groups collaborated on this event due to their expressed desire to create a community/social network of people to share and grow local food. This workshop is one of a series of OKT’s Food Diversity Project’ (FDP) activities.
OKT is a grassroots advocacy group determined to achieve food, social, and environmental justice for low-income earners, especially women with children, in Grand Rapids, MI. Food justice is the fundamental principle guiding the FDP in which OKT challenges the systemic causes of food insecurity: a lack of access to fresh and affordable food. As Lisa Oliver King, the founding organizer of OKT, announced this past Saturday morning, “food is a right for everyone!” The FDP is an alternative to charitable food donations, and encourages neighborhood residents to produce and share their own bio-diversely grown food either from their backyard or community garden.
The “How to Plant a Food Garden” workshop addressed many components of gardening while speaking to environmental and food justice. The attendees included novice and experienced gardeners who traded gardening tips. Everyone had the opportunity to ask a series of questions that predominantly were about composting, what to plant where, and where to find—at no cost—resources for their gardens such as expertise, compost, and seeds.
Clinton Boyd, a biochemist of the Sustainable Research Group, has worked closely with OKT over the last few years around issues of lead poisoning and asthma. He discussed how gardening is related to environmental health issues. For instance, he reported that second to Detroit, Grand Rapids has the highest rates of lead poisoning in the state. Residents living in the more impoverished areas of Southeast Grand Rapids, especially children, suffer from disparate rates of lead poisoning compared to the rest of Kent County. Thus, one does not want to exasperate this problem by growing food in soil with high levels of lead. For this reason, OKT provides resources, such as Clinton, to encourage gardeners to get their soil tested for lead as well as educate people around facts including which plants are less susceptible to lead contamination.
Raised beds are a method for avoiding high levels of lead. Commonly people use compost in their beds though as Clinton pointed out, you have to know what is in it since there is hardly any state or federal laws regulating companies to test their compost for toxins. For instance, he described how much compost in Michigan comes from cow and chicken feces. However, the Food and Drug Administration allows a certain level of arsenic to be used in chicken feed. Therefore, when it comes time to process chickens, their feathers easily fall out due to arsenic poisoning. This is more convenient and less expensive for farmers who are often owned by and mass-produce—with destructive environmental and health practices—for a particular company. As a result, your compost may have high levels of arsenic. As you may know, arsenic is a major component of rat poison.
At the heart of industrial agriculture is this type of quick and convenient production of our food that results in larger profit margins at the expense of our health, the humane treatment of animals, and the environment. For this reason, OKT provides education and resources around less costly and sustainable practices in order for food insecure (and secure) community members to not depend on agribusinesses and the charitable efforts of those who provide the unhealthy food directly linked to high rates of diabetes and obesity.
Last year’s and soon to be this year’s activities educate about as well as address these issues. These events include food garden tours, seed saving, food canning, communal cooking, and educational workshops like the one at Barefoot Victory Garden on “How to grow your own food.”
Will the Climate Bill Nuke Earth Day?
(This article by Harvey Wasserman is re-posted from Commondreams.org)
The Climate Bill is due on Earth Day. By all accounts it will be a nuclear bomb.
It will be the ultimate challenge of the global grassroots green movement to transform it into something that can actually save the planet.
For the atomic power industry, the bill will cap a decade-long $640-million-plus virtual cleansing of its radioactive image.
It will have the Obama Administration and Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) embracing very substantial taxpayer subsidies for building new nuclear plants.
Ditto new offshore drilling and “clean coal.” The markers have been laid for a greenwashed business-as-usual approach toward pretending to deal with global climate change and the life-threatening pollution in which our corporate power structure is drowning us. All without actually threatening certain corporate profits.
From “An Inconvenient Truth” to Obama’s impending Earth Day address, the official emphasis is on each of us, as individuals. To be sure, we ALL must consume smarter, use less and recycle more. Since the first Earth Day, all these great green ideas have had an undeniable impact.
Some corporations have also learned that pollution is by definition a form of waste, and that to actually go green is to become more profitable.
But some technologies and fuel sources have proved simply unworkable on a survivable planet. Topping the list is atomic power.
Once sold as “too cheap to meter,” atomic reactors are too expensive to matter—except for massive taxpayer subsidies.
The first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957. Since then, the industry has failed to solve its radioactive waste problem, failed to find meaningful private liability insurance and failed to find unsubsidized private financing for new reactors.
The handouts in the Climate Bill are sorry testimony to all that. But there’s more.
All reactors are indefensible targets for terror and error. As at Fermi, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the potential for disaster is apocalyptic.
All reactors kill nearby living things—human and otherwise—from “normal” radiation releases.
All reactors also emit substantial toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases in mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication, transportation, waste storage and other related operations.
Reactors in France, Alabama and elsewhere which have been forced shut because they super-heat rivers and lakes—all in the name of “fighting global warming.”
Selling the falsehoods that atomic energy is “carbon free,” successful in France and can “fight climate change” has been dirty and expensive.
Along the way, the industry has hired a bevy of flacks with marginal green credentials.
But on Earth Day we may see its crowning achievement.
Already the Administration has pledged $8.33 billion in loan guarantees to fund a double-reactor project in Georgia. The designs have not yet been certified, the price tag is soaring, there’s bitter debate over where the cash will come from and what fees should be attached, and the state’s ratepayers are on the hook even if the plant never generates electricity.
But the Administration wants more than $50 billion in loan guarantees to repeat the process elsewhere. Kerry-Lieberman-Graham have toyed with even bigger subsidies, in various forms, ranging to $100 billion and more.
Offshore drilling and “clean coal” also seem poised for new handouts.
It’s not clear what the Earth gets in exchange. Cap and trade, once the centerpiece of the whole deal, is gone. A carbon tax does not seem to be on the table. There will certainly be subsidies for various Solartopian technologies, and a headline-grabbing “surprise” or two.
But exactly what the barons of fossil/nuke will offer to justify their massive cash infusions is not yet clear.
All that’s certain is that this Earth Day, the Climate Bill will jack the debate to a whole new level.
Given soaring global carbon levels and a wasteful, obsolete economic infrastructure in serious decline, we are clearly at the precipice.
The Administration, the Congress and the country will have to decide: will we continue to subsidize failed atomic technologies and catastrophic fossil mining and drilling whose corporate backers have apparently unlimited funds for lobbying and PR?
Or do we finally turn to the truly green technologies and ways of living that can save both our planet and our economy?
The final battle starts Thursday. The outcome is up to us.
Immigrants Under Fire: The Tea Party’s Newest Target
What’s bugging the Tea Party these days? Lately, there’s been a lot of talk about the English language.
For example, at a Tea Party event in August of last year, Ada Fisher said: “You cannot be one nation under God when everyone’s speaking something different.”
That might come as a surprise to, say, Switzerland, which has four official languages, or South Africa, which has 10. And in fact it’s also surprising in the United States. We are a nation founded on immigration, and many Americans were raised in multi-lingual homes. Even so, the U.S. Census Bureau found in 2000 that 96 percent of all residents speak English “well” or “very well.”
As linguist Geoffrey Pullum said in a 2004 essay, “making English the official language of the United States of America is about as urgently called for as making hot dogs the official food at baseball games.”
But according to the Institute for Southern Studies, “An Official Language of the United States” made a big showing in voting for the Contract From America, an online document created to list the Tea Party planks. It didn’t make the final cut, but English-only got more votes than issues like interstate health insurance and cutting lifetime pay for members of Congress.
So what’s with the Tea Party and this sudden obsession over English? It’s not about the language; it’s about the immigrants.
The Tea Party seems to be run on rage—White rage, a sustainable resource since 88 percent of members are White, according to a Quinnipiac poll. Along with anger over President Obama, health care legislation, and taxes, this rage is somehow suddenly being channeled against immigrants and in favor of “taking America back.”
Former Representative Tom Tancredo said in his Tea Party convention speech on March 4 that America did not need “a cult of multiculturalism.” He added, “…something really odd happened, mostly because we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House – his name is Barack Hussein Obama.”
Setting aside Tancredo’s apparent desire to re-institute laws that led to lynchings and mob violence, his speech showed one thing: Immigration, once a back-burner issue for the Tea Party, has suddenly become a burning topic.
Tancredo got a standing ovation with his concluding remarks: “[Our culture] is based on Judeo-Christian principles, whether people like it or they don’t. That’s who we are. That is who we are. And if you don’t like it, don’t come here. And if you’re here and you don’t like it, go home! Go someplace else!”
Alien, go home. It’s become a favorite theme. Last November, there was a rash of Tea Party anti-immigrant rallies held across the country, including one in Phoenix where people held up signs that said, “America Not Amexico.” The rage/hate level was so high at the Phoenix event that NeoNazi observers, some carrying signs nearly identical to the ones that the Tea Partiers had, attempted to join in.
Speakers at the Tea Party convention in Nashville this February drove home these talking points: “President Obama wants to turn the country into a Third World country.” “Make English America’s official language.” “Immigrants are taking over the United States. They must be sent back to where they came from.” “This is our nation and we must take it back.”
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, is one of the leaders of a new wave of Tea Party anti-immigrant rallies being held this month. Gheen explained, “We are encouraging Americans coast to coast to stand up and speak out against Obama’s push for amnesty for illegal aliens and the President’s refusal to send the National Guard to the border to defend American jobs, wages, property, health and lives,”
The fear of the foreign is nothing new in the Tea Party, as shown in their widespread claims that Barack Obama is Muslim, not Christian; African, not American. At a Tea Party event on April 9 in Escanaba, a man named Ken Schwalbach said, “Obama, to me, is a socialist. He’s a Muslim and all he wants to do is bankrupt us and run us into the ground.”
Now our need for fairer immigration laws or even tolerance for a society that speaks more than one language is enraging the Tea Party. What are these people so afraid of?
A few clues: On one Tea Party blog, a member wrote: “An overflow of poor, uneducated humanity, looking for free health care will start pouring into our nation. Around the world rumors are already flying that if you slip across the sieve of a border, you can get work as low income and get all your taxes back by lying on the tax form.”
And on this site, in response to a GRIID article, a self-identified Tea Partier wrote about not being able to find English labels on store items and hearing other languages spoken in the street. He commented that to be upset about such things “is not being racist or a bigot, it is American. We live in America, they live in America, why do the majority have to cower to the minority?”
In my opinion, you don’t really see a lot of White cowering in America, but you wouldn’t know that to listen to Tea Party speakers. They also seem unaware that laws made even more Draconian over the past decade make it nearly impossible now for undocumented immigrants who have been living here for years to find their way through the system to obtain legal status and citizenship.
But there could be something larger going on here: the manipulation and control of votes.
A standard feature of Tea Party events has become the moment, as in Riverside Park on April 10, when someone earnestly explains why he or she is not a bigot. And that rang a bell with me, as it would with most students of U.S. history. Who was famous for saying, “I am not a bigot” even when he followed it up with statements such as, “Segregation today…segregation tomorrow…segregation forever”?
George Wallace. Wallace’s clever manipulation of Alabamans over the sea change of the Civil Rights movement was nothing short of brilliant. His overt racism was essentially theater, done with political deliberation. When he was asked why he started using hate speech, Wallace admitted, “I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.”
The majority of Tea Party members say there is no need for more than two political parties. So their votes will inevitably go to the existing party they see as more conservative. Add to the equation that the right wing is desperate to get back into power to save tax cuts for the rich, unlimited war profiteering, and the continued deregulation of Wall Street.
Now factor in a new CBS poll that found 63% of Tea Party members get their information exclusively from Fox News.
To manipulate the Tea Party, steering them toward politicians whose voting records prove that Tea Party issues have never been their priorities, would simply be playing out a tried-and-true method…one that’s been used before, particularly when fueling it with the myth of White oppression, the threat of the erosion of White privilege. Immigration issues provide the perfect trigger for that.
Is the Tea Party being played? If they are, it won’t matter how much rage is generated. This tactic is always abandoned after the votes are cast and the patsies have successfully been used for their purpose.
In Wallace’s case, his claims he could put a stop to the essential addition of civil rights laws were lies that got him into power. Civil Rights legislation prevailed anyway.
In the case of immigration reform, there is a great need for changes to make laws fair, to see that people who desire citizenship can achieve it, and to give everyone an equal place and an equal voice. These are changes that can be stalled, but will not be stopped.
Memo to the Tea Party: You all have immigrant roots. There is no “us” and “them.” Es hora de dejar ir.
Enola Aird listens to audience members discuss points brought up in her presentation in Grand Rapids April 17.
Enola G. Aird , director of Mothers for a Human Future, spoke yesterday about the connection between the commercialization of childhood and the commodification of children. In other words, how advertising that is raising today’s kids into self-indulgent, materialistic consumers is paving the way for a time when children will be genetically modified products with traits preselected by their consumer parents.
Born in the Republic of Panama, Aird is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College and received her J.D. from Yale Law School. She is a member of the steering committee of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood and has worked for the Children’s Defense Fund as well as a variety of media organizations, including the predecessor entities of Time Warner and Viacom. She was hosted by the local grassroots coalition, Stop Targeting Our Kids (STOK).
Aird started her talk by relating a conversation she had with a Mexican exchange student who was surprised by American children’s lifestyles. He said, “In Mexico children are raised to be respectful of their elders, to take care of the younger children and to be family oriented.” Aird went home that evening and asked her then teenage daughter what American kids were raised to be. Her daughter answered, “To get good grades, a good job, to make lots of money and to buy lots of things.” Though joking, her daughter’s response was a correct analysis.
“The US is about material success. The purpose of life is getting lots of things, having material success,” Aird said. “What if we discover our way of life is inconsistent with being human?”
The commercialization of childhood
“Advertising and marketing are a crucial piece of the deadly puzzle we’ve created for ourselves,” Aird continues. “For the past 40 years, they have trained children to be lifelong consumers. Young people want nothing but things—and that is good for our economy.”
In 1980, Congress removed the FTC’s control over regulating advertising targeted to children. Around that same time, James McNeal, who is known as “the godfather of kids’ marketing” explained why kids are the best market to have. They buy things. They influence what their parents buy. And, they will be buying the rest of their lives. (McNeal’s book credits include Kids as Customers: Handbook of Marketing to Children and Advertising to Children in China .)
Since that time, marketing aimed at kids has had less regulation than marketing to adults. Today’s childhood maladies—obesity, violence, hypersexuality and other behavior issues can be directly linked to 
this free-market, profits-over-people mentality that has no concern with children’s well being. As an example, Aird mentioned the child-targeted marketing of the new R-rated movie, Kick Ass, which she described as a “Kill Bill for kids starring an 11-year-old girl.”
“The marketers not only sell product, they sell values. ‘Gotta have it. Just do it. Obey your thirst.’ That ‘gotta have it, gimme’ attitude sells the values of self indulgence, materialism and instant gratification. These are antithetical to the values needed to live in community and in relationship.”
The commodification of children
Aird then gave the example of how consumerism has already begun directing us down the post-human road. Leading scientists, such as Lee Silver, professor of genetics at Princeton, biotech entrepreneur, Greg Stock, and futurist Ray Kurzweil are already cashing in. As is the medical industry. The Fertility Institutes, with clinics in California, New York and Mexico already offer prospective parents guaranteed gender selection.
The technology will soon be here to offer parents the opportunity
The Fertility Institutes' poster child
to shop for the type of child they want: hair color, skin tone, eye color, and enhanced aptitudes. Many college newspapers feature ads for egg donors, with an emphasis on blondes of the right weight and height with high SAT scores.
“The real danger is that we are walking blithely into the commodification of human beings. Professors at University of Chicago and Princeton think it would be a good idea to make bigger, better humans,” Aird said. “When we talk about taking back childhood from corporate marketers, we’re trying to preserve our humanity. Technology and capitalism are very hard to stop … We have to stop it if we are going to preserve humanity.”
How do we stop it? While working through the legal system, staging boycotts and lobbying government all have their place, Aird believes the real hope lies with mothers. Since the dawn of humanity, mothers have carried on the particular way in which human life is brought to the world. Appealing to the “mother trust” held by women in every country of the world could be the best hope for humanity.
“The time is now . . . and it’s at the grass roots, with conversations like these” Aird said. “We have the patenting of life forms. Everything is for sale—kids, body parts, water. Is nothing to be set aside for the common good? . . . I have two children who may bring me grandchildren and I want them to be human.”
