Lubbock Left

Thanks to a friend, I found this amazing historical post about Abd el-Kader and the Massacre of Damascus on, of all things, a baseball blog.  I confess that this was history of which I knew nothing about, despite the global implications during this time (mid-1800s).

el-Kader (al-Qadir if you prefer) is seen as the George Washington of Algeria; his exploits fighting against French colonialism (unsuccessfully) for Algerian independence were known all over the world. His fame reached even the American frontier; Elkader, Iowa is the only city in the USA named for an Arab.

Abd el-Kader is also known for his role in saving the lives of 10,000+ Christians in the massacre of Damascus in 1860. In a letter that seems prescient today, he describes the motivation behind his life-saving efforts:

That which we did for the Christians, we did to be faithful to Islamic law and out of respect for human rights. All creatures are part of God’s family and those most loved by God are those who do the most good for his family. All the religions of the book rest on two principles – to praise God and to have compassion for his creatures … The law of Mohammed places the greatest importance on compassion and mercy, and on all that which preserves social cohesion and protects us from division. But those who belong to the religion of Mohammed have corrupted it, which is why they are now like lost sheep.

Sounds like something one might read today in our world where reasonable people of all faiths are witnessing the hijackings of their faiths by extremists.

I think peace among followers of the major religions of the world requires extraordinary leadership, not only from luminaries at the top but through everyday examples from ordinary folks. Peace is possible, but we must put peace first. (This is why the Department of Peace and Interfaith dialogue are still good ideas.) In other words, look closer at any major religion for the “why” of peace and you’ll find it, but you do have to be looking for it.

Great news out of the political fundraising world today — Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Bill White has out-raised Governor Rick Perry for this most recent reporting period! This is true both in terms of money raised and in terms of number of donors. White also has more cash on hand than Perry, who had to spend quite a bit to survive his primary. White is accumulating the resources necessary to get out his message this election season.

Also, Bill White will be in Lubbock tomorrow (Saturday, June 17th) for a fundraiser dinner. He will also make an appearance at Montelongo’s restaurant (on Clovis Highway between Indiana and University) from 2-3pm tomorrow (Saturday). This is not Bill White’s first visit to Lubbock during this campaign season either. He’s been at least two times before that I know of.

Lastly, if you want to get involved with volunteering for the Bill White campaign, then there is an excellent training opportunity Saturday morning/afternoon: Bill White University (BWU) from 10:30am-3:30pm at the Union Hall at 405 E 50th St, just East of I-27. I will be one of the trainers at this BWU event, so I look forward to seeing you there if you decide to go.

This year’s statewide races are shaping up to be exciting and very, very competitive. I hope you will get involved!

America today is under renewed assault by Dark Age ideas that elevate humankind’s worst tendencies while discouraging the better angels of our nature. I want to look at three such ideas in this post.

Let’s call the first Dark Age idea wealth=goodness. If you’re rich, you must be good. You deserve your riches, no matter what, because you earned them, end of discussion. This is true even if, as Donald Trump puts it, you’re a member of the “lucky sperm club.” (It’s also helpful if you’re a Bernie Madoff or Benny Judah type.) Conversely, if you are poor it indicates a moral failing.

This conflation of good finances with good morality is definitely an American phenomenon, but it’s also as old as civilization. Along the way, pretty much every major world religion has arrived at the opposite conclusion: excessive wealth is a sign of moral weakness. Some American religions have missed that memo, however. To get more insight into the very real way the wealth=goodness worldview is used in America today, check out Jeff Sharlet’s excellent book The Family. It does a fine job of illustrating the history of certain American fundamentalist Christians who curry favor with the world’s wealthy and powerful with some variation of “Hey, mister rich and powerful man… did you know that God loves you just the way you are?”

During the health care reform debate, a related Dark Age belief that I never expected to encounter slithered to the surface: “If you are healthy, it is a sign of moral goodness; if you are ill, it is a sign of moral weakness.” (our second Dark Age idea: health=goodness) I think such a disgusting belief was tolerated in our marketplace of ideas precisely because 1) the wealth=goodness belief was already out there in a very real way, and 2) the quality of health care you receive in the USA depends greatly on your personal wealth. Connect the Dark Age dots and you get the worldview that good people can take care of their health while bad people can’t.

Another Dark Age idea related to wealth=goodness is that old playground taunt that some folks never grow out of: “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?” (The correct playground retort, of course, is: “If you’re so rich, how come you’re not happy?”) This is another Dark Age idea with an American twist that we’ll call success=wealth. The essence of this idea is that if you’re wealthy, you have succeeded. Moreover, wealth is the only measure of success. And, as with the above ideas, the opposite relation is implied: if you’re not wealthy then you are a failure.

When folks ask me why I am a Democrat, my answer usually includes the antidote to the success=wealth Dark Age idea. The Democratic Party is the Party that celebrates the success of working families and protects them from those who would step on them while climbing the ladder to “success” (wealth). We need to celebrate the success that is raising a family, belonging to a real neighborhood community, taking pride in your work, serving your country, or any number of other beautiful, non-material achievements.

What do you think? Are we witnessing the dawn of a New Dark Age? I think we are in danger of a New Dark Age if we let ideas like wealth=goodness, health=goodness, and success=wealth prevail in our society. I also think we can avoid this danger if we identify and confront Dark Age ideas when they rear appear in our lives. And believe me, they will appear.

I don’t normally like to point to another blog and say “go read this and come back,” but I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage everyone to read this excellent post about what caused the recession by my Amarillo friend and fellow progressive blogger jobsanger. His post refers to a recent Alternet piece by Robert Reich which I also recommend you read.

The way into both the Great Depression and the Great Recession was the increasing concentration of income in the top 1% wealthiest Americans. Or, as jobsanger puts it:

In 1928 the income distribution had reached a point where the top 1% of the population was making 23.9% of all income in the United States. With only 76.1% of the country’s income left for 99% of the country’s people, the situation created was like a loaded gun waiting for something to pull the trigger (and that trigger was pulled with the Wall Street crash of 1929).

… [onward to 1980 and beyond] …

The Republicans re-distributed the country’s income by busting unions, deregulating the stock market and the financial industry, severely cutting social programs, deregulating college tuitions (which priced college out of the budgets of many Americans), and by repeatedly and radically cutting taxes for the richest Americans. By 2007, the top 1% of Americans was again controlling 23.5% of this country’s total income.

Once again the country’s economic gun was loaded and cocked. The trigger was pulled by the meltdown of the financial industry.

The way out of the Great Recession is twofold: use government to create jobs temporarily (since private industry is not getting the job done, so to speak) and bring back a fair level of taxation on the rich. Let the Bush tax cuts expire, for starters; they are nothing but giveaways to the ultra-rich in exchange for their support. Then, let’s take Warren Buffet’s advice and tax the rich appropriately.

However, the question that Robert Reich leaves us with in his article is indeed timely: Will President Obama treat income inequality / shared prosperity with the seriousness it deserves as a core problem facing our nation? Or, are we living in a New Gilded Age, where corporate money has a stranglehold on our politics — even for the good guys? Reich argues that the compromise (a word foreign to 95% of today’s Republican Congress) solutions on health care, financial reform, and even the response to the BP spill don’t address the fundamental problem of extreme income inequality… but they DO pad the bottom lines of the major corporate players involved in each case. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the aforementioned solutions do include real reforms, but Reich does have a point about the unjust status quo being maintained in each case.

Let me sum up this way: economic justice is necessary for all economic systems including capitalism, but we as a nation are sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that it isn’t.

Got this video through my facebook (thanks, Colin!), and I feel compelled to share.

Check out the Charter for Compassion:

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

There is more at CharterForCompassion.org. From what I can tell, the site is nonpartisan, and not affiliated with a specific religion. It simply invites people to share acts of compassion and encourage compassion among others.

I’ve added my name to the charter, and I hope you’ll take a moment of your weekday to do the same.

The TTU Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) is raising funds to bring gay rights activist Lt. Dan Choi to Lubbock for a speaking event. Lt. Choi served for ten years under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” before being fired for coming out.

Here is a link to the page where you can donate to help TTU GSA pay for the expense of bringing Lt. Choi to Lubbock.

Lt. Choi speaking at TTU would be part of the 2010 GLBTQ History/Awareness Month in October. (October is GLBTQ Awareness month because National Coming Out Day is October 11 and because October commemorates the first march on Washington by GLBTQ people in 1979.) Watch the GLBTQ History/Awareness Month page for news about this year’s events.

The citizens of Abilene and the good folks over at SaveAbileneWater.com have won a victory recently. The Tenaska company was in talks with the City of Abilene regarding a two million gallon per day water contract for their proposed Tenaska Trailblazer coal plant near Sweetwater. On June 29th the Mayor of Abilene made a surprise announcement that, due to the large public outcry, he will not support pursuing a water contract with Tenaska. He said:

“I believe as the mayor, this is the right thing to do for our city,” Archibald said. “I have been led to believe the citizens do not want this.”

He added, “Instead of waiting for this to go to a vote, I’m willing to say now I cannot support this.”

In recent weeks, Archibald said 95 percent-plus of Abilenians he has spoken with or received correspondence from have opposed selling water to the proposed power plant. That fact, weighed with the need to protect the city’s current and future water supply, prompted Archibald to reach his conclusion and decide to make Tuesday’s public announcement.

Soon after that announcement, Tenaska indicated that it would look to other municipalities in the area for their water needs.

I believe it’s worth noting what has happened here, because it’s a rare and wonderful thing. People of many different political backgrounds and viewpoints united behind a pressing issue, got the word out, and persuaded their elected officials to change course and follow the will of the people. Everyone involved should be commended for their part in this example of democracy at work.

Monday night in Sweetwater the next stage of this drama plays out as the Sweetwater City Council will likely vote in favor of a 500,000 gallon per day water contract with Tenaska. There is bound to be some citizen opposition present at the meeting, though.

I find it strange that the City of Sweetwater, which has taken a leadership role with wind energy on the South Plains, appears to be in favor of the Trailblazer coal plant.

I hope that other municipalities, including Lubbock if our city is approached by them, will not sell water to Tenaska for their Trailblazer plant. The water issue is an important one, to be sure, but the pollution of a coal plant is enough of a reason to oppose Trailblazer. Coal has around 50 harmful byproducts other than CO2, which is the only pollutant captured in the never-tried, experimental capture method that Trailblazer proposes to use. Water conservation and the pollution of our area are both valid reasons for opposing the Tenaska Trailblazer plant.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next stage in this Tenaska saga, because it ain’t over yet.

Note: this post was made last week on the A-J version of my blog. Technical problems with lubbockleft.com kept it from being posted here until now.

I was searching for a Presidential speech to post as an inspirational 4th of July tribute, something to show our strength and unity as a nation. But you know what? I couldn’t think of one single Presidential speech that my readers on the right and on the left would accept as embodying America.

Maybe it’s these divisive times we live in; maybe it’s all this rain throwing off my sleep schedule; maybe it’s just my lack of imagination. Who knows.

However, I do not come to this post empty-handed. I find my inspiration for Independence Day unity today in the recent scientific/historical discovery that Thomas Jefferson had replaced the word “subjects” with “citizens” in the original Declaration of Independence.

That historic change — just one word smudged in ink! — is worth our reflection. We are not subjects; we are free citizens. I hope that is something about which we can all agree.

Happy Independence Day!

Note: this post was made last week on the A-J version of my blog. Technical problems with lubbockleft.com kept it from being posted here until now.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has been making it up again. This time, she’s claiming that illegal immigrants are on a rampage, beheading people in the desert. She has also claimed that most illegal immigrants are “drug mules” who smuggle drugs into the country. Both claims are, of course, false.

What Gov. Brewer is doing is very deliberate, however. We are witnessing the tried-and-true right wing strategy of demonizing an “other” onto which all manner of evil may be projected.

Think back and it’s easy to spot right-wing use of “demonize the other” technique in our recent history. One example that comes to mind is how the right describes homosexuals. The political right has claimed that AIDS is a “gay disease,” that homosexuals are pedophiles, that gay families are always unstable, etc etc even though the evidence demonstrates the exact opposite in each case. Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and many other groups have had their turn as the political right’s targeted “other.”

When it’s convenient for the political right, any group that’s not 1950s nuclear family white is eligible for ire.

Now, with the country in a mess thanks to eight years of right-wing policy-made-action, the distracting “other” of choice is illegal immigrants (and legal citizens accidentally mistaken for them). To distract from their poor governance, Gov. Brewer and other right-wingers have to tie the illegal immigration problem to every evil they can: crime, disease, undesirable culture, economic burden, etc — even though the evidence shows no such links.

Furthermore, the extent of the problem-du-jour (illegal immigration in this case) must be exaggerated so that it’s seen as the biggest problem we face. Forget the economy, the environment, the endless wars we are stuck in, the growing corporate feudalism that is wrecking our world — nothing can claim the 24/7 news cycle away from the right’s cause of the moment.

Lastly, the problem (illegal immigration in this case) must be made as much of a wedge issue as possible. That is, it should divide people into clear “for” and “against” groups with no hope for compromise or common ground, even when (especially when!) common ground or compromise may be possible. The right-wing position on immigration reform right now seems to be “militarize the border and don’t do anything else until that’s done.” Stupid in itself, sure, but look at what that position does to the possibility of finding common ground — it eliminates it.

Read just about any one of Mister Con’s blog posts if you want further examples of this all-or-nothing jockeying.

Now, President Obama is moving forward in his attempt to forge immigration reform that meets at least some of the concerns from all sides. That’s one of the President’s gifts — getting things done in spite of the most hostile political atmosphere in the last 50 years. The legislative outcome has room for liberal disappointment, to be sure, but my goodness — look at the stubborn, confrontational, loud, lying, head-in-the-sand opposition the President has to overcome.

With health care reform under the President’s belt, and financial reform soon to be as well, I believe it is actually possible that we will see some kind of “common ground” immigration reform within, say, a year. We can all agree that physically securing the border can be done better, just as we can all agree that cracking down on employers who always employ illegal immigrants can be done better. Those are the kinds of conversations we should be having. However, Gov. Brewer, Gov. Perry, and your favorite right-wing radio/tv personalities are all going to keep running the same play, saying that illegal immigrants are all dirty druggy immoral criminals who are ruining everything. It’s not true, and saying it poisons the debate.

Which is what they wanted to do all along.