First Thoughts on Tucson

“The rest is just nonsense, my natural response is to ball up my fist and ask- how did we end up like this?”

Apologies for being so late on this, meant to do so earlier, but wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.

The first thing, obviously, is to express deep sorrow and prayers for the survivors of the attack.  I can’t imagine the terror of a husband not knowing whether your beloved is dead or alive, wondering when she’ll wake up, how she’ll sound and look.  I still can’t think for too long about the fact that a 9-year old girl died.  No parent should have to bury their child.  It was good to watch President Obama’s tribute to all those who died.  It’s difficult to watch and not tear up, but it ultimately feels celebratory of the best in them, and we need to hold on to those glimpses of what I’ll keep referring to as that shadow government of kindness and decency, which has always been and will always be with us.  It’s only through the strengthening and mobilizing of that network of love and faith that we will continue to exist, and exist well.

From The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts To The Blessed Community: Who Do We Want To Be?

“So I admit it seems I’m no citizen functionin’, but the common law works against my every flaw”

A while back, in my early academic exploration of environmental justice (thanks Crystal!), I saw a graph that really blew my mind, both because the immediate implications of the graph were horrifying, and also because it was the kind of data point that has the power to deeply shift the terms of a number of debates by both undermining conservative cynicism about human nature and character (ie: poverty as a result of character defect or essential inferiority, and the primacy of base ‘self-interest’) while also tying together seemingly discrete issues of health, environment, justice, education, planning, poverty, and equity.  At once, the graph was a disturbing indictment of current conditions while also serving as a sign-post towards a better approach to addressing social ‘problems’.

Some Thoughts On Joe Stack

The site.

The pilot

On Thursday, an office building in Austin containing nearly 200 IRS employees was hit by a suicide plane attack, strongly reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks.  It appears as though two people are dead, one being the pilot.

The pilot has been identified as Andrew Joseph “Joe” Stack, a 53 year old software engineer.  A six-page statement of his was found online shortly after the attack.  The whole thing warrants a read, but I’ll excerpt from it here:

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in…

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is…

I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country…

He goes on to talk about his personal life and battle against one particular law, his divorce, his inability to find work and resentment over it.  I’ve seen tweets and reports of folks on the left calling this guy a classic Tea Partier and a terrorist and folks on the right not calling him a terrorist and showing remarkable empathy for his anger over misrepresentation and frustration at taxes.

Personally I find any attempt to pin the above statement on either side of the political spectrum somewhat tortured logic.  He rails against taxes (Right), but also is shocked and appalled at the abuses of the health care industry (Left).  He endorses the use of violence for political aims (Right and… more Right, but also kinda Left), but also decries what he sees as the betrayal of a neighbor in Pennsylvania, a retired steelworker who lost his pension (Left mostly, but also kinda Right).  As Rich Benjamin puts it, this man had real populist grievances that explicitly condemn both parties for their mismanagement and what he sees as oppression.

To be perfectly clear, one can have legitimate grievances and, you know, be illegitimately violent with them.  I find any attempt to call flying a plane into a building with the intention of killing civilians anything other than terrorism, as we currently define it in this country, pretty ludicrous given the way that term defines our political discourse and seems to apply to so many other things.  This was a monstrous act, though I find it disturbing in another way entirely that those who seem capable of understanding in some infantile way this person’s grievances, and do not refer to the violent action as terrorist fail so miserably to recognize the grievances of those we do call terrorists- simply because they are Muslim and scary and not like us.  If violence directed against a group (the government, in this case) for the express purpose of sending a political message doesn’t qualify, it is hard to maintain the position that the term stands for anything other than what we wish it to in the moment.

But going back to the beginning of Stack’s statement, and looking at another article I’ll link to, this excerpt struck me the most:

in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Compare this to a recent Rasmussen poll that shows that only 21% of voters (to say nothing of the disenfranchised who don’t vote- I wonder why) feels that the government maintains the consent of the governed, that 71% of voters view the government as a special interest group, and 70% of voters believe that government and big business work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

While Stack’s reactions were clearly fringe and, we pray, uncommon, the sentiments he cite as rationale for his act are anything but.  As Yves Smith puts it at naked capitalism:

It does not take much in the way of powers of observation to see that anger against what we called “the Establishment” in the 1960s is rising. A good deal is correctly focused on how banks have looted the taxpayer; a lot of it is more inchoate but if anything even more virulent: anger about downward mobility, about the rising gap between the rich and everyone else…

Note that he sees his violent response to his economic plight as a political act, a blow for freedom. I am certainly not advocating this course of action. But others start connecting at least some of the dots this way, seeing their financial stresses not as the result of bad luck or lack of sufficient effort, but as an indictment of the system. Given the breakdown of communities (for instance, the fall in involvement in local civic groups and shortened job tenures, both of which lead to weaker social ties and greater isolation), the odds that the disaffected will turn to violence is greater than in past periods of stress.

We need to get back on course, and we need to do it thirty years ago.  The devastation of our country is bad enough without the violence ricocheting off of that devastation.

Peace,
Joel

I HATE When People Use The World War II Defense

I just hate it.

Okay Richard Hass, yes, we get that World War II was a big fucking deal.  I, as a proud pacifist (but I’d say I’m much more of a realist than you), acknowledge that war was unambiguously necessary for dealing with the Nazis.  I’d even acknowledge that yes, there are some people you can’t negotiate with.  And that yes, if you can’t negotiate with them then by all means defend yourself.

But since when did ‘defending yourself’ consist of invading an entire country, with no plan for preventing that country from doing the same thing it does every fucking time it gets invaded throughout its history? No, I mean that seriously.  How is it realistic to look at a transnational organization that committed a horrible act (though no less than the moral travesty that is poor health care or environmental injustice) and invade a single country as a way of dealing with that organization?  Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, but nobody even mentioned attacking Saudi Arabia.  Why not?  Strikes me as, I don’t know, an almost arbitrary decision.

Well Dick Hass, I disagree with committing thousands of Americans in my age group to foreign adventures based on arbitrary decisions.  On realistic fucking grounds.  Al-Qaeda does not represent an ‘existential threat’.  Should it be dealt with?  Yes, but in a strategic fucking manner.  Al-Qaeda is not the same as the Nazis, and you embarass yourself by comparing them.  It’s facile and pathetic, and I expect more from an Obie.

The “unavoidability of war”?  Are you entirely serious?  How many times does this idea have to fail before we start questioning this conservative dogma?

Peace,

Joel

Why Are We Still In Afghanistan?

Why (when we’re fighting a conflict that may be unwinnable when ‘to win’ is defined as preventing rather than promoting terrorism and encouraging some semblance of democratic governance), why (when the Taliban is largely an undefined, ever-shifting force, just like ‘terrorism’.  How do you defeat something that lacks constant definition and status and thus a point of resolution?  And furthermore in the case of the Taliban, is largely a domestic rather than international source of conflict.), why (when the CIA is funding the brother of the undeniably corrupt President, and is most likely a key player in the opium trade, which is a major source of resources for the aforementioned, undefined, Taliban)?

We have a goal that can’t be accomplished because it keeps changing, we have a goal that can’t be accomplished because we just don’t have the resources for it, and we have a goal where we may actually be directing resources to people who are actively working against that goal?

Seriously, why?

350 Alert: Climate Change Already Happening

No wonder they managed to get 15,000 people to a 350 rally in Ethiopia.

LA Times has a harrowing story up about how climate change is already exacerbating Africa’s refugee crisis.  Their figure for the number of refugees whose status can be attributed to climate change driven drought (1o million) does not even account for the wars that are already being fought over that drought in the Sahel and other arid regions.  This 10 million figure ought to be considered a low-end estimate for climate refugees, as conflict (like that in Sudan, Chad, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Central Asia, and anywhere that depends on a glacier for water) becomes increasingly tied to climate change.

How does this affect us (in case international misery isn’t enought to get you incensed)?  Paul Rosenberg at OpenLeft had a piece up yesterday about the national security implications of climate change.  Despair, frustration, and resentment borne of climate change will continue to produce blooms of conflict- conflict the likes of which we’re currently spending billions dealing with every day.  Billions spent on conflict (to say nothing of the war-dead) saps our will and ability to deal with domestic ‘issues’ like energy, health, and education reform that demand attnetion if we are to maintain anything resembling a secure livelihood.  As I mentioned in the caption of one of the 350 pictures I found yesterday, the national security community cannot afford to bullshit on climate change.  They know that we are in for a world of conflict if climate change gets as bad as it could, if we don’t prevent the worst from happening now.

And of course, it bears repeating that the people who are already beginning to suffer the most had the least to do with contributing to this problem, and have received next to nothing of the benefits from industrialization and first-world development.  Climate change is happening now, and it’s happening to those who had nothing to do with bringing it on.  Those people know where the blame lies.

Call your congresspeople, senators and President Obama every day demanding a recognition of a 350 ppm target.  I’m not even addressing whether that’s politically feasible.  The public option wasn’t politically feasible until we made it so, and now the administration and Democratic leaders are shitting a brick trying to figure out how to avoid responsibility for it.  Changing what’s politically feasible officially starts now.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month TONIGHT: Supporting Survivors Of Sexual Assault

In other ‘things-you-should-go-to’ news, check out the Sexual Assault Awareness Month calendar. There is an event today, 4:30 in Wilder 101, that sounds particularly essential: on supporting survivors of sexual assault. I don’t think I really need to repeat the oft-heard but too seldom really listened to statistics on the number of women who will encounter sexual assault of some kind in their lifetimes. Suffice it to say, this is an extremely valuable if difficult event, and I strongly encourage attending if you have the time.

Peace yall, take care of yourselves.

-Joel

Geographies Of Displacement Symposium This Week

What’s good yall? Just a quick post to let you know that there’s a series of talks this week that looks really interesting on geographies of displacement. Understanding these trends is incredibly important among other things because they will be enormously exacerbated by climate change (sorry, it’s been like five days since I mentioned it, I think I’ve been pretty good lately), which produces refugees from flooded, drought-stricken, and wildfire prone areas as well as violent conflict like that seen in the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia.

The first talk is tonight at 8:00 in West Lecture Hall, by Njabulo Ndebele of South Africa, looks at the experience of returning home after apartheid. Much of the destructiveness of apartheid lay in the government’s control of space, its delineation of ‘bantustans’, shifting of peoples’ territories, forced displacements, checkpoints and pass requirements. The reclamation of space after such hateful constrictions is something I think we can learn from as we consider future social trends.

If, like me, you can’t make the one tonight and want to check out others, there are a full six more for the rest of the week. On Wednesday there’s a lunch conversation in Wilder 115 with Losang Rabgey, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of a non-profit working for education, capacity-building, and innovation on the Tibetan plateau, and a talk at 4:30 in King 106 by Sophie Richardson, the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division. On Thursday at 4:30 there’s a reading at the Oberlin Public Library by a poet, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, from India and Nepal. On Friday at noon in Wilder 215 there’s a very interesting talk for you anthropologists (and green jobs advocates) out there on doing community service and internships in indigenous communities. That day there’s also a talk at 4:30 in King 106 on resistance and activism by Phyllis Young, a Lakota/Dakota activist from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She’ll be talking about damage done to communities by the Oahe Dam and Oil Pipeline projects, of especial interest to anthropologists and environmental justice activists (so yeah, I’ll be there.) And finally, on Saturday, we’ll be welcoming back OC alum Ishmael Beah at 2:00 in Hallock Auditorium (Environmental Studies building) to talk about the identity of language.

Hopefully I and some others will be attending a few of these talks and can report back on them for those who don’t get to see them. I’m especially interested in doing the two Friday ones (though that is the day Marcy Kaptur is here,) but if anyone else would like to go to those or other talks and report back on them that’d be great. I spend too much time on this blog (nah…)

Peace yall, happy Monday.

-Joel

Sexual Assault Awareness Month Highlight: Domestic Violence And Women Of Color, A National Conversation

I have been meaning to get some posts out (or even better, manage to get some posts from someone at the Center for Leadership in Health Promotion or another group) for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Here is the first, a reference to a troubling article over at Model Minority on domestic violence and black women.

It first addresses some of the disturbing statistics on rates of domestic violence, according to The Domestic Violence Institute and a Tufts University survey. I’ll just mention the ones brought up in the Model Minority article, but I hope you can take the time to look at the other information:

“Black women comprise 8% of the U.S. population but in 2005 accounted for 22% of the intimate partner homicide victims and 42% of all female victims of intimate partner homicide. African Americans account for a disproportionate number of intimate partner homicides. In 2005, African Americans accounted for almost 1/3 of the intimate partner homicides in this country.” (Domestic Violence Institute)

and

“Approximately 40% of Black women report coercive contact of a sexual nature by age 18. The number one killer of African-American women ages 15 to 34 is homicide at the hands of a current or former intimate partner. In a study of African-American sexual assault survivors, only 17% reported the assault to police.” (Tufts survey)

And this all in addition to the statistics I don’t have on hand for gender and racial pay disparity, AIDS epidemic, and other community afflictions we (those with the privilege not to think about it every day) tend to consign in our minds to the third world.

But the real message of the article was a question, phrased in response to some of 50 Cent’s comments that were picked up by the celebrity news cycle, in which he described the effect the pictures of a brutally beaten Rihanna had on him. The question of the article was basically, what is it going to take to make the mainstream of this nation take domestic violence in communities of color seriously? The author brought in the Obama girls, Sasha and Malia, wondering what would happen if one of them was older, and a clear survivor of domestic partner abuse. How would we react then? Would it be sufficient to wake us up?

I’ve thought about the symbolism of the Obama family before, specifically with regards to the garden in their (White House) lawn, and my only input is that I hope Michelle Obama and Barack can both use their extremely positive images to respectfully raise awareness at this issue, in a way that I’m not sure a white male like me (and every preceding president) ever could. I don’t mean they ought to condemn anyone for their lack of responsibility, go in guns-a-blazing (not that I imagine them doing that anyway) to assign blame and deal with this as is our visceral reaction, with anger and vengeance. I hope that they can open a conversation that tragically, has not yet gone far beyond the activist agenda on the national stage, and it needs to be more widely addressed. I also hope that they can address, from their vantage point as black role models, both the broader issue of domestic violence and the specific issue of unacceptable levels of domestic violence towards women of color. I’ve got to pause right now and explicitly address my privilege as a white male, and acknowledge that I can not hope to truly understand the pain, anger, and desire for justice on the part of survivors adequately. I also can not hope to do justice to the complicated conversations that go on in people of color communities. I can empathize surely, but I speak from a comparatively distant voice, as one who has recognized violence towards people I know, but never been directly assaulted. That being said, my guess is that ending domestic violence will involve a huge array of strategies, including rehabilitation (not necessarily institutionally) of survivors and aggressors, education, and most importantly, honest conversation. It will also likely involve an honest assessment of the unfortunate realities on the ground on what the numbers suggest are disturbing trends.

Michelle Obama is an incredibly powerful symbol, as is Barack Obama, and I know they are both sensitive to the need to address this issue. I think their joint facilitation of this national conversation could take this out of the realm of a ‘women’s issue,’ and hopefully engage the very people that continue, in my estimation, to perpetuate this problem: scared, angry, hopeless, confused, problematic men of all races. I also hope they can take a holistic and sensitive approach toward addressing the root causes of domestic violence in communities of color specifically. I can’t state enough that I don’t mean to excuse domestic violence behavior, but I hope we can look at the problems with men and impoverished communities that bring this conflict to bear.

As with the previous post, I recognize this is a hugely sensitive issue, and I hope readers who disagree with me feel free to address my points however they feel necessary.

Peace, and take care of yourselves.

-Joel

Binghamton

There’s some really horrific news out of an immigrant and volunteer community in Binghamton, NY today. I don’t usually do stuff like this, but please consider extending your thoughts and prayers there, where today at least 12 or 13 individuals were shot and killed and over 40 were taken hostage by what is still an unclear number of gunmen at the American Civic Association. The American Civic Association is a support center for immigrants and refugees, offering counseling, citizenship assistance, family reunification, and cross-cultural community building. The center stands around the corner from the local high school. Inside the center, English-language classes were offered, among other services :

“This is the friendliest, nicest place to be,” Ms. Weisser, a volunteer from Vestal, N.Y., said. “This is a community where we help with any immigrant issue, with citizenship and translation.” – The New York Times

While every act of violence is awful, the good intent and work of this community saddens me that much more. I’ll try and update this as I learn more, and if I can find any substantial actions that can be taken to support this community in its time of crisis I’ll let you know.

Peace,

-Joel