“lo que mal empieza, mal acaba” -- What Starts Bad Ends Bad!

Credit: REUTERS/Ricardo Rojas 

I am a long time coming to this post. I began on November 17, 2013 when I listened to and then read a report produced by Christopher Woolf for Public Radio International (PRI). The gist of this report was a glimpse at the historical antecedents to a ruling by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic. The ruling and the subsequent government decree (Decreto 327.13) put into effect a “Plan nacional de regularización de los extranjeros ilegales radicados en el país” (National Plan for regularization of illegal aliens residing in the country) mandated by constitutional revisions in 2010. This “regularization” requires that people living in the Dominican Republic who were born after 1929 and who do not have documentation of legal residency or at least one parent of Dominican blood are to be declared either in the country illegally or “in transit” (which allows residency for only a 10-day period). This decree potentially affects as many as one-in-ten Dominicans, who are originally from Haiti or of Haitian descent. Many of these people are 2nd and 3rd generation residents.

What!?! So, I was off to try and connect the dots on how this could ever have become an acceptable possibility.

I contributed to the tourist economy of the Dominican Republic once. Once was enough. I went to an all-inclusive resort on the beaches of Punta Cana. There were people from all over the world there, and the beach was a string of one resort after another forming a chain of “guests only” warning signs.

The resort workers lived beyond commute distance and so they stayed at the housing provided by their employers in shifts that might extend to 2 weeks before having 3 days off, mostly spent traveling home and back. Touring the Dominican side of the island outside of the resort enclaves produced the expected American culture shock, even when one works hard to just experience and not compare. And being me, I soon found myself in conversation with one of the guides about all things politics in the Dominican Republic.

We talked about education and how even in a 1-room elementary school house,”no uniform, no shoes, no service.” Education was not free and for some families that meant that one sibling attended a morning session, then traded uniform and/or shoes with another sibling who attended an afternoon session.

We talked about land use and how difficult it was for Dominicans to own land without the threat of imminent domain capitalized on by foreign business interests.

We visited a community beach, full of misuse, uncollected trash, and limited vistas in contrast to the resort areas, and so we talked about how Dominicans were denied the natural resources of their own country.

And, we talked about Haitians. This young, college-educated, practicing Catholic explained to me that Haitians were a race apart. They were without moral values and practiced “voodou,” a term he literally spit out. With that, we talked about religion (always a mistake) and he was not well-pleased with me, to say the least.

The entire experience left a sour taste in my memory. How did this antipathy between Dominicans and Haitians develop? As usual, it’s a long story.

Beginning in the 15th Century, European nations embarked on a 300-year period of exploitation (oops, Freudian slip) exploration to find trading partners, new goods and new trade routes. The contemporary history taught in the U.S. most often presents the explorers of this period as noble and courageous beings seeking adventure, but even more so, seeking knowledge. But, as always, a fuller understanding is served by following the money. Begin with Prince Henry “the Navigator” of Portugal.

Prince Henry directed the development of the caravel, a ship that was lighter than what was then typical and thus able to sail further and faster than heavier ships. As a young man, Prince Henry participated in the capture of the Moorish port of Ceuta in North Morocco. The Moors had used the port as a staging point to raid Portuguese settlements and enslave the residents, adding them to the traffic in African captives.

As governor of Algarve, Prince Henry repopulated a village on the Sagre Peninsula, which provided access to both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. He received funds from his various positions as governor and was awarded all profits for areas he “discovered,” as well as holding a monopoly on vital resources and permissions. His motivating goals were to stop pirate attacks and to learn the source of the west african gold trade, but in addition, he also received a portion of the profits from the sale of slaves at the nearby market in Lagos.

Moreover, Prince Henry desired, as did the other European nations of his day, to find a new route to access the spice and silk trades within Asia. These trades had been severely limited, along with access to North Africa and the Red Sea, by the Ottoman Empire when it took control of Constantinople in 1453. The expeditions that Prince Henry sponsored established colonies in the Madeira and Azores Islands and succeeded in circumventing the Muslim controlled land-based trade routes. Soon gold and slaves began arriving in Portugal. Thus, the Age of Exploration Began. It might also be said that thus, an age of imperialism began.

While the Portuguese focused on sailing along the coasts of Africa to access the eastern trade, Christopher Columbus marketed a different idea, to sail west across the Atlantic. Columbus found Portugal and England disinterested in his ideas. However, Spain proved much more receptive (well, initially anyway). Columbus wanted fame and fortune, as did the monarchs of Spain. And, there was another motivation. Spain had just accomplished its “Reconquista,” expelling Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom after centuries of war. Ferdinand and Isabella now focused on the exportation of Catholicism to lands across the globe. In 1492, with a promise that he could keep 10% of whatever riches he found, and, receive a noble title and the governorship of any lands he should encounter, Columbus set sail under the Spanish flag. Just over two months later, he arrived in the Caribbean and proceeded to sail from island to island in search of the wealth he had promised to the Spanish crown. In March of 1493, Columbus left 40 men on the island he had named La Isla Española (now called Hispaniola) and returned to Spain.

LANDING OF COLUMBUS, John Vanderlyn (1775-1852)

It was here that I found myself distracted by all manner of things: Why was Columbus spurned by Britain and Portugal? Why did the Ottoman Empire restrict European trade rather than take advantage of tariffs or other income sources from that trade?  Where were slaves taken and for what purposes? What is the story of Africans enslaved into Europe during this period? How did slavery as an institution integrate into the various European cultures? How were slaves differentiated from serfs? Not to mention wanting to know more about why the Fall of Constantinople marked the end of the 1,500 year reign of the Roman Empire AND how fleeing scholars sparked the Italian Renaissance. Anyhoo …

Columbus’ dream of wealth did not end well, but in 1496, his brother built the first European settlement in the western hemisphere, the city of Santo Domingo. The Spanish then proceeded to develop a plantation economy on the island and used Santo Domingo as a headquarters as they expanded their presence in the “New World.” Over the next 200 years, the Spanish decimated the indigenous peoples of Hispaniola through forced labor, disease and intermarriage, while at the same time establishing the encomienda plantation system that gave rise to an elite social class and the internalization of racial and religious biases.

Initially, those considered “slaves” in Hispaniola were servants brought from Spain to serve the Spanish elite. Known as “Ladinos,” these servants were people of African descent who had been born in Spain and who had accepted Christianity.  However, with the establishment of the first sugar mill on the island, there rose a demand for labor that was filled by enslaved African workers, and the importation of Africans increased substantially.

In the absence of the isolation control patterns that were to be established in the American system of slavery and that have come to be accepted, in the U.S. at any rate, as norms of the African Slave Trade, the Africans who arrived in Santo Domingo were often from the same geographical areas. This provided the opportunity to  communicate, organize, and to flee, which they did - repeatedly. These rebellions established an African presence in the mountains and eastern section of the island, and created intermarriages between the native Tainos and Africans, who were now known as Maroons. By 1530, the Maroon population had increased to the extent that they had established a level of control over the mountainous central and northern sections of the island.

After the conquest of the Aztecs and Incas and amidst the various wars in Europe (here again, I found myself distracted as I encountered European conflicts that I had never heard of before, but which hold considerable significance in a wide variety of subsequent contexts), Spain shifted its attention to securing Spanish presence and claim to the riches of the Americas. In 1697, Spain ceded the western area of Hispaniola to France as part of the Treaty of Ryswick, which ended a 9-years war wherein France fought against an alliance composed of England, the Netherlands, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the North American Provinces.

Now named Saint-Domingue, the French colony became extremely wealthy through coffee, sugar, cotton, and indigo plantations and the labor of enslaved Africans, who represented 90% of the colony’s population by the end of the 18th Century. In 1791, enslaved Africans, joined by free people of color enacted the revolution that gave rise to the leadership of Toussaint Bréda. Early in the conflict, Bréda renamed himself Louverture. 

The story of this period in Haiti’s history is a distraction in and of itself. As I researched the events, I recognized that being American, I have an internal image of the historical African slave as bereft of politics and the military trappings of politics. Yet, following an increased and indiscriminate demand for plantation workers as the colony’s wealth developed, the majority of the male Africans who found themselves enslaved in Saint-Domingue were captured from the same region, soldiers sold and exported to eliminate an opposing force. These were trained military men, familiar with the weapons and strategies of war in that period. Was it the violent victory of the initial moments in their revolution that nurtured the fears that led plantation owners in the United States to heightened barbarism and oppression as they institutionalized slavery into the birth of the American way of life? Or, were their fears fanned into the obsessive passions that haunt the U.S. to this day by a recognition that the strength so prized in labor and the intelligence witnessed (yet disallowed) could as easily be turned to revolution?

European empires and the newly formed United States shared a common commitment to slavery, but they all coveted one another’s Caribbean territories. With the revolution underway in Saint-Domingue, England and Spain looked to take over the tremendous wealth of the colony. The Spanish offered the insurgents weapons and commissions in the Spanish military, thinking to again have the whole of the island. Louverture accepted the weaponry and subsequently used it to drive the Spanish from Saint-Domingue. The English offered like-minded planters the preservation of slavery in the face of French leanings toward abolition.

As a counter, French Republican commissioners offered freedom and citizenship to any who would fight on the side of France. When there were holdouts, Louverture among them, the commissioners abolished all slavery in the colony. A delegation of elected representatives was sent to France to win the approval of the National Convention. Their success was in itself revolutionary. In 1794, by decree, "the Convention declare[d] the slavery of the Blacks abolished in all the colonies; consequently, all men, irrespective of colour, living in the colonies are French citizens and will enjoy all the rights provided by the Constitution." The decree created the legal foundations for the first multiracial democracy in the “New World.” Hearing of this decree, Louverture rallied to the French side. Subsequently, he was named Governor General of the colony by the French government. 

In 1795, Santo Domingo and Saint-Domingue were joined when Spain ceded their territory to the French as part of the Peace of Basel that ended the War of the Pyrenees. ($50 to anyone who can follow European war history!) Again, more distractions: Louverture’s designs to make Saint-Domingue independent mirrored the former plantation structures - after all, that way lay the established patterns of income. However, whatever the elite or the government might have wanted, the people were vehemently against plantation structures. This was the beginning of independence, but it was also the beginning of a lasting societal schism for the whole of the island. 

In 1799, the French Revolution came to an end with a military coup d’etat. Napoleon Bonapart took power in France. He centralized all power in his own hands as First Consul for Life and just as quickly moved to return Saint-Domingue to the pre-Louverture colonial order. After Louverture created a separatist constitution for the colony, Napoleon, who considered the constitution a personal insult, negotiated with the European powers for the safe passage of his ships into the Caribbean and moved a massive military expedition to Saint-Domingue.

PÉTION AND DESSALINES, Guillon-Lethière
(1760-1832)

What followed is an intricate and phenomenal tale of war, intrigue, and betrayal that saw the fall of Louverture - he would die in a French prison in 1803. In that same year, Louverture’s successors were victorious over the French and created the independent nation of Haiti. Two years later, Haitian troops under the command of general Henri Christophe invaded Santo Domingo so violently that it engendered an animosity between Haiti and what would become the Dominican Republic that echoes into the present day.

In 1808, following the now Emperor Napoleon’s invasion of Spain (he crowned himself in 1804), a Britain/Haiti, coerced, alliance returned Santo Domingo to Spanish control. In 1821, José Núñez de Cáceres, who had been the top colonial administrator, declared Santo Domingo to be independent of the Spanish crown. Cáceres had looked to join Simón Bolivar’s republic of Gran Colombia, but just nine weeks later, Haitian forces under Jean-Pierre Boyer, invaded and prevailed, again joining the island into one sovereignty.

Under Boyer’s occupation forces in the Dominican Republic, slavery was abolished and most private property nationalized, including much Church property and all property belonging to the Spanish Crown. Other changes impacted which crops would be grown, reformed the tax system, and allowed foreign trade. Oddly, education collapsed at every level, and the conscripted Dominicans in the occupation troops were unpaid and left to forage among the Dominican people. Then, Boyer was ousted and in 1843, The Dominican Republic declared independence from Haiti. As with Haiti, the next decades were anything but stable within the Dominican Republic, which also had to fend off multiple renewed, though unsuccessful, Haitian invasions.

Okay, so wouldn’t you think that Haiti and the Dominican Republic would have looked to join forces against outside intervention? At different points, both countries looked to align themselves with other republics and regimes in the region, but never on their own island. Haiti and the Dominican Republic seem to have continually seen each other as enemies. The animosity has been complicated by conflicts over religion, skin color and class that is an inheritance of the racial and economic biases of American and European imperialism.

So, where are we? The ongoing internal political upheavals in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic have shackled the aspirations of the people of both countries. It is dizzying to attempt to follow the string of revolts and the perpetually failed leadership. A condition nurtured by the dominant nations of the world. As the struggle for world dominance continued, America and the European nations jockeyed for position, supporting Haiti and the Dominican Republic in turns of neglect, threats, aiding and abetting the enemy of the moment, and pilfering as much wealth from the island as was possible.

There were decades in which the world refused to recognize the newly independent Haiti as a sovereign nation. This was the lynch pin of a history of poverty and debt for an area where the resources should have continued to provide abundance.  So much of the wealth of nations has come from the resources of the “New World” and African slaves. European thought developed extensive religious and intellectual justifications for slavery. These attitudes of superiority remain the bane of global society. In some ways, it is the naturalization of these attitudes among the oppressed that have allowed them to persist. Even the varied abolitionist movements though opposed to slavery, were unprepared for and unaccepting of difference in dress and mannerisms, particularly for those with darker skin. The existence of Haiti threatened the systems of thought and behavior that grounded America and Western European wealth acquisition.

As a result, Haiti found itself turned away from a seat at the international table, again and again. When recognition was finally granted, it came with a level of debt that paralyzed the country. In 1825, France agreed to halt further attempt to retake Haiti and to grant recognition of Haitian independence in exchange for a payment of $150 million francs (later reduced to $90 million francs) which was supposed to represent the value of property lost by French planters as a result of the Revolution. This payment was borrowed from French banks and came with considerable terms of interest.

It is debt that was used to justify various foreign interventions into Haiti, ultimately resulting in America taking control of the national bank in 1914, sending in the marines to remove all assets, and establishing an occupation the following year that lasted nearly 20 years.

As for the Dominican Republic, it also struggled under massive debt incurred by a series of corrupt and self-serving governments. In 1902, it agreed to a 50-year arrangement with the U.S. under which America would administer Dominican customs (its major source of income), using these funds to repay Dominican foreign debt and also assuming responsibility for said debt. In the following 14 years, the Dominican Republic was engulfed in political intrigue and civil war. Such that in 1916, U.S. President Wilson ordered the occupation of the Dominican Republic. Big distraction here: Wilson's actions were so hypocritical. It makes you want to spit.

Between 1916 and 1922, the United States of America occupied all of the island of Hispaniola.

In 1930, General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was elected President of the Dominican Republic (unopposed after the violent elimination of any challengers). During what would be a long and iron-fisted regime, lasting until his assassination in 1961, Trujillo accomplished economic growth and progress in healthcare, education and transportation with a building program of hospitals, clinics, schools, roads, harbors and housing. Under Trujillo an undisputed border with Haiti was negotiated and the customs agreement with the U.S. was ended in 1941, instead of the original 1956 end date. The Dominican Republic was debt-free in 1947. Trujillo‘s accomplishments were accompanied by absolute repression, where any opposition was met with murder, torture, and terrorism. They were also accompanied, or perhaps enabled, by the United States and the Dominican elite. It is notable that in 2013, 3 Dominican families maintain ownership of 75% of the land of the Dominican Republic.

Haiti’s occupation by the U.S. ended in 1934. However, Haiti’s debts were still outstanding and the American Financial Advisor-General Receiver continued to handle the Haitian budget until 1941. The occupation ended, but, political disorder remained. From 1957 until his death in 1971, Dr. François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” was President of Haiti. He was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude Duvalier, who ruled until his ouster in 1986.

For both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the hallmark of political leadership appears as an unrelenting and violent oppression of both the populace and any political opponents by what are essentially military dictatorships. The dictators grow rich, along with their foreign cronies, while the people suffer.

The 2005 Annual Report of the United Nations Subcommittee on Human Development in the Dominican Republic, ranks the country No. 71 in the world for resource availability, No. 79 for human development, and No. 14 in the world for resource mismanagement. These statistics emphasize national government corruption, foreign economic interference in the country, and the rift between the rich and poor.

In Haiti, the struggle to escape the control systems of plantation-, and now factory-, based control continues. Following the devastation of the earthquake in 2010, Haiti was able to clear its massive, ever-present debt, but quickly raised it again to nearly $1 billion. Did I say ever-present? The story of the current Haitian President is yet another epic tale of U.S. interference and one that makes the push from the Clinton Foundation for an industrial park (funded by U.S. taxpayers), whose first and main tenant, a South Korean company, will pay workers $3.65 per day, just a bit suspect. I can see how this might serve the South Koreans, but I’m not at all sure about the benefit to the Haitians. I hope the U.S. is getting something more than bargaining leverage with South Korea, but I guess we’ll have to wait for Wikileaks to tell us what that might be. Just seems odd to me.

On the other hand, since 2012, Haiti has recognized Kreyol, along with French, as official languages. In this lies hope that the majority of Haitians will finally be able to follow what is going on in their own government.

An interesting comparison between all-things Haitian and all-things Dominican can be found at the Index Mundi website, http://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/haiti.dominican-republic/economy

Only time will tell what will ultimately result from the enforcement of the Dominican Decreto 327-13.

So why has this post taken me so long to produce? Quite frankly, my mind is still reeling.

I see the historical pathways. I see the contemporary status. In the struggle between Haiti and the Dominican Republic lies a personal revelation about the struggles of both the oppressed (read “poor”) and the majority (read “workers,” “middle class,” “undereducated degree holders,” etc.) in a capitalistic, plutocratic world, who have integrated the attitudes (read “racism,” “gender dominance,” “sexism,” “elitism,” “classism,” “religiosity,” etc.) and aspirations (read “wealth,” “privilege,” “entitlement,” etc.) of those in power, such that there is no impetus for a vision of some other way. As I apply the implications to me and it hasn’t been easy - sometimes you just don’t want to look,… Well, it’s been months of exploring just how much of the kool-aid I’ve ingested all these years.

So? What do you think? Never can tell. At any moment, someone will be saying that the U.S. minimum wage should be thought of in terms of per diem, and those in power will be selling people, “Don’t worry. This will only impact ‘those’ people. Drink up!”

Will the Revolution Ever Come? Or, Did I Miss It?

Recently, I attended the Chicago premier of The Trials of Muhammad Ali, an 86-minute documentary by Bill Siegel. Siegel is an Academy Award nominated filmmaker, who resides in the same little suburb as do I. This personal, albeit distant, connection was the first in a series of connections that have left me thinking about this film ever since.

Why do you go to the movies? It is rare for me to go to a documentary screening at a theater, unless it is part of a festival of some kind. Mostly, I go to the movies to exploit what the big screen has that even the largest flat-screen TV cannot provide; larger than life explosions, epic stunts, and magnificent vantages - all of which allow me to completely suspend disbelief. And that is the magic of the movies.

I am hooked, like most of America, on films. Always have been. When The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was first produced, I spent an entire day in the theater, munching popcorn and watching it over and over. And loving it every time! When the capacity crowd was ushered to a side exit which fed into an alleyway after a viewing of The Exorcist, I shuffled along pressed against the strangers beside me as the crowd formed one delightedly scared mass until we scattered into the safety of the sidewalk and lights and traffic. Watching The Trials of Muhammad Ali was something different.

I followed the storyline and images, marveling at how very handsome he was and learning things that I had not known previously about Muhammad Ali’s life and career. Yet, at the same time, I was transported into my own memories of life during those years, as if there were a parallel track playing simultaneously.

• 1960

Muhammed Ali won Olympic gold, and I graduated elementary school. He was so cute! I wasn’t.

• 1961 - 1963

While Muhammed Ali was building his boxing legacy:

George Jackson, aged 18, was sent to San Quentin after an armed robbery conviction, sentenced to 1 year to life. He would later become one of the “Soledad Brothers.” He was killed during an escape attempt from Soledad Prison in 1971.

Robert Franklin Williams and Mao Zedong.

Robert Franklin Williams evaded arrest by going to Cuba with his family after being falsely accused of kidnapping. He would come to travel to China and ultimately return to the U.S. in 1969, on a plane where he and the U.S. marshals were the only passengers. Once he was extradited for trial, the State of North Carolina dropped all charges.

The Nation of Islam membership rose to 30,000 under the recruitment efforts of Malcolm X.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his Letter From A Birmingham Jail and the March on Washington occurred.

I was learning that one must stand for what you believe; share those beliefs with others and speak your mind; don’t automatically oppose that which feels wrongly different from everything that you’ve previously known; recognize that the justice system is most often unfair; and, sometimes even the best and brightest are lost.

• 1964 - 1965

Muhammad Ali becomes heavyweight champion and announces that he has joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Cassius X. Malcolm X breaks with the Nation of Islam, and was subsequently assassinated in 1965.

Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The U.S. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

• 1966 - 1969

Cassius X, now Muhammad Ali, declares himself a conscientious objector and refuses military service. He is charged with refusing induction and found guilty. He is stripped of his title and banned from boxing.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is formed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated. African-American communities in urban areas erupt in violence.

Black Panther Fred Hampton is assassinated by the Chicago Police Department, in collusion with the F.B.I., while sleeping in his bed on the west side of Chicago.

Robert Kennedy is assassinated.

I learned many, many lessons about politics and activism. And many, many more lessons about how I would come to express myself in these realms.

• 1970 - 1971

The Supreme Court reverses Muhammad Ali’s 1967 conviction, paving the way for his return to boxing and regaining his title.

The Ohio National Guard fires on unarmed students, who are protesting at Kent State University, killing 4 and wounding 9 others.

The police fire on unarmed students protesting the invasion of Cambodia at Jackson College in Jackson, Mississippi, killing 2 and wounding 12 others.

I went to Europe.

It is very hard to realize that all this was so many years ago now. Even harder to accept that the lessons of those years are in need of being learned all over again today. But, what is exciting is to know that there are young leaders emerging again, as well. Have at it, Dream Defenders! (http://dreamdefenders.org) It’s quite a ride!

Hang In There, America!

Recently, a friend of mine described feeling deeply ill at ease and anxious, but without having any consciousness of the feeling’s origins. With reflection, I realized that she, and I, and the entire country for that matter, are feeling exactly that: ill at ease and anxious. Collectively, America seems to be holding its breath.

The nation is faced with so many challenges and none seem to be on the road to resolution. But, that’s just it. Perception is everything. There is so much going on, so many people working and striving and achieving and yet, in this gilded age of mass communication, Americans aren’t receiving much information at all, about anything. We are deluged with sound bites, processed and manipulated reportage to achieve a predetermined desirable reaction (mostly focused on the particular media’s bottom line).

Just before the George W. Bush administration’s frenzy of deregulation, tax breaks for the wealthy, and war ushered us into what has become an extended free fall (I’m not calling current conditions a “recovery” - not until I stop seeing economic conditions that create “working poor” in nearly all sectors, not just minimum wage earners; and, not until home foreclosures again become the exception, rather than the rule), Americans were told that we were in the Information Age. And, I for one, believed it. Every government agency has a website. News reportage from around the globe is available as nonstop feeds and email subscriptions. Any time I encounter an unfamiliar personality or name or idea, Google is but a click away! I never have to leave home without it! The vast resources of the Internet are part of my phone!

And yet, while information is so readily available, it doesn’t come with any guarantee of quality. Who do you believe? Who do you trust? And where are the analysts to help us ferry through the deluge of incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading - often intentionally so - reportage of one kind or another. So, I suppose, I really shouldn’t use the term information in this context. What is readily available is hype, not information.

Americans are holding their breath, waiting to see:

• will there be another manufactured crisis in our federal government?
• will policies protect Americans from hunger or instigate even more want?
• will Syria truly divest itself of chemical weapons?
• will Israel and Palestine release their mutual stranglehold against peace?
• will the European Union so benefit from recent trade agreements that we will be even less likely to see Made in the USA on any substantial number of goods in the future.
• what is going on in South America, ... and Mexico ... and Russia ... and China ... and Korea ... and all the other places on the globe that we tend to ignor until its too dangerous to do so anymore?
• is there a Middle East strategy at play, or are we just going to kill as many “terrorists” as we can (at home and abroad if the NSA has their way)?
• will we end mass incarceration that seems to only benefit the profits of privatized prisons, but definitely not society or justice?
• will racism ever show any signs of abating or just be an ever-metastasizing cancer in the bowels of American society?
• will we ever really know what’s in the food that we eat and serve our children?
• will we deny the pursuit of happiness to future generations by denying them quality education?
• will marijuana be truly legalized?
• will guns stop being so readily attainable for all the people who should never have a gun?
• will the Affordable Care Act usher in universal health care or just enrich the insurance industry?
• will science prevail and save the planet?
• will the current capitalism-run-amuck prevail and destroy us all?
• will the question of the millions of undocumented residents lead to a broader understanding of citizenship in the United States of America?
• will Brad and Angelina get married?

And then there are all the little nagging most personal of personal things:

• the young want to know what’s next?
• the old want to know what’s next?
• the discontented want to know is this all there is? (Sorta a pessimist’s form of what’s next?)

Who knows? Certainly not I, but I do know one thing:

BREATHE EVERYBODY! This, too, will pass.

What Does That Mean?

I spend a lot of time thinking about democracy. Well, it’s more accurate to say that I spend a lot of time thinking about the rights and responsibilities of life in these United States. Ahh, ... that is, I spend a lot of time thinking about democracy when I am able to escape from being forced to confront the various biases and frauds that surround those of us who live in the United States. Okay, okay, so I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about democracy, but I do think about it.

Usually, this train of thought is generated by the intrusion of some example of the power of capitalism. It is then that I remind myself (and everyone who’ll sit still long enough) that capitalism is an economic system, not a political one - which leads to: our political system is a democracy. Inevitably, the next thought is like that TV producer’s end of credits logo tag, “what does that mean?”

For me, democracy in the United States is at base the right and responsibility of the citizenry to actively participate; to vote and to hold government accountable to serving the needs of We, the People. Suffrage is the most powerful right bestowed by a democracy. It is the vote that gives the individual American a voice.

There are many forces at work to co-opt this right. Those who have benefited the most from both our political and economic systems now would like to see democracy replaced by a plutocracy where the wealthy trump We, the People, and they’ve got the lobbyists to prove it. Some say they have already been successful - except for that pesky voting thing. Witness the mind-boggling Supreme Court-enabled rush to the enactment of voter suppression laws.

This isn’t a contemporary phenomenon. This struggle has been going on since America’s Day One. In the colonies, land was wealth and the need for the settlement of a vast quantity of land supported upward mobility for those who had none in the Old World. For the most part, American colonists adopted the voter qualifications that they had known in England. Typically, a voter had to be a free, adult, male resident of his county, a member of the predominant religious group, and one who owned land worth a certain amount of money. It was a colonial belief, and one which persists in contemporary attitudes and tax policies, that only landowners had a permanent stake in the stability of society and paid the bulk of the taxes. While other persons, “are in so mean a situation as to be esteemed to have no will of their own.” The quote is from William Blackstone, an 18th century English lawyer who, I think, recognized the vulnerability of the poor and working class (albeit from a lofty and rather disdainful height). It’s a vulnerability that made the simplest forms of political patronage effective.

Up to 75% of the adult males in most colonies qualified as voters, but after eliminating everyone under the age of 21, all slaves and women, most Jews and Catholics, and men who weren’t landowners, the colonial electorate was only 10-20% of the total population. And it is this minority that has passed on a legacy of discrimination and bias at every level of the American political process. Even after suffrage was granted to all adults 18 years of age and older through the 14th, 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments to the Constitution, we have a federal government dominated by “rich, white men.” Even on bright sun-shiney election days as in 2008, scratch a little deeper and the would-be plutocrats will bring you the storm of the 2010 mid-term elections and the 2012 aftershock. Because, although We, the People have the right and responsibility of suffrage, we seem to really struggle with our decisions about who will get our vote.

Patronage once informed the choices of many voters over the first 200 years of American History. Jobs and holiday turkeys for constituents. Contracts and government subsidies for business. Tax breaks and shelters for corporations and the wealthy. Patronage’s curried favor was remembered in the polling booth. But, time and technology marches on and lobbyists and Super Pacs have redirected political attention to focus on the gears of capitalism rather than the will of We, the People.

In the early days of searching the Internet before you could carry a computer in your pocket and use it to make telephone calls, it was a huge concern to educators and pollsters that things read on the Internet were treated as the gospel truth, regardless of source or improbability. Perhaps people have become more wary of accepting anything that pops up in a search feed, but the wariness does not seem to extend to what is broadcast over the airways. If its on TV, it must be true. Enter political advertisements. No need for the immediate gratification of a holiday turkey-type patronage system, just bombard the electorate with ads attacking your opponent and painting yourself as a family man and patriot and, more than likely, you’ll get the majority of the votes - especially, if you can convince a governor or two to hold sway over election boards. It is absolutely amazing how many challenges can be found to disqualify votes. Remember the presidential election of 2000? Thank you, Florida. Not. And, the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission says that corporations and unions can spend as much money as they choose on independent and electioneering communications.

So, here we are, and for the first time in a long time, Americans are starting to realize the importance of their vote. Just in time to be run over by a speeding train, namely money in politics at levels heretofore never even dreamt of. Serving the will of We, the People has been solidly replaced by nonstop political fundraising. Legislation will not see the light of day until all vested parties have had a chance to buy the Congressional support to ensure that the legislation will be of benefit to the vested party with the most outlay. And, that is an understatement.

When Apple’s CEO stated before a Senate panel that it was perfectly legal that Apple paid no taxes of any kind to any country, despite making billions in international profits, he might have added a “thank you” to all the political contributions that helped shape the corporate tax code.

The Federal Campaign Commission mandates the following 2013-2014 campaign contribution limits for individuals: $123,200 overall biennial limit ($48,600 to all candidates $74,600 to all PACs and parties). I mean, really! Why would anyone contribute this kind of money, except to gain influence?

So, again, here we are. What to do? What to do?

• Well, at minimum, We, the People should VOTE! On average, less than 50% of the American electorate actually votes.

I am also of the opinion that we should:

• Demand more information and less infomercials from political candidates. If a candidate gets you all excited and emotional and appeals to your biases, then I suggest you take a cold shower and then take a moment to Google ‘em!

• Stop saying how busy we are and pencil in a little time to participate in democracy. Check on how your elected representatives are voting. Make it harder for election ads to mislead. You can subscribe to an email from http://Congress.org that provides a summary of recent Congressional votes and upcoming Congressional Bills and how your representative or senator voted.

• Read more. Try the newspapers of other countries. Or, if you have abandoned reading in favor of watching, try watching the news broadcasts of other countries.

I want a movement to ban all expenditures on political campaigns beyond a single government fund. This “single-payer universal campaign fund” would be evenly distributed between all eligible candidates. Broadcast time would be provided to all eligible candidates on the Public Broadcasting Service ONLY, with live-streaming and transcripts available online.

In the meantime, maybe we could have politicians wear video cameras, much like those that are more and more in use by police departments. Then again, remember the Nixon tapes? Yikes! Okay, back to the future! VOTE!!

When Sedition Is Not Sedition

Photo: Toe Tags-Street Pirate

So, the melodrama in Washington continues. The vitriol makes the rational American cringe. Wall Street looks to manipulate, as do the billionaires who are currently playing at being monarchs. The media doesn’t know whether to chase behind the sound bites presented by people who display everything bad about the American psyche, or, actually report the situation from the vantage point of informed journalism (guess which stance is winning). Meanwhile, most of us work at swallowing the rising bile of anger and sense of betrayal, and, worry.

Since the 2008 presidential election and the 2010 midterms that gave the Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives (don’t get me started on how that happened), I have recognized a distinct similarity to the Republican maneuvering in the final two years of the Clinton presidency. They distracted the country with issues that should only have had relevance to Clinton and his wife. Quietly, they obstructed and the government accomplished nothing. They waited for Clinton’s exit, sure that the distraction would result in a Republican takeover. And they were right.

Why mess with success? It appears that this plan of obstruction and inaction remained the Republican strategy leading up to the 2012 presidential election. They distracted with nonsense about the president’s birth and misleading information about the Affordable Care Act - well - lies, actually. The Republicans seem to have fully embraced the act of looking you straight in the eye and lying to you. They obstructed confirmation of presidential appointments and stalled on needed legislation. Then, oops!, the president was reelected.

Republicans have chosen to leave the realm of reality and trample their oath of office. They are sticking to their plan -  with an eye on 2016. Republicans are committing sedition, first by fomenting so much dysfunction in federal and state government in terms of how the people are being served by their tax money (read "stalled appointments," "nonexistent legislation to address jobs," “sequestration,” “government shutdown,” “threat against the credit and credibility of the United States economy”) and secondly, by controlling the vote. All the while spouting patriotism as a shield against any possibility of being legally charged for their actions.

It is my opinion that these are acts of treason and sedition. There should be legal charge and challenge to this domestic attack against the democracy of the United States of America. These are sentiments that seem to be increasingly shared and echoed across social media. But, whose job is that anyway?

And herein lies the rub. We do have laws that cover sedition and treason, both federal and among the states. However, they are worded to penalize the intent of violence and violent overthrow of the government.

The Sedition Act of July 1798 punished false statements with the intent to “defame” the federal government or “to stir up sedition within the United States.” It was a blatantly partisan political move against those who opposed President John Adams. It was allowed to lapse in 1801. However, the 1798 Act did generate important debate over freedom of speech.

The Espionage Act of 1917 made it a federal crime to willfully spread false news of the American army and navy with an intent to disrupt their operations, to foment mutiny in their ranks, or to obstruct recruiting. The Espionage Act was amended by the Sedition Act of 1918, which expanded the scope of the Espionage Act to any statement criticizing the Government of the United States. These Acts were upheld in 1919 in the case of Schenck vs. United States (Charles Schenck was secretary of the Socialist Party of America). However, by 1921, repeals resulted in maintaining only the laws forbidding foreign espionage in the United States and allowing military censorship of sensitive material.

In 1940, the Alien Registration Act made it a federal crime to advocate or to teach the desirability of overthrowing the United States government or to be a member of any organization which does the same. This act, known as the Smith Act, remains in effect to this day. However, sedition is difficult to convict, with exceptions that smack of America’s institutionalized biases.

In 1967, demonstrators against the draft were charged with sedition. The charges were dropped.

In 1981, Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican Nationalist and Vietnam war veteran, was convicted and sentenced to 70 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and various other offenses. López Rivera rejected an offer of conditional clemency in 1999. He is said to be among the longest held political prisoners in U.S. history, having been jailed for over 33 years.

In 1987, fourteen white supremacists were charged with seditious conspiracy. They were acquitted.

In 1995, Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine others were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

In 2005, Laura Berg, a nurse at a U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs hospital was investigated for sedition after writing a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, accusing then President Bush of criminal negligence in regard to government response to Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. Charges were dropped in 2006.

In 2010, nine members of the Hutaree militia were arrested and charged with multiple crimes, including seditious conspiracy. The group identifies itself as Christian warriors, adhering to the ideology of the Christian Patriot Movement. The presiding judge dismissed all charges, except for a firearms possession charge. Three members pled guilty to possessing a machine gun and were sentenced to time served.

The crux of the matter is this: unless those members of Congress, who are determined to destroy the United States government and harm the economy for Main Street America, show up to their next session with guns ablazing, the law will not condemn them. This becomes a job for American voters.

The U.S. Attorney General has filed against North Carolina’s recent voter suppression laws. The ACLU is filing against the Kansas proof-of-citizenship voting law which suspended 17,000 voters in its initial iteration. But, until the American electorate demands maintenance of its right to vote and then votes, American democracy will remain the victim of gerry-mandered voting districts and voter suppression, not to mention the loss of civility in public life, brought to you by the will of some very wealthy, very greedy, very egocentric persons.

So, whose job is it to challenge the acts that are crippling the government? Voters.

In the Realm of Ideas

When I was eight or nine years old, my family lived in a two-room apartment on east 60th Place in Chicago. It actually was the back two rooms (kitchen and dining room originally) of the second floor of a two-flat building that had been divided into three separate apartments, rather than one. There are many memories that I retain from the short period that we lived there.

My maternal grandmother would watch us kids for my mom and invariably would decide that she should clean out the refrigerator. The result would be a cake made from whatever leftovers happened to be there, and I do mean whatever! The amazing thing is that even pan-fried calf’s liver and the dreaded brussels sprouts actually could be turned into a tasty snack. Well, as long as you didn’t watch her prepare it! In those instances, ignorance was truly bliss.

My mother had a corselette - all black lace and red ribbons - that I thought was the prettiest thing ever. So, one day I wore it to school, complete with toilet-paper enhanced breasts. The look on my mother’s face when she picked me up, about an hour later, was a perfect version of her famous “How did I raise such stupid children!?” face.

There was the day someone’s cousin or the other brought home a container of the wax used to coat milk cartons. All of us neighborhood kids gathered in the yard behind my building and made casts of our hands. I can remember being terrified to dip my hand into the hot wax and then amazed to find that after that first layer, the cast could be built up completely painlessly. I think it good fortune that soon there was this chorus of mothers shrieking at us to “put out that fire” and “get your tail in this house” and from our porch, “No-reeeeen!” which translated into “all of the above.” It’s really no telling what we would have decided to cast next.

But, my favorite memory of all from that time are the days that I would scurry across Stony Island and the adjacent sliver of parkway and run across Museum Drive to the Museum of Science and Industry. There was no entrance fee in those days, so I was free to wander among the exhibits at will. Mostly, though, I would spend the hour or so that I had before I needed to be back home just sitting in the Great Hall and thinking ... just thinking. Not worrying or plotting or planning, just thinking. It was grand. It is this treasured memory and its many intellectual influences that continue to make me take any and every opportunity to visit the Museum of Science and Industry.

In 1989, the museum did it again and fostered another novel direction to my thinking. One that I still maintain and expand. The exhibit was Frank Lloyd Wright: In the Realm of Ideas. It was a traveling exhibit, a highlight of which was an actual life-sized example of Wright’s Usonian Automatic home installed on the museum grounds. I still covet that house. But mostly, I retain the contemplation of the lifestyle the Usonian design both stimulates and allows.

 The Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Automatic house of hollow-core concrete block was designed so it could be built by anyone." The Chicago Exhibit was held from June - September 1989 at the Museum of Science and Industry. Photographer, Rich Hein. Date: 6-5-89. Location: Museum of Science and Industry.

Wright is known for many attributes, notably his Prairie Houses, richly detailed, labor-intensive designs for wealthy clients. Yet, Wright also believed that the basic building block of American Democracy was the freestanding private house. There was a quote in the exhibit that I have unsuccessfully searched for. Perhaps I made it up. But, it is the notion that the citizens of a Democracy must have a sense of “individual autonomy” in order to effectively contribute to the collective well-being as they direct government.

Interior view of Usonian Automatic House. Exhibition. Museum of Science and Industry. Photo acquired from the archives of the Chicago Tribune.

This has so many ramifications, this individual autonomy; the capacity to make an informed, un-coerced decision. I believe that acquiring this capacity is part of the initial trajectory of human development. Could it be that the toddler first crawls then runs at top speed just because she or he can? That “no” becomes a favorite word because it is a test of control? Likewise, the toddler’s insistence on personal choice in clothes is to stand against the tyranny of adults, albeit well-meaning adults. And on and on. With time, the natural desire for individual autonomy becomes informed (some might say suppressed) by socialization. Such that by the time we have control over, or rather the responsibility to select where we live, it is questionable whether the individual decides or the society decides. But anyway ...

The example of Usonian design in the exhibit offered the following elements:

• A central space that is the hub of the home. where residents come to be together. It is uncluttered through a use of built-in furnishings and filled with light from window walls. In the exhibit version, this great room was bordered by a corner area that featured a division of the tall space into an intimate dining area and an upper-level office/den space. The dining area flowed into a galley kitchen, which maintained the height so that there were extensive built-in cabinets for storage.

• One entered the home though doors which were mirrored across the entryway by doors which opened onto a terrace that ran the length of the house adjacent to the great room. This section of the house contained a hallway of built-in closets/storage areas on both sides and opened into bedrooms (the master bedroom had access to the terrace). The bathroom was at the end of the hallway.

• Flow patterns allowed movement from the entry to the kitchen, the hallway (and thus, bathroom and bedrooms), terrace area, and great room. The great room allowed passage to the dining area, office/den, the kitchen, and back to the hallway.

• The bedrooms were small with built-in beds, shelving, and drawer space, allowing room for a chair and side table.

• Lots of interior wood. Everything in its place and a place for everything.

The intent of the Usonian design was that it be modular and allow a homeowner to determine configuration based on personal need and desire. It was also intended to reduce costs by allowing the homeowner to assemble specially-configured wall modules and other aspects, leaving the skilled labor to be completed by professionals. Another cost savings was in the built-in elements. They also minimized needed free-standing furniture. And, there were features which also addressed maintenance aspects.

I was particularly drawn to the expectation of participation. Like with the building plans and prefab homes you could once buy from Sears and other catalogs, it required input from the buyer in the configuration of the home. To have input has rarely been an affordable option. Yet having input is an important element of individual autonomy. It informs one’s thinking in ways that simply saying yea or nay does not.

So, Frank Lloyd Wright and time have passed and the Jeffersonian preference for open space, the pastural idyll, has given way to urban sprawl, and, biases of myriad kinds have given way to the decline of cities. And, unfortunately, the Usonian home has few existing examples. The horrible burst of the housing market bubble curiously does not seem to have generated much conversation around housing. I suppose it is reasonable to think that people are more focused on mortgages, foreclosures, and the myriad other important issues facing America in this 21st Century. Still ...

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The mission of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is to “Create Strong, Sustainable, Inclusive Communities and Quality Affordable Homes for All. The HUD Strategic Plan articulates the goals that will guide and stimulate its activities to fulfill this mission during the FY 2010-2015:

• Goal 1. Strengthen the Nation’s Housing Market to Bolster the Economy and Protect Consumers
• Goal 2. Meet the Need for Quality Affordable Rental Homes
• Goal 3. Utilize Housing as a Platform for Improving Quality of Life
• Goal 4. Build Inclusive and Sustainable Communities Free From Discrimination

Wow! And that’s before you even get to the subgoals, strategies and measures that support these four goals. Here are the subgoals for Goal 3:

• 3A.  Utilize HUD assistance to improve educational outcomes and early learning and development 
• 3B.  Utilize HUD assistance to improve health outcomes 
• 3C.  Utilize HUD assistance to increase economic security and self-sufficiency 
• 3D.  Utilize HUD assistance to improve housing stability through supportive service for vulnerable populations, including the elderly, people with disabilities, homeless people, and those individuals and families at risk of becoming homeless
• 3E.  Utilize HUD assistance to improve public safety 

It is notable that HUD has newly adapted a collaborative stance toward its mission. The strategic plan outlines a variety of programmatic approaches to working with local communities to address their particular needs. This seems to me a focus whose time has come, finally. I was also struck by the emphasis on counters to discrimination. Given the institutionalized nature of so many of our society’s biases, every element of the government needs to have such an emphasis. But, I will make a confession.

Reading the HUD materials made me extremely conscious, once again, of how much redundancy exists in American government, top-down and bottom-up. Much of the current struggle in the Congress has to do with how government will utilize its resources. It has been portrayed as the struggle between entitlement programs for the rich versus entitlement programs for the middle class and poor. This portrayal is accurate, but it also delineates why the struggle will not contribute to the strength and stability of the United States of America.

The available knowledge base, technology and resources that America brings to bear on the vision of our identity in this new century remain abundant. But, each of these is overshadowed by our very unique brand of capitalism. And in the shadow of capitalism, we will not do what most needs to be done - that is to return to first principles as we restore the faltering economy and rebuild communities devastated by natural disasters and economic ones.

Foremost among these principles is that every American must be ensured the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not only does everyone need a place to live, we need a place to prosper. We need the opportunity to not only be told about possibilities in schools, but to actually see these possibilities at work in our neighborhoods. We think of these elements as only affecting the poor, but how many people do you know whose adult children have returned to live at home because there is not affordable rental homes that enable the quality of life they came to expect from living with their parents?

All of which means that instead of planning more segregated housing patterns, we need the development of more mixed-income housing. Instead of just building affordable housing, which too often translates into boxes with very little consideration given to the lifestyle encouraged by the box. We need to insure that there is an aesthetic component to the architecture, and landscaping, AND building maintenance and sanitation services that are effective!

By way of example, back in the day I worked in a school where busing was utilized to address racial integration. One of the highlight activities of the school was a Bicycle Safety Day. Students came to school with their bikes, riding or being ferried in the family SUV. Since the school bus was not capable of carrying bikes and students who rode the bus would have to ride across several major streets, making that option dangerous, these students mostly did not participate in the activities of the day.

To address this oversight of planning, several of us - teachers and parents - decided to ride along with students in order to make a safe caravan in which they could bring their bikes to school. It was a hoot! But, what I remember most are the comments of parents as we waited for the caravan to form: “Why don’t these streets have handicap access at the crossings?” “Why haven’t these streets been cleaned?” “Wasn’t garbage pickup today? Why are these bins still full?” These were parents who lived less than a mile away, but had never before recognized that they lived in a different universe.

This is where collaborative government programs could have real inroads. Middle and lower income families often don’t recognize that they have a right to more than just a home. They have a right to a clean and pleasing environment in which to live and raise their families. They have a right to hold government accountable for providing the services that promote and sustain the quality of their neighborhood.

Here’s another example: as a young adult, I moved from Chicago’s Southside to an apartment on the Northside, just a block west of the lake. People would spend the summer evenings enjoying the beach and by evening’s end, the beach looked about as I had come to recognize it from my old neighborhood - garbage strewn everywhere! But, here comes the difference; in the early morning, sanitation crews cleaned the beach. Not once a fortnight, or whatever pattern existed on the Southside, but every day. Each evening when people returned to the beach, it was clean, not because no one left garbage, but because public works kept it that way. The instances where public services were, and are, not equally available to all neighborhoods of a city are numerous.

Every neighborhood may not be composed of Usonian houses, but every neighborhood can be inhabited by people who embrace their individual autonomy within the collective. This is learned behavior. As a society, we can teach this behavior just as easily as we now teach that those without wealth have no standing, and, by so doing, we would eliminate our institutionalized biases, like racial profiling and the “invisible” community redistributions of resources to benefit some at the expense of others.

Sometimes the most complicated of things are actually quite simple, where there’s a will - there is a way. You just do it! Our problem is that we have a system that reinforces the idea that only some of “we, the people” can have a quality life; that only homeowners or affluent renters are entitled to have input, and that wealth is the only measure of autonomy. We have integrated the notion that there exists “throwaway people,” as if they were not citizens, with protections under the law. And our housing patterns reflect this attitude. We’ll know when we have gained the will to make our country otherwise, when we establish effective mechanisms to make sure that everyone has affordable access: to quality housing, quality healthcare, and quality legal services!