What would Jesus teach?

June 21, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

The move toward vouchers to send children to private schools is both foolish and dangerous.

First of all, when you take money out of the public school system, it weakens that system and its ability to teach the children who are left.

What’s worse is the stuff some of these schools are teaching children.

When I was in school in Massachusetts during the 1950s and ’60s, the children who went to Catholic schools learned science. They got an education that was at least as good as what we got in public schools, and I don’t remember any of their parents asking for their tax money back.

Today, parents want their children to get an education that denies science and suppresses any form of creativity, AND they want our tax money to pay for it.

Textbooks from Accelerated Christian Education, one of the biggest sellers of Christian curricula, tell students that humans lived with dinosaurs and that evolution is unproven and has been debunked by the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.

The curriculum, which is also popular among home-schoolers, also teaches that solar fusion is a myth, that a Japanese whaling boat caught a dinosaur, that there are no transitional fossils and that most scientists no longer believe in evolution.

ACE teaches that homosexuality is a learned behavior.

The curriculum’s tests are multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions so students won’t be encouraged to think for themselves.

But conservative Christians want your children to learn these lies as “facts.” Once children believe these things, they tend not to question them, even if you put evidence right in front of them.

I grew up in a very fundamentalist church that denied evolution and believed Jesus would return before the Earth’s resources are used up. They lived insular lives because they didn’t want their children exposed to the evils of society.

This curriculum is perfect for them because once their children get through it, there will be fewer thinkers in the world.

If you look at the history of the church, you’ll find a lot of similar behavior. Until the invention of the printing press and the vernacular Bible, Catholics were pretty much forbidden to read the Bible. The church would tell you what to believe, and if you didn’t agree, you could face being burned at the stake as a heretic.

Fundamentalist Christian churches still operate that way. No thinking required — or desired. Children go through their lives not learning to think for themselves and willing to accept whatever is told to them — as long as it’s from an approved source. You can’t argue with them because they’re not operating with real facts but with made-up crap fed to them by “good Christians.”

I don’t want my tax dollars paying for false science and scary religion, and that’s exactly what school vouchers will do.

“Creepy love letters”

June 12, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

Coach Jerry Sandusky and “friends.”

Jerry Sandusky was every single mother’s dream, or so it would seem. He was a golden-hearted man who took an interest in boys, guided them, took them on outings, had them at his house for parties and sleep-overs. He was a mentor and coach.

He was a powerful man in the community, which in my experience makes him suspect.

But then, I’m a survivor of child sex abuse. My abuser also was a beloved member of the community who just adored children, so I have a pretty good icky meter. Most people don’t. That’s why so many abusers get away with it.

They start by grooming the victim. Usually it’s allowing the child to have something parents don’t want them to have — access to video games, a couple of dollars, junk food, alcohol … whatever. Now the abuser is in a position of even more powerful (being an adult is a power position in itself).

The abuse might start with a back rub or a tickling session where private parts are touched “accidentally.” By now, the child might feel uncomfortable, but the abuser has a number of secrets and the child is afraid of parents finding out about the dirty movies or the alcohol, or whatever the abuser has used against the child.

Now the abuser has the child under his control, and the child is certain nobody will believe him (or her). The abuser might actually believe he’s in love with his victim, and the abuse can last for years, as it did in my case. I called a stop to it when I was 12 but it had gone on since I was 3. I never told anyone until I was in my mid-30s because no one would have believed me. When I told my mother, she was shocked, but she did believe me; there was no reason not to. I was almost 40.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t have believed me,” I said. “Be honest about it; you would have had to choose between me and Grandpa.”

That’s another truth about child abuse; people don’t want to believe they’ve been snowed by an abuser, so it’s easier to accuse the child of making it up.

So, when Sandusky’s Victim One got “creepy love letters” from the coach, he was too afraid to take the letters to anyone in authority. Even with the evidence, who would believe him — a powerless kid — over this bastion of power in the community?

The second victim to testify talked about the refusal of a school counselor to believe him. Honestly, it’s easier to believe the kid is making it all up than to think about taking down someone as loved as Coach Sandusky.

I was a single mom, and I was more than careful about whom I would allow access to my boys. When a neighbor offered Mike a couple dollars to help him clean up his workshop and then told Mike he didn’t need to tell his mom about it, he was flat-out forbidden to go back there.

When a co-worker offered again and again to take Danny on outings, I felt something creepy and declined the offer. Later, that man — also a former coach — would be arrested for having sex with underage boys.

Are all coaches, priests, Scout leaders and friends of kids suspect? Absolutely not; most are fine.

But when someone takes too much interest in kids for no apparent reason, I suspect. When someone wants to be alone with kids — especially if there will be no other adults nearby, I suspect.

There are two things you can teach children that will protect them:

1: They never have to hug or otherwise be touched by someone if they don’t want to. Their bodies are their own and they alone decide who touches them (except for a doctor or nurse during an exam, with you present).

2: Don’t let anyone tell them to keep secrets from Mom and Dad, no matter what. There is never a good enough reason for an adult to tell a child to keep a secret from his or her parents.

But most of all, if your child tells you someone makes them feel creepy, alarms should go off. Never dismiss your child’s feelings out of hand.

 

 

And this creates jobs how?

June 7, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

Edward Chapman on his first visit to the ocean after being released from Death Row.

Despite claims by the GOP in Raleigh (and in other places) that they’re going to concentrate on job creation, the parade of non-job-creating actions continues.

The latest here is a decision to remove televisions from Death Row because TV contributes to a “life of leisure” on Death Row.

I thought about asking my friend Edward Chapman about that. Ed lived in that paradise known as Death Row for 14 years after being wrongfully convicted of a double murder in 1992.

He was released four years ago without so much as an apology from the state. Chapman is still waiting for his official Pardon of Innocence, which would make him eligible for some compensation for the 14 lost years of his life, but Gov. Bev Perdue has yet to issue the pardon, even though Chapman is innocent of the crimes.

As it is, Chapman lives in a rented house, works hard at a low-wage job and refuses to hold a grudge. Each year since his release, Chapman’s friends have thrown him a party to raise money to help him pay his bills.

You might expect Chapman to be a bitter man, but he isn’t. He is happy to be free and tries to look ahead instead of backward.

His first day of freedom was the day after my son died, so I remember it pretty clearly. I interviewed him a few weeks after he gained his freedom and have been inspired by him ever since.

I have danced with him at the annual Freedom Ball and advocated for him to receive the official pardon.

So, when I saw the story in today’s paper about televisions on Death Row, I could only wish we would stop being so punitive toward people in prison. Too many of them don’t belong there, and the ones who do would be better served by being offered job training and the skills they need to live on the outside.

Cry tonight, fight tomorrow

May 8, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this frustrated.

A minority of North Carolina’s registered voters just robbed hundreds of thousand of people of their rights.

Our state constitution has been amended to discriminate against people who aren’t legally married all in the name of “family values.”

Now we don’t just have a law discriminating against gays and lesbians by denying them the right to marry, we have enshrined it into our constitution and in the process robbed everyone who isn’t married legally of their rights and benefits.

People who were insured by the employers of their domestic partners will lose their insurance benefits and their rights to any say in the care of the people they love.

Parents will lose rights to their children, and children will lose health benefits.

People who suffer domestic abuse will lose their protections because they aren’t legally married to the person who’s beating the crap out of them. Sure, they can charge their abusers with assault, but they won’t have the added protections they had this morning. No order of protection, no arrest if he comes back to the house, unless he beats her senseless again or succeeds in killing her.

Let’s be clear about this: Amendment One will cause people to die — from lack of insurance, from domestic abuse — all in the process of mixing religion and the law. Because nearly everyone who objects to LGBT relationships does so for religious reasons.

We in North Carolina have taken a huge step back. We have placed hate and bigotry into our constitution, and people will die because of it.

I’m sick to my stomach tonight. I’m going to have a stiff drink and a short pity-party, then I’m going to bed because I’ll need my energy in the morning when the fight begins anew.

I want justice, and I can be damned tenacious.

One last plea against Amendment One

May 7, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Tomorrow is Primary Day here in North Carolina, and the most important item on the agenda is Amendment One, or The Amendment.

Its supporters tout it as a ban on same-sex marriage, but what it really does is attack families, gay and straight, young and old, adults and children. It takes family benefits away from people who rely on them, including survivor benefits, and worst of all, health care benefits.

Take, for example, my friends Mike and Elizabeth, who have a young daughter. They’re a strong family; they adore each other and their child. Like any other couple, they struggle to make ends meet. But because Elizabeth has a chronic illness that absolutely requires medical care, she and Mike can’t get married; if they do, she loses her health care and likely will die from complications. She wants to work and contribute to the family, but if she does, she loses Medicaid and likely will die from complications of her illness.

Now, to add to the indignities they endure, Mike could lose all rights to his daughter because of the amendment. Mike will have to choose between the life of the woman he loves and the rights to the child he adores.

What kind of society is this that calls itself Christian and pro-family and then proceeds to demolish families?

In another twist, the amendment will take away domestic violence protections for people who are not legally married. A woman wouldn’t be able to get an order of protection against her boyfriend. I guess that’s punishment for not being legally married.

Ohio passed an anti-marriage law that’s less restrictive than North Carolina’s, and it has helped batterers get out of jail because they weren’t legally married when the abuse took place. It has made orders of protection unenforceable.

Because this is an amendment to the state constitution, courts can not overturn it, and they can’t change it. North Carolina courts won’t be able to choose whether to apply the anti-gay constitutional amendment to domestic violence cases.  A constitution, whether federal or state, is supreme law. If a court thinks that there is a conflict, the Constitution controls and the court will limit the reach of laws accordingly.

In other words the amendment would rewrite the Constitution, which would nullify all the state laws protecting victims domestic violence unless they are married legally, potentially undoing all the work that the General Assembly have done to protect domestic violence victims.

Perhaps some who want to vote for the law want to punish people who aren’t married legally because they want their so-called Christian values enforces no matter who gets hurt.

But overall, I think most people just don’t know how many families will be damaged or destroyed by this amendment.

Let’s not kid ourselves, people will die because of this. Some will die because they lose access to health care, some because they lose the protection of domestic violence laws. Do we really want to be responsible for those deaths?

Please, no matter what your views on gay marriage, vote NO on Amendment One. Gay marriage is already illegal in North Carolina; we don’t have to institutionalize it.

We are not post-racist

May 2, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Julia Robinson's son died April 3 after being pepper-sprayed by police in Norfolk, Va.

Being from the class of privilege, I sometimes overlook racism without even realizing it. I don’t have to think about the color of my skin and what it means to law enforcement and other power structures.

Yesterday, I went to the Truth and Hope Tour of Poverty in North Carolina as the bus stopped at the Union Grove Baptist Church in a predominately African-American neighborhood in Hendersonville, NC. The tour is sponsored by the NC Chapter of the NAACP, the NC Justice Center, AARP, the  UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and the Institute For Civic Engagement and Social Change at North Carolina Central University, whose representatives have traveled the state by bus to hear stories from people living in financially struggling communities.

There I met Julia Robinson, whose 20-year-old son, Derrick Hemphill Jr., died in police custody April 3 after being pepper-sprayed.

Derrick had been in the Navy and was discharged in March (the Navy reports he received a general discharge under honorable conditions). Julia isn’t sure what happened, but police said he was suicidal and resisting arrest, so they put him in handcuffs and leg irons and sprayed him. He died on the way to the hospital.

Family members say Derrick was a good student and a happy kid. No one in his family knew he had left the Navy, and no one knew he was suicidal.

Would he have been sprayed if he were white and suicidal? I don’t know. I only know that Julia Robinson is looking for answers to a lot of questions and she isn’t finding them.

She believes her son died because of an injustice.

“He wasn’t armed,” she told me. “He wasn’t capable of killing them. Why did they have to spray him?”

If you’ve ever dealt with someone who has a psychiatric illness — and people who are well don’t threaten suicide — you know pepper spray is an over-reaction. There are better ways of subduing someone.

Julia and I hugged and cried over our lost sons. She wanted to know if she would ever get over it and I had to assure her she won’t. The feeling of lost potential will always be there. Parents should never have to bury their children. If Derrick was ill, he should have received treatment, not a discharge.

But Julia’s was only one story I heard yesterday.

Before the meeting started, we all had the chance to see the bullet marks in the side of the church building, where on March 8, police opened fire on a man who was running away from them. Officers chased the man, firing about 50 shots. Some went into the wall of the church; others hit the walls and windows of four homes near the church. Fortunately, no one was killed, but that’s just pure luck if you see where the bullets landed. The suspect was shot in the arm.

Barbara Smith was at home with her 14-year-old son and 1-year-old grandson when the shooting started on March 8.

Barbara Smith was at home with her 14-year-old son and her 1-year-old grandson when the shooting started.

“My first thought was the safety of the children,” she said. “But now, I want to see those officers fired.”

The officers are on paid leave pending an investigation.

This wouldn’t have happened in my neighborhood, I guarantee it. But in a poor, predominately African-American community, police thought it was OK to open fire next to the homes of innocent people.

“What they were saying was that they didn’t care about this community,” said community resident Tony Strickland. “I don’t care who you are, you don’t deserve to be tracked down like a dog. He didn’t have a weapon; his only choice was to run. The police knew where he lived so they could have picked him up any time.”

People in the tight-knit Green Meadows community want to know why it’s OK to open fire on an unarmed man while children sleep nearby.

State NAACP president Rev. William Barber said he thought it must have looked like a scene from a violent video game.

“It’s OK to shoot like that in a video game,” Barber said. “But you don’t do that in real life.”

Was it because Green Meadows is a mostly African-American community? Well, as I said before, it wouldn’t happen in my mostly white, middle-class neighborhood.

When things like this happen, it doesn’t matter that we have elected an African-American man as president, we are not a post-racist society.

 

Blessing the yard

April 25, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Pagan Priestess Byron Ballard sprinkles woad around Pack Park to "bless the yard."

Last week a huge white tent appeared in Pack Park in downtown Asheville — the very spot where the Occupy Asheville folks were told they couldn’t pitch tents — and it stayed there for a week, hosting a “revival.”

Every night, someone preached about sin and hell fire and brimstone, condemning everyone who disagrees with them. One of them even weaseled his way into Asheville Middle School under the pretext of being a “motivational” speaker. As he preached at the students, no one moved to stop him, even though he was in violation of the First Amendment.

Now, I’m a Christian. I follow the teachings of Christ, which I find very different from what’s preached by many Evangelical Christians, especially those who sponsor tent revivals (as a rule).

A friend of mine was downtown with friends during the revival and was approached twice by revival participants who wanted to save her soul. She was very polite with the first one, a little less so with the second.

So what’s my problem with the revivalists? Well, they took over a public park and accosted passersby, and the city allowed it after denying people wanting to protest the immorality of our economic system the same right. So, who approved it? What did the revivalists pay for the permit, if indeed there was one? And why couldn’t Occupy Asheville occupy that same spot even for a single night?

Then they violated the First Amendment by preaching in a public school. Why didn’t anyone know what they were going to talk about in advance, and if they lied to school administrators about what they were going to talk about, why didn’t anyone step forward and tell them they were in violation of the First Amendment?

My friend, Byron Ballard, is leading the fight to keep religion — all religion — out of public education. She’s not looking to take Jesus away from anybody; she just believes — as do I — that the place for religion is in the home and in church.

I don’t know about other Christians, but I find Jesus rather portable. I can take my faith wherever I go, and I don’t need to push it onto people who already have a perfectly good belief system.

So, when Byron said she wanted to bless the park after the revival, I wanted in. I joined her and a couple other people this afternoon and we left some cheap candy, a blue bead, a brand new penny and a bird feather where the center tent pole had been, then we walked the perimeter, sprinkling woad and waving a sage smudge, jingling our keys and picking up bits of trash.

One little boy asked what we were doing, and Byron said, “We’re blessing the yard.”

We spent about an hour there, and if you go by now, I believe you’ll find the place refreshingly blessed.

“I’m not sure about these cookies”

April 20, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

OK, I know “cookie-gate” isn’t a real issue, but there’s something here that bothers me and nobody else seems to have mentioned it.

When Mitt Romney said they didn’t look home-baked, he turned to the woman next to him and asked whether she had baked the cookies. Not any of the men, the woman, as though that should be her function.

He is totally tone deaf to the issues that affect women and families because his family has never had to struggle. Of course, I don’t know if Ann Romney bakes cookies, but she was able to choose to be a stay-at-home mom.

Not that there’s anything wrong with baking cookies — I did it the whole time my kids were growing up (in addition to holding down a full-time job), and I still love to bake. I know what’s in the cookies if I baked them and that’s important to me.

But these Romney supporters bought the best cookies in town from a local bakery that they’re very proud of, and he dissed them. He never took a single bite of any of the food they provided.

If my child had acted that way, I would have pulled him aside to tell him he was being offensive and needed to apologize. It’s about manners and it’s about at least pretending to be interested when people do something nice for you.

Anthony Bourdain eats cookies when they're offered to him, why can't Mitt?

So, what does one do when offered food like that? You look at it and say, “Oh, wow. Where did this come from?” And sound like you’re enthusiastic. And choke a little down, a la Anthony Bourdain, who eats whatever his hosts offer him rather than risk offending them. I’ve watched him eat raw seal eyeballs and pig anus without flinching.

That’s just one reason I like Anthony Bourdain a lot more than I like Mitt Romney.

You know, maybe I should bake ol’ Mittens some chocolate cookies — perhaps laced with a little laxative to loosen him up a bit.

Ann, honey, you still don’t get it

April 12, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

Ann Romney defended herself in a Tweet yesterday, telling political pundit Hillary Rosen that the had chosen to stay home and raise her five children.

Rosen, who may have been a little harsh, said she believed Ann Romney had little understanding about the lives of working women because she never held a job. Whether you say it harshly or gently, it is true. If you haven’t held a job while trying to be a good parent, you can’t understand the challenges.

Yes, Ann, it is very hard work raising children, but you can’t fully understand trying to hold a job and raise children unless you’ve done it. I’m not saying it to criticize; I’m just saying that’s how it is.

In your Tweet, you mentioned you chose to stay home. Therein lies the problem. The operative word there is “chose.” Choice in the matter is not something most of us have. Had I not worked, my kids and I would have been homeless. Even after I remarried, our combined income left us with little extra after the bills were paid. We didn’t own a home until we were 40 because it took us that long to save for the downpayment.

Income for most working Americans has gone down precipitously since the 1970s because of the attacks on unions and worker rights. If manufacturers couldn’t get their workers to offer up enough concessions, the jobs went to China. You never had to worry about that because your husband’s job was to “trim the fat” from companies he bought. That usually meant that people in the working class suffered.

I don’t blame you for the business or political policies of your husband, even though I disagree with him on many, many counts. What I’m saying is that you have no experience with struggling to make ends meet while you worry whether your job will be downsized or outsourced, and at the same time trying to be a good parent.

Studies show that children whose parents are wealthy are less likely to have compassion for people who are poor. Although some people can overcome the disadvantage of growing up advantaged, it’s more difficult to have compassion for something you never experienced. Your Tweet proves that. It never occurred to you that you had a choice most of us never had, or that things for most of us working Americans have gotten much harder.

I’m glad you had the choice to stay at home. But you still have no way of understanding the struggles of a woman who has to work and still wants to be a good parent.

 

Single motherhood is abuse? Really?

April 10, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

The GOP in Wisconsin has introduced a law to classify single parenthood as abuse.

Where are these people coming from?

Before women gained control over their reproductive organs, we were forced to stay in marriages that all to often were unhealthy or downright abusive. We couldn’t find work that paid us enough to live on if we did leave, and men were very adept at not paying child support.

That is not an understatement or a lie; it is true. I knew women who were battered and unable to leave. It’s only been in the last 30 years that public opinion on domestic violence has changed to recognize that it’s not the victim’s fault, at least until these clowns got into positions of power and started turning back the clock on women’s rights.

Once we were able to leave, controlling men hated it. They had no way to keep women as their personal housemaids and sex slaves.

Now they want to regain control by denying us access to contraception and making single parenthood a crime.

Well, it is not a form of abuse.

I was a single mother for several years, and I can tell you it’s hard as hell to be both parents to children, especially when he absent parent (most often, but not always, the father) doesn’t pay his (or her) share of the child-rearing costs.

After work, I picked up the kids, went home and fixed supper as the kids played or watched TV. After supper, it was homework time as I cleaned up. By the time that was done, it was bath time, then bedtime. I never could take them anywhere that cost money because I had none, so we went for picnics or hikes when the weather was good.

My children would have been deprived of Disney World had it not been for their father, who could afford such things. The only reason there was a television in their room was because their father bought it after I asked him not to. They had to suffer through eating home-baked snacks instead of Twinkies or Little Debbie cakes. They had to eat supper at home instead of McDonald’s.

So, were they abused? If you asked them at the time, they probably would have said they were because of the home-baked snacks and my aversion to theme parks, fast food and consumerism.

But they both grew up and moved out and realized I had been right about some things. They both developed a good work ethic and became honest men.

Being the sons of a single mother, they both had to help with household chores. They learned to do laundry and cook, sew on buttons and clean their rooms. They became more resourceful than kids whose mothers did everything for them, and they learned to respect women.

So, why would one want to criminalize single parenthood?

I think it comes down to control. These men who support such laws (and they are overwhelmingly men) don’t want women in control of their own destinies. They don’t want to have to share in the duties of keeping a home and raising a family, they want to be in charge of every aspect of our lives, and God forbid we should produce more strong, Democratic men.

 

 

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