A class in genocide

May 10, 2012 progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Muslim women break the fast of Ramadan. US soldiers have been taught by the military that civilian populations of Muslims are fair game for attack.

Future leaders in the United States armed services have been taught by the military that Muslims must be wiped out through “total war” before the terrorist threat to America is erased. In classes, they were told that the US needs to use “Hiroshima tactics,” killing not just soldiers, but entire cities and that civilian populations were fair game. It’s true that there are Muslims who hate us; it’s also true that there are Christians who hate all Muslims. Neither religion can boast the love for humanity that both faiths call for, but neither should be condemned as being all evil, either. The Pentagon has cancelled the classes, which were held at held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, but hundreds of young officers have been told that the official position of the US military is that Muslims are all terrorists, and that does real damage to our position in the world. If you want to turn more Muslims into terrorists, then treat all of them as terrorists. The problem here is that millions and millions of Muslims are peace-loving people who have no interest in killing Americans. The ones who hate us are led by hate-filled people, not by God. The same is true of Christians. If you are a Muslim child in a predominately Muslim country with no Christians among your circle of friends and family, you’re not likely to understand that most Christians don’t want to make war on you. We can be painted as villains because we are the unknown. Here in the United States, Muslims are in the minority. After 9/11, we tended to blame all Muslims for the actions of a violent minority and we punished those we knew to be followers of the teachings of the Prophet, Muhammad. But how many of us have spent time with people of the Islam faith? Until I covered religion for a newspaper in New York, I knew little about the faith, just what I could recall from a course in world religions I took many years ago. In 1993, I spent a day of Ramadan with the people of a small mosque in Chestnut Ridge, NY, and it turned out to be one of the most profoundly spiritual experiences of my life. I rose before dawn to eat breakfast and fasted all day, then broke the fast with my new friends at the mosque. The food was fabulous and the company even more so. After dinner, I spent the evening with the women, talking about faith and family, and it was there I learned the real meaning of sisterhood. The experience shattered my feminist delusion that women and men are really the same. We are different, but equal. Our two faiths are more alike than I had ever dreamed. We talked about God’s mercy and grace; we talked about our children and our hopes and dreams. We had much in common. As I rose to leave, one of the women called out to me. “I just want to tell you something,” she said. “The word Muslim means lover of God, and you, my sister, are Muslim.” I have never been paid a higher compliment. A few days later, as the story was about to go to press, a group of fanatic Muslims tried to blow up the World Trade Center. My editor asked me to call my Muslim friends and ask them about the truck bomb. “OK,” I said. “As long as someone calls a Christian and asks about David Koresh and the mayhem in Waco for the Easter story.” He didn’t think the two were the same. After all, Muslims are known to be violent. I pointed out the Crusades, the Inquisition and other well known examples of Christian violence, and he agreed to talk about how we might cover this without offending people. “We need to educate our readers that most Muslims are appalled by this,” he said. The solution was for me to call the Imam and talk to him about the violence in the city and allow him to condemn it, apart from the story on Ramadan. “These are not people who are inspired by Allah,” he said. “These are people who are inspired by earthly power.” The military officers who gave this class in genocide need to meet some of the Muslims I know, and the Christians who condone this hatred need to look into their own hearts to see the reflection of what they’re saying about their Muslim brothers and sisters.

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.

 

 

Please vote against hate

April 9, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

I’d like you to meet my friends Amy and Lisa and their four kids. They work hard to make ends meet and raise these kids. They fuss over what to watch on TV, try to keep the house in order — pretty much everything a straight couple does.

But if The Amendment passes in North Carolina next month, they will never be recognized by the state as a family. If Amy gets sick, Lisa may not be able to have a say in how she is treated.

The Amendment, as it is called on the ballot, would insert discrimination into the state’s constitution.

It also would affect heterosexual couples who have chosen not to marry legally — something several couples I know have chosen to protest discrimination against gays and lesbians. They could lose domestic partner benefits.

What’s even scarier is that it would make domestic violence laws more difficult to enforce, as has happened in Ohio. Women who are battered by their boyfriends are less likely to be able to prosecute under domestic violence laws. They can still file assault charges, but there are fewer protections for them. It is a huge step backwards.

North Carolina already has a law against same-sex marriage, but opponents — who overwhelmingly object on religious grounds — want to make it even harder to repeal the ban.

I believe Amy and Lisa have a right to be married legally and have the same legal benefits and protections I do. Marriage is a legal contract and it should be nothing more than that to the state. To bring religion into it violates the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which supersedes the state’s. It’s none of my business whether a couple is gay or straight; the only marriage I should have any say in is my own.

Early voting begins next Thursday. Before you vote, please consider the harm this amendment would cause to gay and straight couples and their children. It’s morally wrong and it needs to be defeated.

 

You bet I’m angry

April 6, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

By my friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Matt Davies

I had a pretty lengthy rant going on Local Edge Radio the other day. I started with the arrogance and mean-spiritedness of Justice Antonin Scalia, making light of the Affordable Care Act, complaining it was too long to read and saying it was OK to let people die.

It was NOT OK to let my son die, or any other American whose life could be saved by appropriate medical treatment. A study released this week placed the United States 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in health care outcomes. Dead last (pun intended). It also estimated 101,000 Americans die each year because they lack access to appropriate treatment.

Someone commented to me that we can’t afford to treat everyone — just look at all the problems the Euro-nations are having.

Well, first of all, the economic mess comes from the power of Wall Street and the big banks to do whatever they please, rob the economy blind, take us to the brink of world economic disaster and suffer no punishment for it. Secondly, every one of those countries pays far, far less than we do for health care because it costs far, far less to care for people before they become critically ill. It costs far, far less to treat mental illnesses in a clinic than it does in a jail, which is where some 60 percent of people with chronic and persistent mental illnesses get treatment nowadays.

And we’re just talking about the financial cost, not the human cost of allowing people to suffer needlessly.

Regulation is important, not just for health insurance companies, but for banks, Wall Street, utilities — every industry. Without it, you get economic meltdown as the 1 percent steals ever more from the working class.

Without regulation, there is less safety in the workplace — the reason my son has had third-degree burns three times where he works.

The Right would have us believe government can do nothing right. They point to schools, which have been defunded at historic rates.  When schools were funded, American children had the best education system in the world. That hasn’t been true since the 1980s. In fact, we have been slipping badly.

Now they’re defunding highways and transportation, claiming that the market will build and maintain roads where they’re needed. Yes I have heard that claim many times; I’m not making it up.

But you still can turn on your tap and get water. You still have libraries and police and fire departments you can call when you need them — at least until the Right privatizes them or eliminates them entirely by defunding them. Already, we’re seeing concerted efforts to reduce their power to negotiate and reduce their salaries and benefits.

Workers’ salaries aren’t keeping pace with inflation. In every city in the country, it takes more than twice the minimum wage to pay for even the most basic needs (housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, child care). Those basic needs do not include cable TV, any meals out, including McDonald’s, or Internet service.

Why do you suppose that’s true? Well, we’ve villified the American worker and killed the unions.

This sustained attack on working Americans has reduced our salaries and increased our debt — it hearkens back to the Guilded Age when factories put people up in company-owned housing and paid them in company scrip which could only be spent at the company store. Prices at the store were high enough to keep workers in debt so they couldn’t leave.

If you think that’s not where we’re headed, think again.

And now they attack women, forcing us to have transvaginal sonograms — against our and our doctors’ wills — before we can have a perfectly legal surgical procedure. They call us whores because we want to be the ones to decide when and if we will bear children, as though we can’t be trusted to control our own bodies.

I lived through the changing of those laws. I thought we had changed attitudes too, but apparently, we weren’t as successful as we thought.

We are engaged in endless wars, killing and maiming our soldiers while asking nothing of any of the rest of us. The military-industrial complex is making billions off of these wars while soldiers and their families suffer with not enough pay and not enough care, not to mention the misery we inflict on the populations of people we attack. But if we demand an end to war, we’re told we’re not supporting the troops. That’s bullshit, pure and simple.

I’m tired of the attacks on the American people and I’m furious about the lies they perpetrate on us.

The Affordable Care Act will not result in rationed care; that’s being done already by Big Insurance. It will not mean people over 75 will be refused treatment for cancer, not like my 30-year-old son was refused care because he didn’t have insurance. These things are deliberate lies.

You bet I’m angry.

 

« Older Entries   Recent Entries »