Two weeks ago, on a Saturday night at 1 a.m., my entire neighborhood was torn from sleep by the sound of a massive explosion, followed by the deafening sound of grinding metal. Hearing this, I jumped out of bed, fumbled for the light, slammed a door open, and with most of the inhabitants of my house and the rest of the neighborhood, ran downstairs.
It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life – being jerked out of from exhausted sleep by what sounded like a bomb going off, then the sounds of an entire neighborhood flipping on light switches, opening windows and doors, afraid of what they would see, while all the while, the huge grinding sound continues, as if huge robots are waging war above the nighttime rowhomes of Petworth.
A 17-year-old boy had stolen a car from Kennedy and raced it south down 7th Street NW, losing control about half a block above Farragut and then careening into a parked Acura, a parked Jaguar, a parked Toyota and two other parked cars, before flipping over and exploding in a fireball about 30 feet from the home of Peggy Watson’s house, where I have been living.
The 17-year-old boy had been thrown from the car and was smeared across the road; his 15-year-old friend who had been in the car with him but who had gotten out alive sat on the curb and watched his friend dying. The flames of the still-burning car flickered in the eyes of the neighbors, some of whom held each other, some of whom cried, waiting for the police and firetrucks to arrive. At the end of the street, three men watched the car burn from the wheelchairs to which gunfights had consigned them from the rest of their lives. The guys in the wheelchairs were all under 30. “It’s like Vietnam,” Peggy said.
“This is the summer, here,” Peggy said. “This is just the beginning.”
Peggy Watson’s house is a little like a stone fortress on the corner of 7th and Farragut NW. She is a little bit of the block captain and unofficial mom of the neighborhood. She has two cats, one of which is named Hannah. I don’t know how she holds it together. This horrible scene is only the most spectacular of the things I witnessed there.
I have lived in a lot of places, and not all of them have been what is called ‘nice’, but I was completely unprepared for the stewpot of dehumanization, racial animosity, sexual harassment, mental illness, and just sheer hopelessness in the part of DC that I happened to wash up on. I was consumed by it, because I am always attuned to my environment, and I soak it up.
One of the survival instincts I lack is the ability to disregard other people’s pain; the 70/71 bus (which runs down Georgia Avenue, which I would take to work for the first two months of my existence here) is a moving holding tank of pathos and despair. My second week in town, while waiting for the bus in the morning, I started talking to a man who was waiting at my stop, at Farragut and Georgia. He was about 45, and had been waiting there all night looking for his teenage daughter, who had gotten into drugs and run away from home. He showed me a picture of her and asked if I’d seen her, and I said no, and he said, “Of course, she probably looks different now, she’s probably lost weight.” He had moved to DC with his family from Detroit for a job, and he regretted ever coming here, because the toxins had gotten to his daughter, and he was powerless to do anything about it. The bus pulled up and I had to get on, so I cried a little bit and gave him a hug and wished him good luck and watched him alone on the bench, from the window of the bus.
I have to write this down because I don’t know what else to do. The things I have seen are so awful: the girl’s wrist, for example. There was a tiny, 13-year-old pregnant girl in my neighborhood, and her wrist was as thin as a pencil, she was so underfed. Or - one time going at home at night on the bus, we had to pull over, and everyone had to get off and walk because someone on the back of the bus had literally shit on the floor of the bus.
A community service for the boy who’d died in the car wreck was held a week after the accident, right in front of my house. There were people who walked away from the service and made drug deals two blocks down the street in the early evening sunset. Peggy Watson got up in front of the crowd – she’s lived there for 20 years - and gave a speech that was an act of love. I was very proud of her. “Don’t let anyone tell you aren’t beautiful because you are black,” she said. “We are all beautiful. Don’t let anyone put you down.”
Five days after the accident, I went with Lynda to a happy hour and panel about the DC local blogger community put on by the Next American City magazine. I had never seen this magazine before, even though it is published out of Philadelphia; it was a gorgeously designed urban planning mag about sustainability and carbon footprints and phrases like ‘the built environment’, funded by some foundations, with no ads at all.
The cover of the magazine said “Cities in Crisis,” with a picture of a little old African American lady walking past a crumbling building (assumably Detroit, since they are now the poster child for romanticized urban ‘decay’.) Despite this being a 65 percent African American city, not only were none of the DC bloggers black – there wasn’t a single black person in the whole room! I was astounded. If I needed more of a reminder for why solving the digital divide is important, I don’t think I could have gotten one.
The event mystified me – the reality mystified me. I do not say this to cast aspersions on DC local bloggers, who are a group of extremely idealistic people that are probably the first generation of the DC transient class to ever care about the health of the city. This is a huge and important development.
The thing that is really and truly disturbing about the social breakdown and sorrow of DC is that is happens right under the nose of the most powerful people on the planet. People who could solve these problems with the stroke of a pen. The political class here has completely abdicated its responsibility to its neighbors, and that says everything you need to know about the way they go about running the rest of the country. One cannot govern humanely if you are choosing to ignore the real people around you who need help. That is a strange way to live, and that is why Washington is so dehumanizing. It has echoes of the slave city it once was. Not too long ago, this was not free land. And the two-class city that has replaced it doesn’t really look much different.
The only sure-fire way I know of breaking apathy and hopelessness is by teaching people that they have power over their own lives. That is the only thing that works. Having something to build towards brings out the best in people. The Obama campaign energy is still there, but it has to be channeled in DC, or else it will turn into more cynicism.
Right before I left Philly, I met this magical woman who had lived in DC in the 70s, and she told me about her life here then. It was a different world entirely. It was so much happier of a place, she told me, before crack was invented and all the guns came. She told me about a strip of discos – I don’t know where - where they would literally close down the street so people could rollerskate between clubs. And it would be a Saturday night and all these folks would be out rollerskating. In mean old DC.
Democracy does not cure all problems, and it does not turn thugs into rollerskaters. But what it does do is give people the opportunity to address the problems they see in their own community. What I don’t quite understand yet here is how the disenfranchisement of DC residents exactly works – but I have a feeling that this is connected somehow to all these other problems. Peggy tried to teach me this, but I am still confused, especially since we apparently have a functioning city government.
At the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights dinner, I met the outreach coordinator of DC Vote, and the poor woman got treated to a 30-minute harangue about what field consultant they should hire and how they should go after the unions and all that. “Oh yeah, there's about a six month window with political professionals after they get to town,” Nathan says, watching my enthusiasm. “After that people get resigned to not voting.”
I suspect I will probably be an exception to this, but I don’t have the foggiest idea how I will have time to work on this. However, it’s definitely the next thing that needs to happen in the democracy movement. Suffrage. Suffrage is … come on, it’s Democracy 101. And how beautiful a thing it would be to have an actual democracy movement right in the face of the American federal government.
P.S. I want to give a promo to the blog Lynda writes for (this is Lynda Laughlin, formerly of Temple, for those of you who know her): www.greatergreaterwashington.org. It is very good and smart and community minded and they are on a crusade to clean up the Anacostia River. It also has a blogroll of other local DC blogs. Someday I will write about the DC bloggers. They all know each other and complain about each other, it’s a community. I suppose I am one of them now since I am a blogger and live here. Hooray that I found the other writers!
Monday, June 1, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The Last Island in the Ocean
When I lived overseas, it was commonplace, during American elections, for expats to say: everyone in the world should get to vote in American elections, because American government runs the world. American government should have a global vote.
It seems a bit much, when you live here. But when you leave you realize how true this really is. American monetary policy, military policy, environmental regulations, banking policy… trade, taxation of the international corporations that are based here… technology policy, intellectual property, on and on the list goes… these all effect not just what happens within our borders, but the daily life of millions and millions of people flung all over the globe.
We don’t govern that way – openly anyway. Our political discourse takes as its presumption that we are an innocent little nation state amongst many others, that our behavior is normal, as if there were Tunisian military bases in 130 countries around the world, or if Malaysia regularly sent robot warplanes to bomb villages in Iceland.
I wrote a long time ago in a post about then freshman Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA) that one cannot understand the implications our foreign policy unless one witnesses it. And we are so geographically isolated that we cannot really see those things - nor the fact that we are most often the nation that others look to for help and succor, in the most desperate of circumstances. There are entire islands in Indonesia with cultures that have existed for thousands of years, now in danger of going permanently underwater because of the impacts of the 1950s suburbanization of America … whose only hope is that we start biking (and fast) or give them enough money to relocate.
When we do things right, we do things globally right… but more often than not, we do things wrong, and globally so. And this is not being talked about. This is all being swept under the rug. Our world is literally being burnt up, and the human race being overwhelmed in a plague of violence, dislocation, and greed, while our massive communications system and our media hides it, and prevents us from taking action to solve our problems.
I am an optimist. I believe in the intelligence and bravery and kindness and resourcefulness of human beings. Not because such traits automatically flourish – but rather because I have seen them flourish even under the most difficult and brutal of circumstances. Love and hope just never run out, and sometimes all that is needed is to be reminded of them.
No matter how grave and massive our global problems are, I believe that in the deep wisdom of all of our combined cultures we have the ability to address them, and stop them. No – I don’t just believe this. I know this. Ordinary human beings like me and you know what’s best for the world. We know better than anyone else what kind of world we would like to live in.
Right now, though, we are prevented from talking about this world. We are prevented from having the public deliberations that would allow us to come to conclusions and take action. We are prevented from doing so by democratic failures in many countries, and most of all, a global communications infrastructure that is not built for democracy.
And most of all, the most failed system of communications is that which we have in America. Where it is needed the most. Although e get to vote on what happens to the rest of the world, we have a communications system that almost completely fails to tell the truth and give us power over our own political conditions – despite it enveloping and overwhelming us. Our communications system is now actually standing in the way of the human race solving its own problems. It simply must be circumvented or reconfigured, if we are ever to survive at all.
Arundahti Roy wrote in An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire that “the only thing stronger than the United States government is American civil society.”
I say this to myself a lot, especially since I live in Washington now and have to see just what it is we are up against. Some of the media corporations we are up against have one lobbyist for every member of Congress.
I have to believe it is true. In fact, I know it is. It’s just a shock to realize that what we are doing is not just organizing for America – we are organizing for the world. And that if the world is to change, it will require nothing less than a sea change in the hearts of the American people.
It seems a bit much, when you live here. But when you leave you realize how true this really is. American monetary policy, military policy, environmental regulations, banking policy… trade, taxation of the international corporations that are based here… technology policy, intellectual property, on and on the list goes… these all effect not just what happens within our borders, but the daily life of millions and millions of people flung all over the globe.
We don’t govern that way – openly anyway. Our political discourse takes as its presumption that we are an innocent little nation state amongst many others, that our behavior is normal, as if there were Tunisian military bases in 130 countries around the world, or if Malaysia regularly sent robot warplanes to bomb villages in Iceland.
I wrote a long time ago in a post about then freshman Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA) that one cannot understand the implications our foreign policy unless one witnesses it. And we are so geographically isolated that we cannot really see those things - nor the fact that we are most often the nation that others look to for help and succor, in the most desperate of circumstances. There are entire islands in Indonesia with cultures that have existed for thousands of years, now in danger of going permanently underwater because of the impacts of the 1950s suburbanization of America … whose only hope is that we start biking (and fast) or give them enough money to relocate.
When we do things right, we do things globally right… but more often than not, we do things wrong, and globally so. And this is not being talked about. This is all being swept under the rug. Our world is literally being burnt up, and the human race being overwhelmed in a plague of violence, dislocation, and greed, while our massive communications system and our media hides it, and prevents us from taking action to solve our problems.
I am an optimist. I believe in the intelligence and bravery and kindness and resourcefulness of human beings. Not because such traits automatically flourish – but rather because I have seen them flourish even under the most difficult and brutal of circumstances. Love and hope just never run out, and sometimes all that is needed is to be reminded of them.
No matter how grave and massive our global problems are, I believe that in the deep wisdom of all of our combined cultures we have the ability to address them, and stop them. No – I don’t just believe this. I know this. Ordinary human beings like me and you know what’s best for the world. We know better than anyone else what kind of world we would like to live in.
Right now, though, we are prevented from talking about this world. We are prevented from having the public deliberations that would allow us to come to conclusions and take action. We are prevented from doing so by democratic failures in many countries, and most of all, a global communications infrastructure that is not built for democracy.
And most of all, the most failed system of communications is that which we have in America. Where it is needed the most. Although e get to vote on what happens to the rest of the world, we have a communications system that almost completely fails to tell the truth and give us power over our own political conditions – despite it enveloping and overwhelming us. Our communications system is now actually standing in the way of the human race solving its own problems. It simply must be circumvented or reconfigured, if we are ever to survive at all.
Arundahti Roy wrote in An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire that “the only thing stronger than the United States government is American civil society.”
I say this to myself a lot, especially since I live in Washington now and have to see just what it is we are up against. Some of the media corporations we are up against have one lobbyist for every member of Congress.
I have to believe it is true. In fact, I know it is. It’s just a shock to realize that what we are doing is not just organizing for America – we are organizing for the world. And that if the world is to change, it will require nothing less than a sea change in the hearts of the American people.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The Philly Casino Fight, and the World
(Crossposted at Young Philly Politics.)
I work on a lot of things now, and they are all interconnected in many ways, although it’s not always obvious. What holds all of the things I work on together is the principle that the public should have the power to make decisions for itself, without intermediary, and that structures and places that allow and facilitate the necessary discussion and decisionmaking should be free, and protected by law.
I want to write about the casino fight because, as with so many things, the public conversation has become a little amnesiac about what has really happened here.
The casino fight in Philadelphia, and to some extent Valley Forge, is so much more than a traditional NIMBY fight that the comparison (which I sometimes still hear) is downright laughable. For the people who have been involved in this fight over the last 4 years now, our world has been like descending into the depths of political hell and traveling through a seedy, dark underworld of corruption, arrogance, creepy casino operators who make their living impoverishing seniors and bankrupting families, backroom deals, complete lack of respect on the part of elected officials for their own constituents, disgusting short-sightedness on the part of old people who are willing to flush Philly down the toilet on their way to retirement, Gaming Board officials with ties to the mob, open lies, votes at midnight on a vacation weekend, the failure of our business and political leadership to come up with a sustainable economic vision for the city that doesn’t involve creating a morass of crime and social problems, the silencing of the public voice, casino operators pitting neighborhood against neighborhood to incite class and racial hatred in a city they don’t care about because God knows they don’t live here, a failure to talk about property taxes and what really needs to change in our state tax structure…you name it. It has been awful to watch, even when I wasn’t able to actively participate, because it was so anti-democratic, really.
And that’s not even counting the ballot measure.
Did you forget about this?
In the winter of 2007, a number of grassroots groups with no money came together, gathered something like 13,000 signatures to get a measure on the city primary ballot that said basically, no casinos in neighborhoods. It didn’t say no casinos at all, it just said you could only build them where they were 1500 feet from homes and schools. (Which would mean the casinos would essentially have to move to the Navy Yard or the airport.)
This was a really really big deal. The process to get a measure on the city ballot via signatures is very difficult to do in a grassroots fashion. For one, the period to gather the signatures comes before the period to get signatures for candidates – in other words, it’s even colder, and standing outside of a grocery store is even more excruciating.
Two, it’s really hard to get 13,000 people to do anything unless you have a lot of money. Which they didn’t have. REALLY hard. You have to have a lot of angry people for that to happen. In fact, it’s so hard to do this, and requires so many people to do this, that the only other time this has ever happened in recent Philadelphia history was the petition drive to Recall Rizzo – which garnered a similar number of signatures – more than 20 years ago.
So… they got it on the ballot…. City council, to its credit, gave approval… and then we’re all rolling along nicely in the primary when the PA Supreme Court takes it off the ballot because Foxwoods and Sugarhouse sued, and said our vote was illegal.
No reason given. Nothing else was struck from the ballot.
Just the ruling: Philadelphians do not have the right to vote on whether we have casinos in our neighborhoods.
After that, sheer fury ensued. Casino Free Philadelphia ran their own election day operation at 30-plus polling places on May 15 anyway. It was pretty amazing, especially taking into account that this was over and above a huge number of rebellious/progressive political types who were already running/working on 20-plus other challenger city council campaigns at the same time. Not to mention the mayoral volunteers. Lot of energy, that year.
The Supreme Court decision was awful. It is the real knot in all this, that decision. That decision effectively said to me, and to all of us, that the casino owners were afraid. They were afraid of letting us choose, because they know they would lose. For all their rhetoric about it ‘being just a few neighborhoods that are anti-casino,’ those in power were really just bluffing.
Because this is the deal. Almost half the neighborhoods in the city have been threatened by a casino now, and had to organize against it, and have seen their comments and sentiments and their very self-determination about their homes and businesses mowed over by a cabal of casino operators and the people who work really really hard to see they get what they want, while the desperately needed public policy concerns that would help their neighborhoods – education, gun control, affordable housing - languish and die in Harrisburg. The other half of the city may not have been personally threatened, but they have been waiting for a really long time for someone to help them out, and they know that a casino sure as hell isn’t designed to help them. It kills me to hear the governor and the mayor get up there and say things like, “finally, we can move forward, isn’t it wonderful,” as if casinos were health care reform.
Chinatown, Fishtown, Fairmount, Pennsport, Queen Village, Society Hill, Richmond, Old City, Tioga, Center City, Wash West, Nicetown, Germantown, 9th Street, Bella Vista…and now CFP is organizing in West Philly.
Why am I writing about this? I am writing about this because I am beginning to realize that this battle is as important as I thought. I’ve moved to DC for a while to work on democracy (through opening up the media), and one of the things that I have quickly learned in DC is that the United States still sets the standards for democracy globally. I had no idea about this, but this is what people in the State department say – that when we craft any policy that is about democracy, it gets copied in other countries. I was really surprised when I heard this.
But then I realized what a huge responsibility we have. If we are the gold standard, we really have to be the gold standard. That is tremendous power to change the lives and fortunes of people around the globe – based on what goes down in a little casino battle in Fishtown. I think Bill Clinton is even coming to the National Constitution Center next week to talk about this – I don’t think it’s open to the public – but I do wish they would invite the PA Supreme Court.
There is a lot more to say about this – for example, the counterargument that cities and states are really at the mercy of global capitalism and we shouldn’t get mad at them etc etc. There is so much to the picture that I can’t cover it all, and I haven’t gotten to half the stuff I intended to.
But in the end – I just feel like - enough talk, it's time we really got to vote.
Philadelphia should have the right to vote on whether we should have casinos in our neighborhoods.
That's a campaign I would very much be down for.
Hannah
I work on a lot of things now, and they are all interconnected in many ways, although it’s not always obvious. What holds all of the things I work on together is the principle that the public should have the power to make decisions for itself, without intermediary, and that structures and places that allow and facilitate the necessary discussion and decisionmaking should be free, and protected by law.
I want to write about the casino fight because, as with so many things, the public conversation has become a little amnesiac about what has really happened here.
The casino fight in Philadelphia, and to some extent Valley Forge, is so much more than a traditional NIMBY fight that the comparison (which I sometimes still hear) is downright laughable. For the people who have been involved in this fight over the last 4 years now, our world has been like descending into the depths of political hell and traveling through a seedy, dark underworld of corruption, arrogance, creepy casino operators who make their living impoverishing seniors and bankrupting families, backroom deals, complete lack of respect on the part of elected officials for their own constituents, disgusting short-sightedness on the part of old people who are willing to flush Philly down the toilet on their way to retirement, Gaming Board officials with ties to the mob, open lies, votes at midnight on a vacation weekend, the failure of our business and political leadership to come up with a sustainable economic vision for the city that doesn’t involve creating a morass of crime and social problems, the silencing of the public voice, casino operators pitting neighborhood against neighborhood to incite class and racial hatred in a city they don’t care about because God knows they don’t live here, a failure to talk about property taxes and what really needs to change in our state tax structure…you name it. It has been awful to watch, even when I wasn’t able to actively participate, because it was so anti-democratic, really.
And that’s not even counting the ballot measure.
Did you forget about this?
In the winter of 2007, a number of grassroots groups with no money came together, gathered something like 13,000 signatures to get a measure on the city primary ballot that said basically, no casinos in neighborhoods. It didn’t say no casinos at all, it just said you could only build them where they were 1500 feet from homes and schools. (Which would mean the casinos would essentially have to move to the Navy Yard or the airport.)
This was a really really big deal. The process to get a measure on the city ballot via signatures is very difficult to do in a grassroots fashion. For one, the period to gather the signatures comes before the period to get signatures for candidates – in other words, it’s even colder, and standing outside of a grocery store is even more excruciating.
Two, it’s really hard to get 13,000 people to do anything unless you have a lot of money. Which they didn’t have. REALLY hard. You have to have a lot of angry people for that to happen. In fact, it’s so hard to do this, and requires so many people to do this, that the only other time this has ever happened in recent Philadelphia history was the petition drive to Recall Rizzo – which garnered a similar number of signatures – more than 20 years ago.
So… they got it on the ballot…. City council, to its credit, gave approval… and then we’re all rolling along nicely in the primary when the PA Supreme Court takes it off the ballot because Foxwoods and Sugarhouse sued, and said our vote was illegal.
No reason given. Nothing else was struck from the ballot.
Just the ruling: Philadelphians do not have the right to vote on whether we have casinos in our neighborhoods.
After that, sheer fury ensued. Casino Free Philadelphia ran their own election day operation at 30-plus polling places on May 15 anyway. It was pretty amazing, especially taking into account that this was over and above a huge number of rebellious/progressive political types who were already running/working on 20-plus other challenger city council campaigns at the same time. Not to mention the mayoral volunteers. Lot of energy, that year.
The Supreme Court decision was awful. It is the real knot in all this, that decision. That decision effectively said to me, and to all of us, that the casino owners were afraid. They were afraid of letting us choose, because they know they would lose. For all their rhetoric about it ‘being just a few neighborhoods that are anti-casino,’ those in power were really just bluffing.
Because this is the deal. Almost half the neighborhoods in the city have been threatened by a casino now, and had to organize against it, and have seen their comments and sentiments and their very self-determination about their homes and businesses mowed over by a cabal of casino operators and the people who work really really hard to see they get what they want, while the desperately needed public policy concerns that would help their neighborhoods – education, gun control, affordable housing - languish and die in Harrisburg. The other half of the city may not have been personally threatened, but they have been waiting for a really long time for someone to help them out, and they know that a casino sure as hell isn’t designed to help them. It kills me to hear the governor and the mayor get up there and say things like, “finally, we can move forward, isn’t it wonderful,” as if casinos were health care reform.
Chinatown, Fishtown, Fairmount, Pennsport, Queen Village, Society Hill, Richmond, Old City, Tioga, Center City, Wash West, Nicetown, Germantown, 9th Street, Bella Vista…and now CFP is organizing in West Philly.
Why am I writing about this? I am writing about this because I am beginning to realize that this battle is as important as I thought. I’ve moved to DC for a while to work on democracy (through opening up the media), and one of the things that I have quickly learned in DC is that the United States still sets the standards for democracy globally. I had no idea about this, but this is what people in the State department say – that when we craft any policy that is about democracy, it gets copied in other countries. I was really surprised when I heard this.
But then I realized what a huge responsibility we have. If we are the gold standard, we really have to be the gold standard. That is tremendous power to change the lives and fortunes of people around the globe – based on what goes down in a little casino battle in Fishtown. I think Bill Clinton is even coming to the National Constitution Center next week to talk about this – I don’t think it’s open to the public – but I do wish they would invite the PA Supreme Court.
There is a lot more to say about this – for example, the counterargument that cities and states are really at the mercy of global capitalism and we shouldn’t get mad at them etc etc. There is so much to the picture that I can’t cover it all, and I haven’t gotten to half the stuff I intended to.
But in the end – I just feel like - enough talk, it's time we really got to vote.
Philadelphia should have the right to vote on whether we should have casinos in our neighborhoods.
That's a campaign I would very much be down for.
Hannah
Thursday, April 16, 2009
On Magic vs. Power, Continued.
There was another reason that I started using the word magic in place of the word power: sheer self-preservation.
Many times when I met powerful people, or were exposed to their organizations, I was always shocked and disturbed at how power had deformed them over the years – personally, spiritually, socially, and often even physically.
The behavior, paranoia, secrecy, and control mechanisms required to maintain their own personal power seemed to remove so many of them from the basic realities and joys of being a human being - appreciating mystery, enjoying spontaneity and humor, or being able to have a conversation free of any underlying transactional subtext.
It was deeply disturbing, and very sad, because so many of the people I met in Philadelphia had had ideals: justice, peace, freedom, equality. Generally the system that they had become a part of had done them such violence, and so they replicated it with their own subordinates. Not everyone was like this, but I saw a lot of confusion out there.
Paolo Coelho in 'Brida' wrote that there are two types of creators: those who build, and those who plant. And that those who build become trapped by the structure they have built - while those who plant are continually amazed by the new stages and shapes that appear.
I have thought about running for office in the past, because I would be very smart about it, probably win, and then would have power to accomplish progressive goals. I have struggled with this a lot, but in the end I know I cannot do this. I do not want to end up like those folks. It seems like the worst and the loneliest way to live. My job is to carry the ring of power without putting it on. To fragment and destroy all centralization of power, and return the magic (which I guess is just power broken into atomized golden dust) to those who should have it.
I consider myself exceptionally lucky to be able to do this. I have been let into the group of people who truly change the world. It is a heavy thing, but quite amazing, and quite a heavy burden. I have to really earn my stripes, if they are going to let me stay in.
I do not know precisely how power is broken into magic. Sometimes it is force, and sometimes it is music, and sometimes it is just knowing where the cracks are. It is still very mysterious to me. It is sometimes hard, to be that which grounds power – I transfer power through me to others without keeping it for myself - a conductor. But I wouldn't wish for anything else.
Many times when I met powerful people, or were exposed to their organizations, I was always shocked and disturbed at how power had deformed them over the years – personally, spiritually, socially, and often even physically.
The behavior, paranoia, secrecy, and control mechanisms required to maintain their own personal power seemed to remove so many of them from the basic realities and joys of being a human being - appreciating mystery, enjoying spontaneity and humor, or being able to have a conversation free of any underlying transactional subtext.
It was deeply disturbing, and very sad, because so many of the people I met in Philadelphia had had ideals: justice, peace, freedom, equality. Generally the system that they had become a part of had done them such violence, and so they replicated it with their own subordinates. Not everyone was like this, but I saw a lot of confusion out there.
Paolo Coelho in 'Brida' wrote that there are two types of creators: those who build, and those who plant. And that those who build become trapped by the structure they have built - while those who plant are continually amazed by the new stages and shapes that appear.
I have thought about running for office in the past, because I would be very smart about it, probably win, and then would have power to accomplish progressive goals. I have struggled with this a lot, but in the end I know I cannot do this. I do not want to end up like those folks. It seems like the worst and the loneliest way to live. My job is to carry the ring of power without putting it on. To fragment and destroy all centralization of power, and return the magic (which I guess is just power broken into atomized golden dust) to those who should have it.
I consider myself exceptionally lucky to be able to do this. I have been let into the group of people who truly change the world. It is a heavy thing, but quite amazing, and quite a heavy burden. I have to really earn my stripes, if they are going to let me stay in.
I do not know precisely how power is broken into magic. Sometimes it is force, and sometimes it is music, and sometimes it is just knowing where the cracks are. It is still very mysterious to me. It is sometimes hard, to be that which grounds power – I transfer power through me to others without keeping it for myself - a conductor. But I wouldn't wish for anything else.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
On Magic vs. Power.
One of the odd things about my political writing and commentary in Philly over the last few years (mostly on Young Philly Politics) is the fact that I used the term magic. I used it over and over again in place of the word power, eschewing the word power itself almost completely and creating, over two years of writing, an alternate universe in which I recast everything around me in a fantastical light. Candidates or campaigns or political acts either had magic or did not - political actors were pirates or wizards – my political intuition and professional assessment of a campaign’s chances were couched in terms of whether they had good voodoo or bad voodoo.
I did this over and over again, on a public blog, and in conversation as well, without ever really thinking about what I was doing, or why I preferred to talk about politics in terms of spell casting (which is, really, all a campaign is – the concentrated repetition of powerful words.)
I’ve asked myself lately why I did this. And I found that the answer was actually incredibly important and complicated – that I did this because it was my negotiation with the political world I was entering, the action I took to set the terms. When you first get into politics there is a reeducation-camp thing where you learn where the power centers are and where they are on the scale. And ‘power’ in those terms, I found, meant really only one thing: having access to a lot of money. That was it. At first I just hated this, and I didn’t understand it. I was very mad, and it seemed unfair, and I was just full of disgust.
The most amazing and powerful political feats are accomplished not by those with access to money, but those who have very little, and still make things happen. They have to be smarter than anyone else, and they have to work harder, but in the end they are the only people who really change the world. And that is power. This I knew in my heart, but I did not see it reflected in the way that journalists would write about politics. So what I did was come up with my own way to talk about it. They had cleaned out all the meaning of the word ‘power’ – which is, in reality, a very complicated algorhythm. So I had to use another word. The word I chose was magic.
I liked it for a number of reasons. One – magic is entirely too complicated and mysterious for people to fully understand, which is in keeping with reality. If I had to sit down and make a list of the most powerful people in Philadelphia, I don’t know if I could do it, because there are simply too many factors for which to control – is someone born into money, do they have a familiar last name, etc. Even then, I would miss people like Amy Dougherty, the Executive Director of the Friends of the Free Library, who runs a grassroots organization that operates in every neighborhood in the city, and just ran one of the most amazing campaigns I’ve ever seen with a staff of three. Power is much more fluid that people think. I used the word magic originally as a naming device, but I was right in more ways than even I knew. Power behaves, really, more like magic. It is odd, and very fleeting, and sometimes the window opens and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes you can push and it won’t work anyway. Sometimes you are ten years ahead of your time. The word just means “to be able to do something.” That doesn’t reside permanently in any organization or operation or person.
The word itself also causes harm when it comes to organizing. Within the ‘power vs. powerless’ matrix, you have to spend a tremendous amount of time and energy convincing the ‘powerless’ that they do, in fact, have power. It would simply take too much time, it seems, to break apart the whole falsity of this silly word and the brainwashing that goes with it. Maybe that is what I will do down the road, I don’t know. So you have to go out there and say over and over again, you do have power, you do, even though you don’t have any money and very little time and the game is set up so that you can’t participate or are scared or intimidated. It takes so much work, it really does, and I am always so moved by the incredible bravery that people find within themselves. But power is such a foreign word. It has become a word that prevents us from making progress.
I am learning what I refer to as ‘Chinese magic’ now, which is basically the principles as laid out in the Tao Te Ching. This really proves my point about timing – knowledge is very much a form of power, and sometimes it comes to you and sometimes it doesn’t. Books find me when I am ready for them. I tried to read it fifteen years ago and gave up, I even lived in China, and I never got any of this. But it’s a way of talking about power that I love and that speaks to my heart. I am very lucky, at age 33, that I am at a place where I can understand this.
from Chapter Eight of the Tao Te Ching:
The sage’s way,
Tao,
Is the way of water.
There must be water for life to be,
And it can flow wherever.
And water, being true to being water,
Is true
To Tao.
. . .
The sage rules with compassion ,
And his word needs to be trusted.
The sage needs to know like water
How to flow around the blocks
And how to find the way through without violence.
Like water, the sage should wait
For the moment to ripen and be right:
Water, you know, never fights
It flows around
Without harm.
I did this over and over again, on a public blog, and in conversation as well, without ever really thinking about what I was doing, or why I preferred to talk about politics in terms of spell casting (which is, really, all a campaign is – the concentrated repetition of powerful words.)
I’ve asked myself lately why I did this. And I found that the answer was actually incredibly important and complicated – that I did this because it was my negotiation with the political world I was entering, the action I took to set the terms. When you first get into politics there is a reeducation-camp thing where you learn where the power centers are and where they are on the scale. And ‘power’ in those terms, I found, meant really only one thing: having access to a lot of money. That was it. At first I just hated this, and I didn’t understand it. I was very mad, and it seemed unfair, and I was just full of disgust.
The most amazing and powerful political feats are accomplished not by those with access to money, but those who have very little, and still make things happen. They have to be smarter than anyone else, and they have to work harder, but in the end they are the only people who really change the world. And that is power. This I knew in my heart, but I did not see it reflected in the way that journalists would write about politics. So what I did was come up with my own way to talk about it. They had cleaned out all the meaning of the word ‘power’ – which is, in reality, a very complicated algorhythm. So I had to use another word. The word I chose was magic.
I liked it for a number of reasons. One – magic is entirely too complicated and mysterious for people to fully understand, which is in keeping with reality. If I had to sit down and make a list of the most powerful people in Philadelphia, I don’t know if I could do it, because there are simply too many factors for which to control – is someone born into money, do they have a familiar last name, etc. Even then, I would miss people like Amy Dougherty, the Executive Director of the Friends of the Free Library, who runs a grassroots organization that operates in every neighborhood in the city, and just ran one of the most amazing campaigns I’ve ever seen with a staff of three. Power is much more fluid that people think. I used the word magic originally as a naming device, but I was right in more ways than even I knew. Power behaves, really, more like magic. It is odd, and very fleeting, and sometimes the window opens and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes you can push and it won’t work anyway. Sometimes you are ten years ahead of your time. The word just means “to be able to do something.” That doesn’t reside permanently in any organization or operation or person.
The word itself also causes harm when it comes to organizing. Within the ‘power vs. powerless’ matrix, you have to spend a tremendous amount of time and energy convincing the ‘powerless’ that they do, in fact, have power. It would simply take too much time, it seems, to break apart the whole falsity of this silly word and the brainwashing that goes with it. Maybe that is what I will do down the road, I don’t know. So you have to go out there and say over and over again, you do have power, you do, even though you don’t have any money and very little time and the game is set up so that you can’t participate or are scared or intimidated. It takes so much work, it really does, and I am always so moved by the incredible bravery that people find within themselves. But power is such a foreign word. It has become a word that prevents us from making progress.
I am learning what I refer to as ‘Chinese magic’ now, which is basically the principles as laid out in the Tao Te Ching. This really proves my point about timing – knowledge is very much a form of power, and sometimes it comes to you and sometimes it doesn’t. Books find me when I am ready for them. I tried to read it fifteen years ago and gave up, I even lived in China, and I never got any of this. But it’s a way of talking about power that I love and that speaks to my heart. I am very lucky, at age 33, that I am at a place where I can understand this.
from Chapter Eight of the Tao Te Ching:
The sage’s way,
Tao,
Is the way of water.
There must be water for life to be,
And it can flow wherever.
And water, being true to being water,
Is true
To Tao.
. . .
The sage rules with compassion ,
And his word needs to be trusted.
The sage needs to know like water
How to flow around the blocks
And how to find the way through without violence.
Like water, the sage should wait
For the moment to ripen and be right:
Water, you know, never fights
It flows around
Without harm.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The Media Bill of RIghts
This is the foundational document of the Media and Democracy Coalition, the organization for which I work. Current signatories here.
---------------
The Media Bill of Rights
Preamble
A free and vibrant media, full of diverse and competing voices, is the lifeblood of America’s democracy and culture, as well as an engine of growth for its economy.
Yet, in recent years, massive and unprecedented corporate consolidation has dangerously contracted the number of voices in our nation’s media. While some argue we live in an age of unprecedented diversity in media, the reality is that the vast majority of America’s news and entertainment is now commercially-produced, delivered, and controlled by a handful of giant media conglomerates seeking to minimize competition and maximize corporate profits rather than maximize competition and promote the public interest.
According to the Supreme Court, the First Amendment protects the American public’s right to “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail” and “suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral and other ideas and experiences.” Moreover, it is “the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”
But too often, our nation’s policymakers favor media conglomerates’ commercial interests over the public’s Constitutional rights, placing America’s democracy, culture, and economy at risk. Instead, guided by the principles that follow, policymakers must ensure that the Constitutional rights of present and future generations to freely express themselves in the media, and to access the free expression of others, using the technologies of today and tomorrow, are always “paramount.”
We ask you to join the broad coalition of consumer, public interest, media reform, organized labor and other groups representing millions of Americans in proposing the following Bill of Media Rights.
Media That Provide “An Uninhibited Marketplace of Ideas”
The American public has a right to:
Journalism that fully informs the public, is independent of the government and acts as its watchdog, and protects journalists who dissent from their employers.
Newspapers, television and radio stations, cable and satellite systems, and broadcast and cable networks operated by multiple, diverse, and independent owners that compete vigorously and employ a diverse workforce.
Radio and television programming produced by independent creators that is original, challenging, controversial, and diverse.
Programming, stories, and speech produced by communities.
Internet service provided by multiple, independent providers who compete vigorously and offer access to the entire Internet over a broadband connection, with freedom to attach within the home any legal device to the net connection and run any legal application.
Public broadcasting insulated from political and commercial interests that is well-funded and especially serves communities underserved by privately-owned broadcasters.
Regulatory policies emphasizing media education and public empowerment, not government censorship, as the best ways to avoid unwanted content.
Media That Use The Public’s Airwaves To Serve The Public Interest
The American public has a right to:
Electoral and civic, children’s, educational, independently produced, local and community programming, as well as programming that serves Americans with disabilities and underserved communities.
Media that reflect the presence and voices of people of color, women, labor, immigrants, Americans with disabilities, and other communities often underrepresented.
Maximum access and opportunity to use the public airwaves and spectrum.
Meaningful participation in government media policy, including disclosure of the ways broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations, ascertain their community’s needs, and create programming to serve those needs.
Media That Reflect And Respond To Their Local Communities
The American public has a right to:
Television and radio stations that are locally owned and operated, reflective of and responsible to the diverse communities they serve, and able to respond quickly to local emergencies.
Well-funded local public access channels and community radio, including low-power FM radio stations.
Universal, affordable Internet access for news, education, and government information, so that the public can better participate in our democracy and culture.
Frequent, rigorous license and franchise renewal processes for local broadcasters and cable operators that meaningfully include the public.
Conclusion
These principles are not meant to be all-inclusive. Rather, they illustrate an American media structure that is the American public’s present and future right under the Constitution of the United States.
---------------
The Media Bill of Rights
Preamble
A free and vibrant media, full of diverse and competing voices, is the lifeblood of America’s democracy and culture, as well as an engine of growth for its economy.
Yet, in recent years, massive and unprecedented corporate consolidation has dangerously contracted the number of voices in our nation’s media. While some argue we live in an age of unprecedented diversity in media, the reality is that the vast majority of America’s news and entertainment is now commercially-produced, delivered, and controlled by a handful of giant media conglomerates seeking to minimize competition and maximize corporate profits rather than maximize competition and promote the public interest.
According to the Supreme Court, the First Amendment protects the American public’s right to “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail” and “suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral and other ideas and experiences.” Moreover, it is “the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”
But too often, our nation’s policymakers favor media conglomerates’ commercial interests over the public’s Constitutional rights, placing America’s democracy, culture, and economy at risk. Instead, guided by the principles that follow, policymakers must ensure that the Constitutional rights of present and future generations to freely express themselves in the media, and to access the free expression of others, using the technologies of today and tomorrow, are always “paramount.”
We ask you to join the broad coalition of consumer, public interest, media reform, organized labor and other groups representing millions of Americans in proposing the following Bill of Media Rights.
Media That Provide “An Uninhibited Marketplace of Ideas”
The American public has a right to:
Journalism that fully informs the public, is independent of the government and acts as its watchdog, and protects journalists who dissent from their employers.
Newspapers, television and radio stations, cable and satellite systems, and broadcast and cable networks operated by multiple, diverse, and independent owners that compete vigorously and employ a diverse workforce.
Radio and television programming produced by independent creators that is original, challenging, controversial, and diverse.
Programming, stories, and speech produced by communities.
Internet service provided by multiple, independent providers who compete vigorously and offer access to the entire Internet over a broadband connection, with freedom to attach within the home any legal device to the net connection and run any legal application.
Public broadcasting insulated from political and commercial interests that is well-funded and especially serves communities underserved by privately-owned broadcasters.
Regulatory policies emphasizing media education and public empowerment, not government censorship, as the best ways to avoid unwanted content.
Media That Use The Public’s Airwaves To Serve The Public Interest
The American public has a right to:
Electoral and civic, children’s, educational, independently produced, local and community programming, as well as programming that serves Americans with disabilities and underserved communities.
Media that reflect the presence and voices of people of color, women, labor, immigrants, Americans with disabilities, and other communities often underrepresented.
Maximum access and opportunity to use the public airwaves and spectrum.
Meaningful participation in government media policy, including disclosure of the ways broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations, ascertain their community’s needs, and create programming to serve those needs.
Media That Reflect And Respond To Their Local Communities
The American public has a right to:
Television and radio stations that are locally owned and operated, reflective of and responsible to the diverse communities they serve, and able to respond quickly to local emergencies.
Well-funded local public access channels and community radio, including low-power FM radio stations.
Universal, affordable Internet access for news, education, and government information, so that the public can better participate in our democracy and culture.
Frequent, rigorous license and franchise renewal processes for local broadcasters and cable operators that meaningfully include the public.
Conclusion
These principles are not meant to be all-inclusive. Rather, they illustrate an American media structure that is the American public’s present and future right under the Constitution of the United States.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
My CodePink Post from this summer
Just had to go looking for it -
My Slaughterhouse Five post from CodePink House this summer is here.
My Slaughterhouse Five post from CodePink House this summer is here.
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