Gay Marriage, or why I hate the equals sign

We need to ask ourselves why same-sex marriage is building support, even among conservative Republicans, at the same time that:

• Tennessee is about to punish poor kids who don’t do well in school by starving them.  
• 16-year-old Kimani Gray has become the latest symbol of the non-stop assassination of young people of color by police
• 41 states have introduced 180 laws to restrict voting rights in the last two years.  A majority of African Americans in Michigan are living under unelected leadership appointed by their governor through emergency powers.
• William Bratton, who brought “Stop and Frisk” to New York and Los Angeles, is on the march in Oakland.  Bratton says that cities who don’t use stop and frisk are “doomed.”  In New York, over 85% of those stopped and frisked were Black or Latino, and over 90% were not breaking any laws.
•  At least 41 of the prisoners in indefinite detention in Guantanamo are on hunger strike; some advocates say it’s more than 100.  Ten of them are being force-fed, in violation of international law.  Most of them were cleared for release years ago.  The military is refusing to give press access to the hunger strikers.
• Obama and Kerry are poised to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, despite the major spill when a pipeline broke in Arkansas last week.

Street art from a few years ago - some things never get stale

Whatever else it is or isn’t, the marriage rights movement is not the “new civil rights movement.”  Civil rights are for everyone.  Marriage is about broadening the class of people eligible for certain privileges, most having to do with who gets your stuff when you die, and how much they get taxed for it.  Every possible benefit of marriage – health care? immigration? could be more effectively established by demanding genuine equality for everyone.

The marriage cases are also not comparable to Loving v. Virginia.  Loving decriminalized relationships between whites and non-whites.  It was more analogous to Hardwick v. Georgia than Hollingsworth v. Perry.

I don’t have anything against people getting married – hey, I’m going to a gay wedding later this month.  But what does it mean to demand equality in a country that is so fundamentally unequal?  Once you have your equality, what are you going to do with it?  Buckle down to abolish the prison state and raise the minimum wage?  Fight for teacher unions and against high-stakes testing?  Don't you see that they're just trying to buy off those of us they think are acceptable, to recruit us into the war against people who aren't? 

The Human Rights Campaign just had to apologize to one of the speakers at the rally on the Supreme Court steps last week.  Just before Jerssay Arredondo went on stage, a staff person told him not to say he was Undocumented, because it would "hurt their image" and "distract from the issue."  Might want to take that equal sign off your facebook profiles.

My friend Elana says:  “Sometimes there's a neon sign: if this is the result of your actions, you better rethink those actions.”

Come on, my queer people – start rethinking!

9 (Sort of ) Revolutionary (Sort of) Gifts for the Holiday Season

A number of my friends have the misfortune to have birthdays very close to Xmas.  It's a misfortune because it’s hard to schedule parties and because people like me, who hate shopping, avoid it even more ferociously as December wears on.  But of course, the Internet has changed all that.  In the cozy privacy of my office, I figured I could be a good friend and not give IOUs or “love yas” instead of real live gifts this year.  But having made that earth-shattering decision, I was stuck when it came to where on the ever expanding world wide web I might actually find something suitable for the revolutionary who has almost everything she could want except revolution.

So I Googled “gifts for revolutionaries”.

I skipped right over the ones that were using “revolutionary” to modify an app, device, fabric or appliance – surprisingly, there weren’t that many.  I guess maybe the days when “revolutionary” got anyone’s attention are bygone, since it must by now be the second most common word in the English language.

I did get a little excited by “Redesign revolution” because boy, do we ever need to do that!  But sadly, it wasn’t a how-to guide for a consensus process that works in just 45 minutes or getting media attention for your creative direct action.  Instead it was “Gizmos, Gadgets and Gifts – Oh My! Holiday Gift Guide for Gadget Geeks.”  I am kind of a gadget geek, but I don’t wanna be so I clicked away in a hurry and went on to:

1.      The very first item was Jesus Christ Revolutionary, and it actually said “You searched for Jesus Christ Revolutionary” which I certainly did not!  But I clicked through to http://www.cafepress.com/+jesus-christ-revolutionary+gifts, which features a Jesus-as-Che Viva La Resurreccion Baseball Jersey.  The cutest thing I found there was the No Justice No Sleep baby bodysuit.  I don’t have any revolutionary friends getting ready to deliver, but when I do, I know what they’re getting for baby shower gifts.  

2.      From Amazon comes The History Channel Presents The Revolution (2006).  Revolution in a box for $49.99 would be a good deal, but sadly it’s a 13-part miniseries about The American Revolution.  No doubt I’d learn something, but not what I had in mind.

3.       Zazzle, as it turns out actually does have a “revolutionary gift” site offering everything from U.S. Army mugs to revolutionary war memorabilia to pictures of Villa and Zapata to Ron Paul bumper stickers to Socialist Party pins.  I clicked on the last and found myself at the page entitled “Home > Politics > United States > Parties > Communist” – wait, was it a socialist or a communist pin?  Couldn’t buy it unless I knew.  Oddly, the Red Star on a black field pin was not on that page, but on the “Philosophy and Belief” page.  Go figure.  At the top of my screen, underneath “Revolutionary Gifts - T-Shirts, Posters, & other Gift Ideas” it said:  “Related Searches:  vladimir lenin without, war, war cannon”.  Huh?

4.       There’s Revolution Tea:  “Revolution Tea is proud to introduce you to the wonderful world of tea. In the past, you may have experienced the bitter taste of low quality teas served in paper bags. At Revolution, we are committed to changing the way tea is served in addition to offering high quality, great tasting teas crafted to suit the taste of today's palate.”  In addition to tea, they offer tea lights, tea cups, tea servers, tea cakes but sadly not "Revolutionary Tea Party," my favorite CD by the great Lillian Allen.  You can get it on CD baby though.  

5.     Revolution Books, marketing hub of the formerly-antigay-now-only-mildly-heterosexist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), offers “shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, hats, calendars, tote bags and more with challenging and inspiring quotes from…the cutting edge work of Bob Avakian, whose new synthesis of communism envisions a radically new society that is overcoming all of the oppression of the current world while giving great scope to the intellectual work, ferment, and dissent as integral to the complete emancipation of humanity.”  Okay, just how “new” and “cutting edge” can his work be after 50 years?

6.     Maopost.com offers Chinese propaganda posters.  Site labels include “Posters”, “Calendar cards”, “Fakes & reproductions” and the ever-popular “Personalized oil paintings”:  “A revolutionary gift idea: your portrait oil painted like a propaganda poster."  I thought about it.

7.     Mug Revolution was actually kind of tempting, as both I and one of my Saggitarian friends love mugs.  These boast lead-free glazes and certified 100% non-toxic local clay.  They are hand-made in Oregon, meaning they wouldn’t be being shipped too far, but they're kind of ugly, at least in the pictures. Maybe it takes toxic clay or lead glaze to make pottery that looks pretty? (No offense meant to any of my potter friends, who all make gorgeous and I'm sure healthful stuff.)

8.    “Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Apocalypse Saga L.E.”  I gather is a Japanese animated TV series.  It’s a 3 DVD set and sounds rather gender-bending:

"Utena, fueled by her desire to protect Anthy, continues to prevail over the feeble ambitions that drive the Student Council to fight.

The Council's ambitions are reignited, however, when they hear a sound. At first, it's faint, but soon it becomes clear: the promised revolution is within reach - and the duels must go on.

And what of Utena's own ambition? To become a prince, the duels may be only one of the trials she has yet to face."

It might be just the thing for friends or kids who like anime, which I don’t.  Though for full disclosure, one of the swordswomen on the box cover is wearing a long pink gown.

9.   Revolution Brewing, a Chicago brewpub has a host of “Revolution Brewing” paraphernalia, including shirts, caps, signs, and bottle openers.  Cute for a revvy who drinks beer, but I'm going to keep looking.

Comcasted!

“Thank you for choosing Comcast.”

I will be hearing that phrase in my sleep for a long time; I’ve heard it at least 20 times in the last week, because it’s the cheery closing of every call.

It’s a bitter irony, because I did not choose Comcast.

My mom recently concluded that it was time to move out of the house she’s lived in for 46 years to an apartment without stairs.  She found a nice two-bedroom two blocks away from the house in Richmond, VA and my sister arranged for it to be renovated to her specs.  I went back two weeks ago to help with the final packing and organizing and help get her settled in the new place.

A week before leaving California, after doing some research, I decided that she should give up her Comcast cable and MCI long distance in favor of a Verizon triple-play – phone, internet and Direct TV. 

My mom doesn’t use the internet; in fact, she refuses to look at a computer, but my sister and I decided that it’s essentially free to add it to the other services and it would be good for us and for others who come to help Mom to have it in the apartment.  We are also plotting to get her a computer, which she probably won’t look at but again, others can use it to get schedules and information from the groups she belongs to and we can use it to send her photos and letters and articles that others can print out for her.  In fact, the computer we’ve ordered, which is called the Telikin, is designed for seniors who are not tech-savvy and one of the features I’m excited about is the ability to remote in to her hard drive.  So if it works the way it is supposed to, we can go in and print something out for her and all she’ll have to do is go into the spare bedroom/den/office and get it.

Of course, Comcast also offers an internet-phone-TV bundle.  I chose Verizon for two reasons:  she could keep the phone number she’s had for all these years, and it was quite a bit cheaper.  So I ordered the triple play, only to learn the next day that the building doesn’t have Direct TV, only Comcast.  So I went back to the drawing board.  I kept the phone and internet with Verizon and arranged to transfer her existing Comcast service to her new address.

On moving day, the Comcast guy showed up and hooked up the cable in the apartment, or said he did.  But when the boxes were cleared and the paintings hung and I connected the TV in front of her favorite chair in the living room, it didn’t work.  We got the program guide but no picture.  I called the company and they said they could not get a signal through to the box.  They thought it could be a bad box.  Seemed suspicious since it had worked fine on Wednesday.  The first appointment they could give me for someone to come back out and get it working was Tuesday – this was Thursday.  Moreover, I was planning to leave on Tuesday and wanted to make sure everything was working before I left.

So on Friday, I went to the Comcast office and picked up two new boxes – a big one just like the old one we had moved from our old house, and a little one called a DTA – digital transport adapter for the new flat screen TV I had installed in the bedroom.  She doesn’t watch TV in the bedroom – couldn’t since the TV she had in there hasn’t worked in years – but I figured it would be good to have one in case at some point she has to spend more time in bed.  I got home and hooked up the two boxes.  The adapter seemed to work fine.  The other one, which I now know is called a digital receiver, got some of the channels but not all, and most annoyingly, two of the channels it did not get were the two she watches nonstop: MSNBC and CNBC.  We are bonded over Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris Perry.  Before I could call and ask why I was only getting half the channels, the receiver stopped working at all.  Back to the situation I had been in the day before – I could see the channel guide but no programming.

My mom was completely mystified and couldn’t figure out what was happening.  She’s just not techy, as you’ve probably already guessed.  She kept pressing Channel 28 (MSNBC) on the remote over and over and over, even when I told her the box was disconnected (one of my ideas to try to reset it).

I called the company and again they tried and failed to send a signal to the box.  They still couldn’t give me an appointment before Tuesday.  I took the adapter box from the bedroom and hooked it up in the living room, so she could watch the shows she wanted to watch.  That helped, but the adapter doesn’t have a display, so she couldn’t see which channel she was on, and it doesn’t get the program guide, so she couldn’t see what was coming up.  She just wanted everything to be the way she was used to.  Who doesn’t?  And she’s 87 and just moved to a new place and you can’t blame her for wanting a little continuity.

On Friday night there was a huge storm all over the east coast, including in Richmond, where we were.  A lot of people lost power for hours, days or even weeks.  My sister, whose power was only out for twelve hours or so, has a freezerful of other people’s food.  We were lucky and only lost it for a few minutes.  Saturday morning, I went out in the muggy thousand degree heat to get some things for the house (bath mats, ironing board cover – I am pretty sure the one on the old wooden ironing board had been there for 50 years, soap dishes, trash cans).  There was a Comcast van in the parking lot, and the driver was in the van.  I walked up to it and said, “I know this is probably a screwy question, but since you’re here, is there any way you can pop up and look at my mom’s cable?”  He was very nice but said that he had a list and wasn’t allowed to deviate from it.

“Especially today,” he said, “because we have so many calls because of the storm.”

I thanked him and walked away, thinking, “Well the people whose service went out from the storm obviously just called today, and we called on Thursday.  So how come they can get service now and I can’t get it until Tuesday?”

Tuesday morning the guy showed up right when he was supposed to.  Great.  He worked on the cable for about 45 minutes and announced, “You’re good.”  He turned to leave.

“Wait,” I said.  I picked up the remote and pressed 28.  It went to 30.  I checked the channel guide.  It went 21, 22, 24, 27, 30.  I showed him that we were not getting all the channels.

“She’s supposed to get every channel, right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well we’re not.”

“You will in a little while.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.  “This is just what happened last week, and then it stopped working completely.  I’m sorry, but I need you to stay until we’re getting all the channels we’re supposed to get.”

He looked unhappy, but mumbled “Okay.”  A minute later, he walked out, saying, “I’ll be right back.”

He never came back.

An hour later, I called the company to ask where he was.  The woman I spoke to said that he had marked the job completed, so she could only put in a new ticket and give us an appointment for the next day.  I said no, that was unacceptable, I was supposed to leave today, my mom can’t explain to the guy what needs to be done, we’ve waited almost a week, the guy walked off the job, I need it done today.”

I made six calls to Comcast that day.  I talked to the Operations Manager for the Beltway area, who was in Texas.  I asked to speak with the Area Manager (my job at a law firm happens to have brought me into contact with a lot of Comcast organization charts).  Steve Sanchez, the Operations Manager, said that the Area Manager was not in the office but he would have him call me.  Steve also promised to call me back within an hour to let me know when the technician would come back to finish the work.  Neither of those calls came.

I asked my sister, who was home in Maryland, to call because I just couldn’t do it any more.  She said okay.  Then the phone rang and it was Comcast.  They told my mom they needed to verify some information because her daughter was on the phone.  They asked for the last four digits of her Social Security number.  She gave them.  They said that wasn’t what they had on the account.  She took out her Medicare card and read them the entire number.  They said it wasn’t right.  They didn’t want to let my sister talk to anyone because they didn’t believe she was really my mom’s daughter, even though they had called the number on the account and reached my mom and my sister has the same last name.  They told my sister she has to take my mom to a Comcast office and have her show them her photo ID and Social Security card.  I was told the same thing when I took the phone back.  Is there some law that says you have to even have a Social Security card to order cable TV?

I called back.  The hold time was 20 minutes.  I put it on the speaker phone and read a book and waited.  Finally a young woman came on the line who was very sweet.  She said she had elderly parents too, and she understood.  She was going to find the technician and make him come back.  She gave me a ticket number, which had never happened before, and promised someone would call me back within 20 minutes to let me know when they would be coming back.

In 40 minutes, I called again.  This time I got a young man who was also very nice.  I gave him the ticket number.  He called it up.  He said he still couldn’t find the tech.  I asked for his supervisor.  He said she was on another call, so he didn’t know how long she would be, but he would have her call me as soon as she got off the phone.  He gave me another ticket number.

No call from the supervisor.  No call from the technician.  No technician showed up.  I took my mom to the doctor.  We had to wait a long time, because it was the day before a holiday.  When we got home, I called Comcast again.  I gave both ticket numbers.  The woman I spoke to said, “Those tickets are unresolved.”

“I know that,” I couldn’t help saying.  “That’s why I’m calling.”

My sarcasm got me nowhere, but of course, being sweet had also gotten me nowhere.  I insisted that someone had to come the next day to finish the work that had not been completed.  She said, “That would be hard.  Tomorrow’s a holiday.”  I said I knew people would be working, because they had previously offered me an appointment for Wednesday, and we should be at the top of the list because we had been waiting since last Thursday.

“I had to change my flight because of you all,” I said.

“I can give you an appointment on Sunday,” she said.  I demanded to talk to her supervisor.  The supervisor said he would try to get someone out on Wednesday, but at the least, he would schedule it for Sunday.  I said that they need to comp us the month because we are not getting what we’re paying for and I’ve spent the equivalent of a week’s work talking to them about it.  He said, “I’m not sure we can do that.  We will certainly credit you for the time you’ve been without service.”  I said they had to do more than that.  Friends of mine got a huge discount and a bunch of extra stuff for free because they had connected their own modem wrong.  He said he would see what promotions were available.

My sister called at 6:00 am on Wednesday and talked to someone in Costa Rica.  She was promised that someone would come that day, probably before 1:00 pm.  I called at 8:00.  I was told we had an appointment for Sunday.  I said my sister had been told someone would come that day.  They said they could see that we had been given priority, but that didn’t mean someone would actually come.

Okay, so this much angst over cable TV seems kind of absurd.  At least 26 people have died from the heat or the storm.  But Comcast doesn’t provide emergency food aid or cooling shelters.  They’re a cable company.  They actually don’t have anything more important to do than get people’s cable working right, and my mom’s still doesn’t.

Her building is supposed to be wired for FIOS in August.  If her Comcast is working by then, am I going to dare to start over with someone else?

Five Great Things About the Occupy Movement

As I was walking to lunch the other day, I heard the unmistakable tones of someone droning through a bullhorn.  I assumed it was the picket line at the Hyatt Regency, but as I got nearer, I realized it was coming from the other side of the street, by the Federal Reserve building.

The Fed is, in my opinion, the most underprotested building in San Francisco.  I always try to convince people to demonstrate there, and they inevitably opt for what they think of as more direct corporate enemies, like Bechtel or The Carlyle Group, or government buildings like the Federal Building (boring!), ICE Headquarters or the ultranondescript South of Market office building housing Homeland Security.

People don’t target the Fed because they don’t understand what it does.  I don’t either, but I do know this: its job is to keep American capitalism from collapsing, by manipulating the currency supply and the interest rates.  In fact, this is what the Federal Reserve’s website says its responsibilities are:

• Conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices.
• Supervising and regulating banks and other important financial institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers.
• Maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets.

In their own words, this whole mess is the Fed’s fault because it didn’t do its job.

Plus it’s across the street from my job, so I always want people to be demonstrating there.  And now they always are.  Hallelujah.

The people droning through the bullhorn were, it turns out, a very small cadre of the Occupy SF movement.  Inspired by their fellows on Wall Street, an unemployed lawyer called Belle Starr, and a heavily tattooed guy in fatigues, had set up a dozen or so signs, some on the ground, some propped up facing the street, with messages like “Being in Debt Doesn’t Make You Rich,” and “Make the Banks Pay.”  Instead of pushing leaflets at uninterested people like I always do, they had stacks of information sheets sitting on the ground for people to pick up if they wanted.  There was a small stack of DVDs too, featuring video from protests in New York and here.  I took one, and put a small donation in their donation jar.  Belle told me they were going to be there every day, and that there are General Assemblies every day at 6:00 pm in Justin Hermann Plaza.

One day after work, I happened to run into the GA, which inexplicably had moved to the sidewalk in front of the Fed.  There were about 50 people in a circle, surrounded by posters saying things like “We Are the 99% and So Are You” and “People Not Profits.”  Everything that anyone said, the crowd would repeat so that people who were not near the speaker could hear.  I had seen the Wall Street protesters on TV using that method to amplify Michael Moore’s speech to the occupation there, but I have to say, in this case I thought it was a bit of overkill; if people had gathered a little closer in, everyone should have been able to hear.  But it is obvious that they are learning a particular method of organizing from the other groups that are their inspiration, and it’s a unifying cultural phenomenon.

Thursday was a demonstration in the financial district, but I couldn’t go because it was Rosh Hashanah and I was having ten people over for dinner.  A friend of mine went and said there were about 500 people there, mostly students, but that the turnout was better than the organization; there was no plan for what to do once they marched over to Chase.  That’s been true of some of the Uncut actions I’ve been to here as well.  It’s a frequent byproduct of extreme anarchist philosophy that people sometimes resist even the level of leadership that means someone makes sure that there will be banners and signs, a route, and something for people to do once they show up.  Sometimes people take the initiative and the demos are great, but if no one takes responsibility on their own, there may be no mechanism for plugging the holes.

According to the Occupy website, Occupy SF has three loci.  There’s a night camp at Howard and Spear, just south of the building where I work.  I’d noticed that the block between Howard and Mission on Main, across from the Fed, seems to be one where homeless people are able to camp without being disturbed, and I guess that is true on the other side of the Fed as well.  Not sure why, but it sure is picturesque.  The “permanent camp” is at Justin Hermann during the day – I guess they can’t stay there at night or they’d get shooed out or arrested.  In front of the Fed is what they call the Front Line.  They have General Assemblies on Saturdays at 4 pm in Union Square, except when they move them to another time and/or place.  (All this is very subject to change so before you go anywhere, check their site.)

So far I haven’t had time to participate in this nascent local movement, nor will I be able to in the foreseeable future, but I’m really enthusiastic about it.  I ask myself if it’s just because they’re hanging out at my favorite target.  I don’t think so.  Here are the things I love about the Occupy movement:

1. The use of simple cardboard signs.  Even though there were only two people hanging out on the Front Line the two days I walked by, it looked like a bigger deal because of the artful use of signs.  Some were facing the street, some were laid on the ground, so you didn’t need people carry them the way you would if they were picket signs.  Of course it helped that this was the hottest week of the year and there was no wind to speak of.  We’ll see how it works when the weather changes, but I like the look.

2.  They are more focused on longevity than size.  I’ve always been a big believer that the way you build a movement is by doing something consistently and growing little by little.  So often in this country, all the focus is on “How many people did you get?”  We think anything that isn’t huge is nothing, and it’s more important to get 50,000 views on YouTube than to get 50 people to come to an action.  Last week, some friends were talking about the Direct Action to Stop the War shutdown of San Francisco on March 20-23, 2003, and I suggested that one reason the antiwar movement fizzled out in this area was that we had 20,000 people those first few days and very shortly after that we had trouble getting 100 or 200 people at a demonstration.  If you start really small, you have nowhere to go but up.

3.  It is spreading around the country, but each local group seems rooted in the community of people who can make the commitment.  Okay, so I haven’t been able to participate much yet.  That’s okay, because I’m not really the constituency of this movement.  I like it, I identify with its anarchist process and its anticapitalist goals, but I’m not an underemployed 20-something.  The Tahrir Square uprising and its counterparts in North Africa and Europe did not happen because middle-aged people with good jobs suddenly decided to risk everything by camping out in the squares.  They started with the people who could afford to camp out in the square because they had nowhere else to go – young, unemployed people.  And we have plenty of those people here, and this is their movement.  Those of us who have jobs and families and other commitments can participate by feeding them, publicizing their actions through media or social media, talking about them at work, cheering for them when we walk or drive by.

4.  They are not waiting for some organization or famous person to tell them what to do.  They’re not agonizing about where to get funding.  They might not know what they’re doing, but at least they’re doing it.  It’s not some old left groups pretending to have a base they don’t, and it’s not nonprofits deciding who should be invited and who shouldn’t be.  It’s not faux spontaneous.  It’s messier than it would be if ANSWER or EBASE were organizing it, but it’s messy because it really IS spontaneous.

5.  I keep hearing people say “We have to get off our computers and come out into the streets.”  And they are!

To Preserve the Welfare State, Fighting Racism Is Key

Last week I wrote about changes in Western Europe relating to the mass immigration of darker skinned and Muslim people. Steve Hill, author of Europe’s Promise, called my analysis shallow and “glass half empty.” I’m sure it is shallow – I’m a blogger, with a degree in political theory, not comparative European politics, while Steve has spent years researching European political systems. Since getting that feedback, though, I have sought out the opinions of a lot of European experts, and I haven’t really heard anything that contradicts the thesis I put forth in “Song of Norway” – that immigration and global economic conditions are pushing even the most progressive countries of Europe to the right (which doesn’t mean they are going to get there or stay there).

But I was not trying to paint a gloomy prognosis for Europe’s decline into nativism and fascism. Rather, I meant to point out that over the last half century, the most egalitarian countries in Western Europe have also been the most monocultural. As they become more heterogeneous, they might want to take heed of the experience of this country, where fear (or maybe just hatred) of the Other has been used quite disastrously to wage war on programs that promote equality.

One of the things we need to remember, when mourning the slow death of the U.S. welfare state, is that it was never motivated by compassion for people of color. Noam Chomsky points out that even in these anti-tax-and-spend days, a majority of white U.S.Americans actually favor giving more government money to poor people – unless those people are Black. They make a distinction between “supporting the (deserving) poor,” and “welfare”, which we have been trained to see as synonymous with “giving money to (undeserving) Black people or immigrants.” Not coincidentally, the attack on the welfare state grows in ferocity as the political power of African Americans is increasingly curtailed, by a combination of voter suppression, redistricting and gentrification of urban population centers.

In the mid-1930s, when the New Deal was enacted, the population of the U.S. was 88.7% white, 9.7% African American and 1.2% Mexican (in the 1940 census, Mexicans were recategorized as white). The only other groups counted were Native Americans, Chinese, and Japanese, who together made up 0.5% of the population. The electorate was well over 95% white, since 77% of African Americans lived in the South, where they could not vote.

White unemployment in 1933 was about 25%. In 1930, African American unemployment was slightly lower than that of whites (because their wages were much lower) but by 1935, it was nearly twice as high. Many African Americans were thrown out of work so that whites could take their jobs. At least half a million Mexicans were deported (“repatriated”) in the thirties, 60% of them U.S. citizens. Many of the New Deal programs, including Social Security, either expressly or de facto excluded African Americans. Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force (as well as over half of women workers) were not covered by Social Security. Waiters, butlers, domestic and agricultural workers were all excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage.

The New Deal was possible because so many white people were homeless and out of work that nearly everyone, with the exception of the wealthiest white Americans, had close friends or family members who needed the help. Today that’s not the case. We say that unemployment is 9.3%, and many commentators point out that it’s really more like 16%, but even those numbers obfuscate the reality, that certain communities are affected much more heavily and others scarcely at all. Even to say that white unemployment is at 8%, African American 16.5% and Latino 12% is misleading, because those rates are not constant across racial groups. For whites rural unemployment and poverty are much higher than urban, while 40-50% of young African American men in some cities are unemployed or marginally employed.

For whites with college degrees, the unemployment rate is 2.9% while for those who haven’t finished high school it’s 12%. Since in the 2010 midterm elections, the turnout was 78% white and college educated and only 13% of voters had family incomes under $30,000 a year, we can kind of see why we’re in danger of losing our Social Security.

By far the best news I’ve read in ages is in an article called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Be More Equal.”  Three psychologists have recently found that Americans are happier “when national wealth is distributed more evenly than when it is distributed unevenly.”

The bad news? The wealthiest 20% don’t follow the trend.

Neither the U.S. nor Europe has a long tradition of tolerance. Contemporary Europe was built by exporting people it saw as undesirable, while the U.S. was built by exterminating them. But let’s not forget that Europe has done its share of exterminating, both on its shores and abroad. If we don’t want to see those bloody histories repeated, we must – all of us – work on creating true multiculturalism, something none of our societies have ever had.

Song of Norway

U.S. Americans on the left love to romanticize Europe in general, and the Scandinavian countries most of all. They have such a nice social safety net, high taxes, gay marriage, sex-change operations. They abjure violence, are neutral in World Wars, give out the Nobel Peace Prize. Plus they’re the source of those great Dragon Tattoo books we’re all reading, and the Wallander mysteries we love to watch on PBS.

Thanks to Anders Behring Breivik, we’re seeing another side of Scandinavia. It’s a side that closer observers have been talking about for a while. Between September and November of 2010, nearly every news outlet had a story hailing the arrival of far-right politics in Sweden, after the Swedish Democrats won ten seats in Parliament. By that time, Norway’s Progress Party held nearly 23% of the seats, making it the nation’s second largest party.

How could this be happening in the countries we so admire, and how could something nearly as terrible as the Oklahoma City bombing occur in a country so humane that its prisoners get to go horseback riding and use the internet?



In May of this year, the MiRA Resource Centre for Black, Immigrant and Refugee Women in Norway published an article entitled, “Welfare state and immigration: Non European nationals as second class citizens?” They were responding to a government report on Welfare and Migration.

“The Norwegian welfare model is, in the Welfare and Migration report, defined as dependent on high level of participation in employment and a relatively equal distribution of income in order to keep a generous and universal supply of welfare to all citizens. Immigration, according to the rapport, can contribute to the labour market with proficiency, labour and innovation, and can therefore be strengthening the welfare state. However, if the immigrants are not gainfully employed, they will become a double loss for the Norwegian state with increased welfare expenses and reduced tax incomes. As a result, migration would not be profitable for the Norwegian economy. Therefore, the Welfare and Migration Committee recommends active integration of migrants within the workplaces in order to rescue the welfare state. The committee also proposes that the various economic benefits such as child welfare allowance to the immigrant communities could be converted into the provision of employment or qualification programmes which can result in creating job participation. It means in practice that if the immigrant women are unemployed, they would not be qualified for welfare allowances like their ethnic Norwegian sisters.

“We are … sceptical to some of the recommendations which portray immigrants who become unemployed due to various factors among them discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion and the colour of skin, as a burden to the welfare state.”

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/populationtrends/downloads/poptrends142web.pdf

In 2000, newspapers and scholarly journals of Europe were filled with articles on “demographic change.” What this referred to was the anticipated arrival of the baby boomers at retirement age, without leaving enough replacement workers because of the declining birth rates. The fear was that this would result in both a labor shortage and the depletion of the pension funds. One of the major remedies for this coming catastrophe was to encourage immigration from less wealthy areas.

“Today, there is a growing awareness in the EU that there are at least two major policy issues in relation to population ageing. These are the ageing of the workforce and the risk of growing imbalances in the financing of the social protection. … There is a growing awareness that restrictive immigration policies of the past 25 years are no longer relevant to the economic and demographic situation in which the Union now finds itself.”

EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON POLICY RESPONSES TO POPULATION AGEING AND POPULATION DECLINE, Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations Secretariat, New York, 16-18 October 2000

The strategy worked brilliantly. War, climate change and global economic instability were boons for the European population crisis. Between 1995 and 2010, the immigrant population of Norway rose by nearly 250%. Over half of the 234,000 new immigrants were from other European countries, with Poland, Bosnia-Hercogovina, Kosova and Russia accounting for just over 85,000. Asia accounted for over 147,000 and Africa more than 50,000, so these “undesirable” and heavily Muslim immigrants combined to represent almost twice as many of the new Norwegians as people coming from other Western European countries.

In 2004, Italian Prime Minister Sergio Berlusconi offered a “baby bonus” to counter the declining birth rate caused by a majority of (Christian) Italian women choosing not to have children. When he learned that Muslim families had claimed the bonus, he tried to get them to return it.

In 2006, a number of European online papers published a screed against Muslim immigrant youth entitled “Swedish Welfare State Collapses as Immigrants Wage War.”  The "article" claimed that Muslim "gangs" were robbing Swedes as a form of warfare against "the Swedish model."

Flash forward to late 2009, when even the prosperous European nanny states were feeling the ripple effects of the U.S. financial debacle. European scholarly journals are full of articles with titles like, “Migration and welfare state solidarity in Western Europe”:

“In recent decades Western Europe has had to face increasing migration levels resulting in a more diverse population. As a direct consequence, the question of adequate inclusion of immigrants into the welfare state has arisen. At the same time it has been asked whether the inclusion of non-nationals or migrants into the welfare state may undermine the solidaristic basis and legitimacy of welfare state redistribution. Citizens who are in general positive about the welfare state may adopt a critical view if migrants are granted equal access.” (Steffen Mau, University of Bremen, Germany, July 2009)

“We find (1) that people who hold both negative views about immigrants generally tend to be less supportive of income redistribution, and (2) that they become even less supportive if they perceive a high share of immigrants in the population.” (C. Senik, H. Stichnoth, K. Van der Straeten, 2008)

It’s easy for us to believe that the U.S. has a monopoly on racism and immigrant-bashing. But it helps to remember that the Anglo-Saxon population of this country came from the Northern European countries in the first place, many of them escaping persecution for fairly minor differences. These societies have been notoriously homogeneous. As increasing migration into and across Europe brings waves of economic and political refugees, many of them darker skinned and/or practicing Islam, those countries start to look a lot more like this one.

Keep your gay marriage, give me my Social Security

I don’t have a partner. Maybe that’s why I’m not excited about President Obama’s endorsement of the Respect for Marriage Act, introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Or maybe it’s because I know that close to half of all marriages end in divorce, a majority of U.S. households are headed by unmarried people, and about a quarter of the adult population has never been married. In some communities, and notably the African American community, those numbers are much higher.

So increasingly, the campaign for same-sex marriage is not about extending the rights of the majority to a minority, but about further enshrining the privileges of a shrinking minority.

But in fact, the benefits marriage activists seek are waning by the day. By the time gay elders can claim each other’s Social Security and Medicare benefits, those benefits will have been eviscerated. Social Security, as we all know, is probably at this moment being sacrificed on the altar of deficit reduction (which, of course, it has nothing to do with). While same-sex-marriage advocates insist that marriage rights will guarantee the right of immigrant couples to live together, immigrant families all over the U.S. are fighting to stay together and out of jail. The Obama administration has deported and detained far more immigrants – including legal immigrants - than the Bush administration did.

I expected Wednesday's headline to be, “Obama caves in on budget deal.” Instead, the headline was “Obama backs same-sex marriage.” Coincidence? I don’t think so. Gay marriage is being used as a distraction to appease liberals.

Gavin Newsom, who was elected mayor of San Francisco on a pro-corporate, anti-homeless platform, used same-sex marriage to liberalize his image. In 2003, Newsom fairly narrowly defeated Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez, winning 53% of the vote after polls a day earlier showed a virtual tie. In 2007, fresh out of alcohol treatment and having being caught having an affair with a (female) employee who was married to one of his top aides, Newsom was reelected with 73% of the vote. The difference? Gay marriage.

Here’s how his own website (he’s currently Lt. Governor, after precipitously pulling out of the governor’s race without explanation), describes his mayoral career:

“In 2003, after a fiercely-contested race, Newsom was elected the youngest Mayor in San Francisco in more than a century.
“After only 36 days as mayor, Newsom gained worldwide attention when he granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This bold move set the tone for Newsom’s first term.…
In 2007, Newsom was re-elected with more than 73% of the vote.”

Same-sex marriage is an easy fix. It doesn’t cost anything, and a majority of the public, including a slim majority of Republicans, supports it.

I do too. Of course, I do. I’m a lesbian and I’m in favor of equal rights for everyone in all spheres. But it’s basically worthless to most people, including most gay people. I won’t even go into the ways in which it reinforces inequality. (I and plenty of others have gone into that at length over the years.  My point here is that the LGBQ community must not allow our fight for civil equality to be used to distract from the fight to the death, or really against death, that everyone in this country is in right now – a fight for our very survival.

Consider the moment. The latest poll shows Obama in a dead heat with GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney. 19 different polls show that a vast majority of Americans, somewhere between 62% and 80%, favor raising taxes on the wealthy to fund services and balance the budget. Obama refuses to do that. His one big legislative victory since taking office has been the health care reform bill. Who created the program that was based on? Hint: Romney’s Republican opponents have taken to referring to the Massachusetts health care plan as “Obamney Care.” So Obama needs something to separate himself from the Mormon Romney, and even just not being against gay marriage wouldn’t do it, because Romney has refused to take the “anti-gay marriage pledge” and offends "family values" voters by defending the separation of church and state.

Queer communities have been hit as hard in the recession as other communities - necessarily so, because we are part of every community. San Francisco’s cutting edge network of services for LGBT people and HIV-affected people, built through decades of community activism, agitation and organizing, has been largely decimated in the last two years. New Leaf, a 35-year-old San Francisco center serving the LGBT community with mental health, substance abuse, and HIV/AIDS services closed in October of last year. Lyon-Martin Clinic, the first lesbian- and trans-focused clinic in the country, nearly closed last year and is still on shaky ground. Just hours before the New York legislature passed the marriage equality bill, activists gathered in front of the Stonewall Inn, where the modern LGBT movement was born, to demand funding for programs for homeless LGBT youth.  Roughly 1,000 queer youth go without shelter every night in New York City, and Governor Cuomo recently cut the funding for youth shelters in half.

This is far from the first instance of minority groups winning rights as those rights, only to find their victories virtually hollow.

The standard of living for most Black South Africans has worsened considerably since apartheid was toppled. In the U.S., nearly fifty years after the Civil Rights Act was enacted, Black families with children have median incomes roughly half those of white families. Black children are three times as likely as white children to live in extreme poverty; 40% of Black children under 5 are living in poverty.

I’m not suggesting that the fight for same-sex marriage is the same as the fight for African American civil rights or the liberation of South Africa. But we should be aware of those histories, as well as many more. The unemployed youth of Egypt and Tunisia are now realizing that it’s easier to bring down a dictator than it is to break the stranglehold of neoliberal economic policies.

LGBTQ people need to keep our eyes on the real prize and not be fooled by the shiny decoy. If we don’t, the couples making their way to New York to take those marriage vows will soon be selling their wedding rings to keep each other in cat food.

10 Things I Don’t Understand About the Debt Ceiling Debate

Bay of Rage protest against
budget cuts in Oakland

1. Why the Republicans can get away with claiming that the entire debt is the fault of a president who has been in office for two years.

2. Why there are so many different polls on raising the debt ceiling, when no one cares what the people think anyway. See, for example, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20080492-503544.html , http://www.gallup.com/poll/148454/debt-ceiling-increase-remains-unpopular-americans.aspx , http://tinyurl.com/debtapocalypse.

3. Why people (including the Obama administration) are not demanding that Congress cut its own salaries to be equivalent to the average Social Security payments (without cost of living increases).

4. Why the mainstream media never seem to ask people like Boehner, Kyl and deMint why they voted for debt increases seven times under Bush, while grilling Obama about why he voted against it once.

5. What the people who are pushing for huge spending cuts, no tax increases and a balanced budget really really think is going to happen if they win.

6. Why there don’t seem to be any women economists writing about it.

7. Why if the Progressives Caucus is the biggest caucus in Congress (83 members, compared to 26 Blue Dogs and 53 Tea Party Republicans), it has the least power.

8. What ever happened to those polls showing that Americans like socialism better than capitalism?

9. Why a political ruse like the McConnell plan can work when everyone knows about it.

10. Why #debt or #budget deal are not among the top trending subjects on Twitter right now.

Best thing I heard in the last week (or maybe in the last year):

It turns out that “Gilligan’s Island” was really anti-colonialist social commentary. Sherwood Schwartz, who created the show along with “The Brady Bunch,” said so. “‘I knew that by assembling seven different people and forcing them to live together, the show would have great philosophical implications,’ he told Time magazine in 1995. ‘On a much larger scale this happens all the time. Eventually, the Israelis are going to have to learn to live with the Arabs. We have one world, and “Gilligan’s Island” was my way of saying that.’” Honest. That was in his obituary last week.

Schwartz must have been right, though, because the show only lasted three seasons and probably has the best-known theme song in history.