As we sail into the present economic mess, the one storm that can bring dramatic change is social unrest. We are beginning to see it in actions like the community organization Acorn deciding to bar the door to home evictors. That’s reminiscent for me of the the YCL, the “Young Communist League,” in the Bronx during the thirties returning evicted tenants to their homes. When the Marshals removed the tenants furniture to the street, a well disciplined YCL Flying Squad would put the furniture back in the apartment. Thousands of World War One veterans marched on Washington for their promised bonuses. Workers were joining unions by the thousands to protect their jobs. It was these actions that caused the powers that be or the “ruling class” as we called them to begin to think about how to cool the unrest. Hence the New Deal. (1)
Back then there was a powerful organized left that could give leadership and direction to the unrest, as the YCL did in the Bronx. At the same time we would agitate for a new socialist society. The presence of the Soviet Union back then also had a sobering impact on how the bourgeoisie thought of what social unrest might bring about. The Soviet Union and its “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” was the greatest disaster for the left. For in fact it never was a truly democratic socialist society. But still people confused it with what a true socialist society might look like. No matter, the ruling capitalist class still worries about social unrest because it destabilizes the capitalist system.
If the economy continues to go into the dumps, social unrest will grow. I believe that our national propensity for the right of the individual to defend their homes will take on some serious consequences. I am awaiting the day when a group of NRA folks decide to defend their homes by sitting on their porches, shot guns in hand, to defy the Sheriff from seizing it. Maybe you can sense the glint in this old geezers eye. Man would I love to organize those folks. Montana or Missouri would be my first places of choice. I can see the headlines, “People Take Guns to Defend Their Homes.”
I have a major concern that all that anger and rage against Wall Street is not being organized into meaningful objectives for change. I am not referring to Obama’s change. That mostly has to do with style, like reaching across the isle. (Yee Gods, how that went bust.) I am talking substantive change, for example a rule such as the State that is bailing out the banks gets to control them. If we were talking business wouldn’t we insist on that? We put up the money, so don’t we get something in return? I’m afraid Obama does not have the stomach for that. The least he needs to do is like the way the government bailed out the S&L banks--take them over, stabilize them, and give them back. In the present mess the Government needs to take over the failing banks in order to reorganize them and get them functioning again. And it needs to decide that some of them are not worth saving.
In my YCL days I spent a lot of time studying how capitalism works. As a result I still have some ideas why the present plan is not working. In my next blog I am going to dive into those waters and I am certain I won’t sound like the Sunday morning television pundits. (Pssst, they never had to study how the capitalist system works.)
Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Valentines Day
In the mid sixties I was working for the City of New York as Deputy Manpower Commissioner. My primary responsibility was youth employment and job training. Since these were the days of anger and rage, a major part of my job was, as John Lindsey said, was to “keep the kids from burning down the town.” To say this was an assignment full of “perfect storms” would be a gross understatement. At times my office at 50 Church Street seemed to be like the cuckoo ward at Bellevue. In order to escape the craziness I would periodically sneak out at lunch time and walk over to Trinity Church for a period of quiet thought.
Trinity Church dates back to when the Dutch ruled Manhattan. Sitting oh so quietly in the empty chapel I would find myself staring at the naked man up there on the cross and wondering, what made him this most beloved, most revered person in our history? Each time I made it to Trinity, there he was staring back at me, forcing me back to the same question. As I kept coming back, it seemed I was increasingly looking for an answer to my question, why him?
One day after a bad weekend of rioting in the Bedford Stuyvesent section of Brooklyn, I was back at Trinity. It was a rainy Monday. As I sat there for an extra long period of time, a light bulb went on! That man up there on the cross had made two phenomenal human achievements--how to love unconditionally and how to forgive. I realized then and there how difficult it was to love. To be able to truly love, we must be able to get ourselves and our needs out of the way so as to give yourself over to others. I thought, “well thats a pretty simple idea,” until I tried to put it into practice. Oh, it’s so easy to say “I love you,” but it is extremely difficult to live it. What I learned that day is that the challenge of living “unconditional love” is one tough, if not impossible, assignment. Think about it. No, better yet, try practicing it.
To the second lesson learned, forgiveness. In a way it is the proof for the first lesson. For if we are able to love unconditionally then forgiveness follows. It is in the loving that we can find the ability to forgive. Unconditional love by definition suggests that we are able to look past the sins of human beings (including ourselves) and find their humanness. What a powerful message that is. Just try to imagine what the world would look like if we could just begin to practice that philosophy. If this was easy to achieve Jesus would not have become the revered icon of Christianity. Ask yourself, is there someone I should love and someone else to forgive? Have a happy Valentines Day.
PS: Next week I promise to be back to our present mess in which there is no love and less forgiveness.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Trinity Church dates back to when the Dutch ruled Manhattan. Sitting oh so quietly in the empty chapel I would find myself staring at the naked man up there on the cross and wondering, what made him this most beloved, most revered person in our history? Each time I made it to Trinity, there he was staring back at me, forcing me back to the same question. As I kept coming back, it seemed I was increasingly looking for an answer to my question, why him?
One day after a bad weekend of rioting in the Bedford Stuyvesent section of Brooklyn, I was back at Trinity. It was a rainy Monday. As I sat there for an extra long period of time, a light bulb went on! That man up there on the cross had made two phenomenal human achievements--how to love unconditionally and how to forgive. I realized then and there how difficult it was to love. To be able to truly love, we must be able to get ourselves and our needs out of the way so as to give yourself over to others. I thought, “well thats a pretty simple idea,” until I tried to put it into practice. Oh, it’s so easy to say “I love you,” but it is extremely difficult to live it. What I learned that day is that the challenge of living “unconditional love” is one tough, if not impossible, assignment. Think about it. No, better yet, try practicing it.
To the second lesson learned, forgiveness. In a way it is the proof for the first lesson. For if we are able to love unconditionally then forgiveness follows. It is in the loving that we can find the ability to forgive. Unconditional love by definition suggests that we are able to look past the sins of human beings (including ourselves) and find their humanness. What a powerful message that is. Just try to imagine what the world would look like if we could just begin to practice that philosophy. If this was easy to achieve Jesus would not have become the revered icon of Christianity. Ask yourself, is there someone I should love and someone else to forgive? Have a happy Valentines Day.
PS: Next week I promise to be back to our present mess in which there is no love and less forgiveness.
Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Reliving the Depression
These days I am periodically asked to compare this economic bust with the 1930s. In the thirties I was a child. What happened then was filtered through the vision of childhood. I was lucky because we didn’t starve or weren’t made homeless. That was primarily because we were part of an extended family of German socialists. For a 12 year old, people banding together to help and support each other had a fun aspect to it. Everybody making due with less seemed like a fun game. What did scare the day lights out of me was the people living in cardboard shacks in the City Parks. Papa assured us this would never happen to us. That was the scary part of that time that I thought by now I would have forgotten.
As the present crisis unfolded I did not feel particularly emotional about the losses that many average souls were going through. Now as I experience the present crisis, both through media as well as hearing first hand stories of what is happening to people, I find myself becoming increasingly emotionally troubled. People are losing their jobs, losing health insurance and suicides are increasing. I want to go and tell every single person who feels like a failure because they got laid off, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! IT’S THE SYSTEM THAT’S ROTTEN, NOT YOU!!!
In the radical world of lefties I grew up in, not one single person that I ever heard of considered suicide. On the contrary, it just made all those folks more determined to change the society. They really understood the Reinhold Niebour prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Man, they sure knew the difference,
We participated in almost daily marches and protests. People organized food banks and regular trips to farmers to purchase food wholesale for the benefit of all the participants. People who owned cars would volunteer to go to the Bronx wholesale market to buy potatoes, beans and beets by the sackful. The despair of suicide was never in the air as these people were determined not to fall victim to the “capitalist machine.”
We knew that we were not the problem, It was the capitalist system that needed to change. That change became known as “The New Deal.” In many parts of the world, present day radicals are taking to the streets to create some social unrest that well surely begin to scare the ruling class into action. Yes, I am still using the phrase “ruling class,” because that’s what it is. Americans have been duped into believing that any talk of “class” will create some kind of warfare. Well what exactly do we think is happening right now? Unfortunately we don’t have the labor movement or the radical organizations of the thirties to harness the rage people are feeling about the bonuses, the private planes, the office decorations into an organized protest movement.
I am still hopeful that the Obama movement will use that great internet network to get people out and raise some hell in the streets so the folks in Washington will get the message that things really do have to change. I am not talking about from Republicans to Democrats. I am talking about a redistribution of wealth that Sarah Palin accused Obama of proposing. Now what we need is to see him begin leading the fight to do it. That means he needs to get all those great people who elected him busy in actively working for change rather than just mouthing it. And finally, please tell anyone you know who is feeling desperate about what is happening to them, “It is not your fault. It’s the system that is letting you down. That is where to focus your rage, not on yourself.”
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.
As the present crisis unfolded I did not feel particularly emotional about the losses that many average souls were going through. Now as I experience the present crisis, both through media as well as hearing first hand stories of what is happening to people, I find myself becoming increasingly emotionally troubled. People are losing their jobs, losing health insurance and suicides are increasing. I want to go and tell every single person who feels like a failure because they got laid off, IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! IT’S THE SYSTEM THAT’S ROTTEN, NOT YOU!!!
In the radical world of lefties I grew up in, not one single person that I ever heard of considered suicide. On the contrary, it just made all those folks more determined to change the society. They really understood the Reinhold Niebour prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Man, they sure knew the difference,
We participated in almost daily marches and protests. People organized food banks and regular trips to farmers to purchase food wholesale for the benefit of all the participants. People who owned cars would volunteer to go to the Bronx wholesale market to buy potatoes, beans and beets by the sackful. The despair of suicide was never in the air as these people were determined not to fall victim to the “capitalist machine.”
We knew that we were not the problem, It was the capitalist system that needed to change. That change became known as “The New Deal.” In many parts of the world, present day radicals are taking to the streets to create some social unrest that well surely begin to scare the ruling class into action. Yes, I am still using the phrase “ruling class,” because that’s what it is. Americans have been duped into believing that any talk of “class” will create some kind of warfare. Well what exactly do we think is happening right now? Unfortunately we don’t have the labor movement or the radical organizations of the thirties to harness the rage people are feeling about the bonuses, the private planes, the office decorations into an organized protest movement.
I am still hopeful that the Obama movement will use that great internet network to get people out and raise some hell in the streets so the folks in Washington will get the message that things really do have to change. I am not talking about from Republicans to Democrats. I am talking about a redistribution of wealth that Sarah Palin accused Obama of proposing. Now what we need is to see him begin leading the fight to do it. That means he needs to get all those great people who elected him busy in actively working for change rather than just mouthing it. And finally, please tell anyone you know who is feeling desperate about what is happening to them, “It is not your fault. It’s the system that is letting you down. That is where to focus your rage, not on yourself.”
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.
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