Grace Notes (commentaries written for "RADIO with a VIEW")

by Grace Ross
Social welfare advocate, activist, and former candidate for MA governor

We grieve the lives taken at Virginia Tech.  We grieve the soldiers’ lives sacrificed in the occupation of Iraq.  We grieve the lives lost in the killings in our communities.

The well of grief is deep – the examples too numerous to name.   But if we are honest with ourselves, we are angry too.  And we are scared.

Bush tries to act “national healer” – and yet, for so many of us, his words ring hollow; he tells us there is no understanding why these horrific things happen.

Oh really?   When our air waves are clogged with fear-mongering - which his administration has played an ever-growing and calculated role in.  We are taught to fear our neighbors, to fear those with a different culture, a different economic status, in fact, a different gender.  The very supposedly Christian leaders too often build their political career on the most anti-Christian of tenets – hate, and then fear, thy neighbor.

When 9/11 happened there was no national, moral call for healing.  Instead the cry of the first public rally in the damaged streets of New York City was “our grief is not an excuse for war”.  The federal government started beating the war drum before bodies were done being dragged from the wreckage.  And too many of us in grief and shock, sat in front of TV screens being re-programmed by the visual of the planes crashing again and again into the buildings with “Attack on America” coded over them.  And rather than a public search for grounding in our deepest held, best values and a spiritual search for genuine plumbing of causes, we have been the target of repeated, amorphous, color coded re-traumatization.

It is not enough to grieve although we must learn to start there and reclaim our right to grieve in public ways for public tragedies, we must allow our anger to bring us together in committed action on root causes, not rip us apart in mutual, growing distrust (as too many of our elected leaders either foster or breed out of negligence).

The tragic loss of US lives in Iraq and Afghanistan is put in a new context when added to the over 30K lives lost in violence inside the US in the same time period-- lost at the hands of the same industry that manufacturers guns for our military.

I have friends who use guns to hunt and only hunt for food.  The other practical argument for a gun is self-protection.  I won’t engage in constitutional interpretations because I don’t believe that most gun owners have them primarily as a philosophical issue.

While I appreciate the fear that leads people to want a gun to protect themselves, guns are not a practical protection.  Plenty of studies show they don’t work – the average gun owner is not an accurate enough shooter in complicated, real-life settings.  And the owner’s gun often actually gets used against them in real attack situations. 

For hunters, the English system worked well until guns began to slip too easily into the country.  Gun owners belonged to gun clubs (yes, you registered on a list as proposed by some of the best US gun legislation) and the club kept your gun unless you specifically signed it out to hunt – and then it was returned.  The system worked so well that until recently English police only carried night sticks not guns.

We have to ask who creates the fear?  And who markets the solutions?   And who profits from the solutions we are presently offered in every film, in every game, in the market place?  What industries create not only the wars abroad but the battlefields here at home?

At a deeper level we must ask ourselves, if all wars are waged in the imagination – who has conquered our imagination?  As individuals, as groups, as whole communities that bear witness to an illegal war, that bear witness to the sounds of battering in an apartment nearby, that bear witness to shootings in our streets – when will we start to write a new story, to fill our imaginations with a new imagery, to physically practice new techniques – not of beating up the bullies or using domination to force them to change – but of proactive, nonviolent, respectful yet uncompromising intervention, actions that conger by their very nature a new, non-oppressive culture slowly into reality.

Safety: Deval Patrick went to Boston recently, and promised more police for the streets, supposedly, to improve safety.

President Bush tells us, having used the vast resources of the government to increase our fear of terrorism , that he is increasing our safety through continued occupation of Iraq.  He asked the now Democratically-led Congress to give him a blank check to attack Iran.  Then he criticizes speaker Pelosi for speaking with Syrian leaders because that's not part of his plan of safety for us the U.S. people.

Some Worcester activists recently pointed out that pension and 401(k) plans are supposed to provide for safety in our old age. But these plans have no guarantee. Pension plans have become yet another source of financial capital for unscrupulous corporate owners to raid.  401(k) plans are uninsured unlike money deposited in our bank.

Mortgage foreclosures rain down on us because a whole new industry was allowed to grow up –under the guise of providing us the safety of owning our own home – through loopholes in the banking regulations put in place after the Great depression that actually protect us and our financial assets.

We become pawns in what is a game to players in financial profiteering.  Our lives and our children's lives become insignificant factors in an oil grab by political and corporate leaders who feel no commitment to either the people who elect them or the consumers they assume will forever purchase their products. And huge corporate profiteers promise one thing and take away the economic survival of both retirees and those workers with the least rights in our society who end up working under sweatshop conditions.

In fact we live in a society full of the fair tales of safety – is it because we have so little of it that we crave it so much?

Perhaps as a child of incest on the one hand but who also experienced true unconditional love, I have a hard won understanding that being told you are safe can easily mean the situation in which you are in the most danger.  And when you are promised nothing at all but simply allowed to experience safety – that’s the real thing!

We must wake up, Sleep Beauties!  Not awaiting Prince Charming’s actually nefarious kiss – but dig beyond the rheotoric for real solutions.  It is youth outreach workers and concomitant youth jobs and programs which will make our cities safer.  We must stop killing people across the world to protect dead end oil addiction (just because Bush said “addiction” – like false promises of safety – does not mean he plans to do anything about it!).  Polls of Iraqis show again how dangerous our government’s policies are felt by the rest of the world. 

And the increasing addiction to profits means an ever spiraling increase in profit margins, in the incomes and assets of the richest while our legal protections (whether to retirement savings or mortgages) are cleverly circumvented.  We have allowed ourselves to become lulled into isolation and individual solutions to social problems – so long as we are divided into individual solutions (such as private schools, private IRA’s, etc.) we cannot protect others who get picked off even though we are next, nor can we garner the forces necessary to push back.

As the Civil Rights movement learned, not only is safety only won collectively but that we must use economic as well as moral power to create change.  When will everyone stop pouring money into private, mostly segregated school coffers and throw our full weight behind our public schools?  When will we commit to drinking and therefore having to clean up our public water supplies?  Will you pull your investments, however small, out of the stock exchange and invest locally?  Where are and were the lawsuits against mortgage companies making profits in ways we had protected ourselves against banks making profits?  Will you stop paying your taxes to fund perpetual war?  And when you look in the faces of our children – will your to do list include a step by step weaning of us from lives dependant on oil?

It helps to come name it helps to come to put a name on these other forms of power. Psychological power some people saw me display as the calm center in the midst of the madness of that gubernatorial debates. The interpersonal power that comes from loving connection to vast thousands perhaps of people. The spiritual power of withstanding often horrendous conditions. The Justice power of voicing the truth when you have no social status. All of these forms of power are not competitive - the more you have of one , the more I can have of the same one , and together we build the greater force.

As we face a potentially devastating future of the abuse and using up of not only our natural environment, but the waste of so much human potential through the abuse and using up of economic resources, we must cut a new path. That believes in, nutures, and values in each other forms of power that are cooperative that strengthen all of us. When we look to a new energy solutions let them be our solutions the rest in a solar panel on every rooftop roads paved with light colored asphalt that doesn't create heat high heat islands, tax breaks where they are given are given to local business owners, to new enterprises that create the most new jobs. Where programs focus on bringing money to rebuild our communities - best supplied by raising the standard of those with the least. In this future while we will struggle with the impacts of global warming created by many previous generations, our children's generation might face a New World in partnership in collaboration drawing on wide and splendorous diversity, and a new sense of community and trust built on a real commitment to each other to the natural environment and to a commitment unto the well-being of the seventh generation as our native sisters and brothers have been trying to tell us for all long time.

The time has come to use alternative energy for peace.

Many peace activists focused their hopes on the supplemental budget vote in congress.  Our own Congressman McGovern spent long hours lobbying colleagues to shut off the money for Bush to continue sending troops.  Local peace organizers insisted on a Congressional focus for the March 17-24^th protests.

Then MoveOn broke ranks and following the logic promoted by Congressional Democrats on what was “politically possible” started supporting a yes vote on the supplemental budget since it had a September 2008 time limit.  These same democrats - swept into power largely on anti-occupation sentiment – would not even consider an amendment requiring steps towards immediate withdrawal.  The same Democrats who apparently did not even write the September limit language so that it is truly binding  - possible loopholes may render it advisory.

Cindy Sheehan spoke the night after that bad supplemental vote, right here in Boston; spoke of the moral reprehensibility of the vote and the need for us to cut off the funding if they won’t, the need for each of us to start to tax resist now.  After all, something important once started right here with the demand of “no taxation without representation”.  We’re clearly not being represented; it may be time to start that again.

Actions like tax resistance have to come out of a different mindset.  Who defines our reality?  The elected leaders who live mostly within four marble walls, day in and day out focused on the perceptions of each other?  Their political reality is not ours – not the reality of death in Iraq and here, not the reality of failing schools, healthcare, housing, jobs and young people killing each other in the street.

Do we let major media outlets define our reality?  Or just what large corporations and monied interests tell us?  They aren’t really discussing critical underlying causes – not just peak oil, but peak coal (the world’s primary energy source still) nor what local water experts refer to as peak water, perhaps already the reality here in Massachusetts.

We cannot avoid war if those we have left in charge of our energy production and environmental future are committed to competing for and securing ever scarcer resources at any cost.  Competition is supposedly the logic of our entire society – capitalism and the culture and domination it fosters.  That we are individuals and opposition is how we get what we want and need.  Competition is the luxury of a surplus society – where appetites are encouraged to be infinite, conflictual and inefficient. 

We must begin to live our lives in the true reality – where resources are scarce and our true interdependence (on each other, on nature) is revealed in every area of our lives.  Even US’s competitive capitalist leaders in short term crises where they could not ignore scarcity - such as when we entered world war II - did an about face and demanded cooperation from us all.  It is the only option in a world of limited resources.

How will I recognize a peace activist now?  By their shifting their personal resources to alternative energies and conservation.  By their reclaiming and helping others reclaim our power – through recognizing and acting on the many ways we contribute and our state government contributes to war; they may stop paying taxes, insist that at least Massachusetts’ national guard be brought home, return to direct action that is not simply symbolic, and engage in outreach to everyone – because in an interconnected world no one is really a stranger.  But what will be most noticeable is that our primary means of creating change will assume, in fact insist on, the means of cooperation not individualism and competition – we will seek to listen not lecture, engage difference not cocoon ourselves in sameness, seek balance not privilege, only cooperate with the powers-that-be by conscious choice and be prepared to be changed by the truths of others as much as expecting them to be changed by our truth.  In these ways we will midwife a new reality, a new society.

Imagine living in a community where you never see boarded up houses, no one puts their child to bed hungry.  A community where healthy food is assumed as is everyone having access not just to health care when they are ill but to a healthy life – less stress and enough time for self, family and community.  Work is done that promotes the well-being of all, necessary tasks are shared and the economic, creative and intellectual life thrives.

This is a dream so many of us share and in the third highest income state in the richest country in the world we certainly should not accept the assumption that we cannot get there.  I have always loved the quote from the children’s book, the Phantom Tollbooth that “impossible simply means it has not been done yet!” 

A strong local economy should be the context in which we all grow up, a birth right we should all strive for.  And certainly Massachusetts has the resources to be such a Common Wealth.

However, we cannot get there from here if we keep going the way we are now.  While Gov. Patrick and the legislature struggle with the state budget deficit, there are deeper problems afoot.

You may remember from the campaign that I talked about the bottom 2/3s of us being in a recession.

I am not going to address the moral damage of stepping over homeless people in the street, or worse justifying to our children why they are left to live this way.  The moral reasons for a just budget have been argued before.  Let me give you the economic reasons.

Over the last two decades we have gone from corporations paying 16% of the state budget to less than 4%. And because corporate taxbreaks and citing deals apply only to corporations, small businesses fail more in competition with them.  Folks at the top pay less than half as much per dollar in taxes as the w 60%, that is most of us.  Sales taxes cost the lowest income the most per dollar.  Property taxes are the second most regressive, now costing the bottom 60% of us the same or more than income taxes.  And when the budget does not balance it is mostly our services that are cut.

Besides being clearly unfair, this is a recipe for an increasingly failing state government.  Why?  Because it is the lowest income folks who spend all their money and spend it locally.  Working class and middle class folks spend almost all their money and when policies favor thriving local economies they spend most of it locally.  And small businesses depend more than large corporations on those local expenditures – and who has traditionally provided most new jobs, and provided them locally?  Small businesses 

It is not really because of citing deals that corporations decide where to move – such deals make up .8% of their income.  And it is our incredibly profit driven market that ensures that that these days the richest one hundredth of one percent is the only segment rapidly accruing more wealth.

So as the median income continues to drop in Massachusetts and those individuals paying the tax burden are in a continuing depression and small businesses are more likely to fail, how do we change this?

Our state budget must prioritize bolstering the lowest income, and then working and middle class individuals.  It must focus on nurturing local businesses and local economies – it will help our environment, our neighborhood and our quality of life.  AND it is the only thing that ensures our economy won’t collapse and that even corporations will have any consumers.

Our state leaders must prioritize the small amounts it will cost to bring in more federal dollars for such programs as food stamps; they must increase the minimum wage, increase affordable housing, prioritize homeless prevention, put money into small business technical assistance.  And yes, close corporate tax loop holes not only for the money but to stop pressuring small businesses out of business.  And stop increasing local and regressive taxes and instead start creating the political will for property tax relief for most of us while increasing income taxes which is the only way the folks at the top have to pay closer to their fair share!

Whether you share my vision of a healthy local community or not, you cannot want the structural collapse of our state budget!

What will we be haunted by?

That picture of the young child, tears streaming down her face, clearly terrified – the child of an immigrant in the midst of the New Bedford raid.

Another suicide, a hanging, in one of our prisons – in solitary, which the inmates call the “pit”, of a prisoner with mental health issues – inside reports say was “tortured” by the guards.

Another circle of a wonderfully diverse group unfortunately gathered again to vigil for a young woman, 23 years old, strangled to death three blocks from my home in Worcester.

Or something I did not witness, but my imagination vividly recreates: the body of a young man, 18 years old – having finally turned his life around, shot six times.  My campaign manager, said they heard the shots, and rushing to the window watched for interminable minutes while he bled to death.  Hundreds of middle school students just out of school witnessing.  While the boy’s family, a neighbor rushed to hold him, offer CPR; a TV camera arrived before the police from the police station only two blocks away.

I have cried at all these things.

I had a chilling moment too at the cheapest supermarket near me – in Leominster.  I stood in front of the lettuce – shocked at the price especially given the literally brown, dried out outside leaves.  I slowly focused on the sign that explained: most of the California crop had been ruined by weather with an apology for the high prices and low quality of the produce.

And I really was chilled – This crop loss is part of global warming.  What will happen the food in the markets is comparatively inedible? How soon will it reach a large scale?  As we make less and less money to afford food, how will we react? Will there be fights at the supermarkets?  Or will we be ready?

The Patrick administration was forewarned by ICE of the New Bedford raid.  We don’t know what details they had but they were told to have DSS ready for the children.  Yet they were totally unprepared.  Tuesday night I listened to the tear-filled voice of the breast-feeding mother of a 6 month old who was held overnight unable to get ICE to understand/react while her child was hospitalized for dehydration.

Justice required Patrick to at least alert the immigrant advocates.  It was not the Patrick administration, but immigration lawyers that filed for an injunction on the flights of the immigrant workers to Texas.  And as more privileged citizens we have not yet networked ourselves to respond rapidly enough should they ever try to do this again.

Experienced grassroots advocates know how to dramatically reduce the youth shootings.  But we have not connected with them enough yet to force the state to shift funds to youth worker programs, for instance.  We have reports now 4 years old on how to reform our prisons.

But in the shooting story, I am most struck by how unprepared police and emergency services are.  I am reminded of the traumatic impact on all my friends who sat glued to the TV watching the planes crash over and over again into the towers in NY.

These are all policies coming home to roost – none of us will escape them.  So we must act but we cannot help ourselves act, or the police to act more appropriately – if we do not recognize in advance, that we are all being traumatized – even those in more privileged neighborhoods approach war zone trauma by seeing it on TV over and over and feeling helpless.  That is the combination: fear, grief, helplessness.

Don’t mesmerize yourself or let your children mesmerize themselves with violence.  We must stop ourselves from shutting down – talk about the traumas you witness, don’t isolate, open your heart however painful, cry & let yourself feel the fear and be held. Remember your power by doing what you can now.  And create plans of action.  Engage your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers in brainstorming sessions – what would you do?  When food gets scarce at the market?  When violence happens on your doorstep?  Stay connected, feel & be prepared so you don’t feel helpless. 

 The future remains ours to mold….

The Jewish people always lived conditionally in Germany.  When the economy went bad before and decent jobs scarce, anti-Jewish sentiment reappeared as would periodic violence.  Hitler chose to use that sentiment, pour oil on the smoldering sparks because he needed a scapegoat (in fact, many scapegoats, he used all anti-group sentiments) to divide the people and consolidate his power.  This is why Nazi Germany serves as a warning.  If we desire a civilized society, we cannot allow the economy for regular people to get bad, we cannot allow those in power to divide us.  Targeting of vulnerable groups should alarm all of us regardless of politics.

During my campaign, many different people demanded “so what are you going to do about these immigrants?” My response? “Tell me, when do we ever talk about immigrants?  Immigration policy”  And they’d say “Huh?”  “Don’t we only talk about immigration when there are not enough, decent paying jobs?”  And they would consider and agree.  I‘d ask if they thought relatively recent immigrants who maybe clean toilets at the top of office buildings at midnight and were too scared to stand up for their rights as workers for fear of being deported, were likely to have made the policies that meant fewer decent paying jobs over the last twenty years?   Or whether it was more likely to be the rich business interests (many of whom made money off those low-paid workers) were why we do not have enough decent paying jobs?  And I told folks I wanted to focus on increasing income and jobs, what about them?.

In the US immigrants have always lived conditionally.  Since the 1996 so called immigration reform, I have been haunted by fleeting images.  Of immigrants being forceably rounded up, terrorized, families destroyed, held in detention camps and then…, what?.  I suggested to local peace activists and key immigration activists,  perhaps we need meetings with anti-war and anti-patriot act activists (who tend to be US citizens) we need to plan and train for the day when they scoop up our neighbors who happen to be immigrants without legal papers at the time.

Tuesday, those haunting images came home to Massachusetts.  In recent years, periodic small INS raids have also made me sick – knowing immigrant as I do – hard working, tax payers in our communities – often raising children on not enough money, church volunteers, community advocates – and still unable to afford to get a green card (costs spiral for the very people least able to get decent paying jobs!).  While Ellis Island was brutal for many – you did not already have to have a job, you did not have to have a relative or sponsor making enough money to guarantee supporting your entire family for five years.  Even then, the rules were harsher if you came from a less white part of the world.

Tuesday, our federal government rounded up almost all very low-income mothers working in the very sweat shop conditions immigrants are most vulnerable to - almost 350 of them, leaving hundreds of children behind – many tried to flee through the streets.  Already most been flown from Ft. Devens to Texas Detention Camps (yeah, euphemistically called “centers”).  The business owners who helped provide illegal papers for these workers they wanted to exploit?  They got arrested too.  Was it just for show?  Cause they were out hours later and in two days, their business reopened.

This is not the first wholesale raid.  But in Massachusetts, we stood up on the right side more than any other state so far.  We have still done too little.  We cannot wait for a real Kristalnacht – color of skin and accent come to be targeted, like a yellow star or a pink triangle.  We must get to know all our neighbors who also labor to survive.  We must ensure they share the same workers’ rights.  If no one is desperate for work and without rights as workers, then there are no scabs for unscrupulous employers to hire.

This is our wake up call.  We must get past our prejudices and claim all of our people.  We must not let ourselves be divided and distracted from fighting for the healthy economy we all need.  For now, what will you do if they disappear your neighbors?  Will you know them to know that they have disappeared?  Will you be ready and willing to intervene?  Opportunities to intervene in prejudice happen every day.  Some day soon an opportunity to physically block the destruction of a family may confront you as well.  Will we act this time?

Silence...                                                          

Enforced silence...                                                          

Silenced when incested by a parent...

Silenced when raped...                                                                

Silenced when putting a child to bed hungry because there is no money...

Silenced when putting a child to sleep when there is no bed.

As we enter women’s history month, I am reminded of the enforced and re-enforced silencing.  What are we waiting for?  The figures can get old; we lose our ability to hear them afresh and react.  Our hearts become silenced.

But we have to listen, because the silence and ensuing inaction is killing us.  One in four women are battered – and since welfare reform fewer are leaving and more are getting more severely injured.  Because if you are a battered mother, welfare was often the only way to get money to stay away.  Recent studies show how battering is handed on – Is this the legacy we want our public policies to pass onto the next generation?

During the campaign, Kerry Healey used the stereotype of stranger rape – but what about the thousands of domestic crimes?  Our culture authorizes them, our beliefs re-enforce women’s silence and we must reverse our inaction and change our understanding and our policies.

How many of us fear walking down the street at night?  Curtail our outside activities but won’t devote the time to a self-defense class?  Our prisons become self-imposed.

Instead we go home; we tell ourselves not to speak up when our partners treat us as stupid, or physically or financially restrain us (if they are men, they make millions more than us over a life time of $1.00 to our 73¢ per hour).  If we fear their attack – financial, verbal or physical – we stop asking, stop letting ourselves stand up, and eventually learn not to want what we cannot expect.

A different way is possible, and we must become it – for ourselves and for our daughters and our sons – we must re-learn and live our birthright.

I have been blessed with strong support from other women and men who insisted I stand as a real equal.  Many women have come to me: saying they experienced something fundamentally different in my leadership – they seem to carry some image from the debates – of my relative calm, my certainty, centeredness – that the floor I stood on was fundamentally mine.

We must remember that wherever we are, we are at home – we have as much right to that piece of earth as any other human being.

But more importantly we cannot get there alone.  This enforced silence - not the healthy kind which we choose to retreat to for spiritual renewal - is a social norm and we must create our own circles to reverse that norm.

It is not enough to elect leaders – we must learn as well not to be silent in the face of their real actions – regardless of what they have promised or whether we liked them.

Governor Patrick has proposed a cap on welfare, meaning actual denials or service cuts to women (overwhelmingly survivors of battering) who are now trying to raise their children at about 40% below the federal poverty level.

No matter your gender, honor this women’s history month by being loud and by supporting every woman in your life (yeah, that includes yourself) to take bold leadership.  We need the money brought home, we need equal pay, equal benefits, an end to violence in our homes and confidence to walk our streets.  But mostly  we need to not be silenced about our right to govern ourselves and insist that those elected to represent us – actually represent us!

03.04.07

Another black history month is coming to an end - always a wonderful and challenging time for me.

Without the struggle against racism I would not be a worker for change.  My family was blessed with deep friendships with African Americans and, as liberals, taught me that black folks were often wrongly denied equal treatment.  As a teenager, one day I happened across the most racially progressive and integrated clique in my high school; they were treating a clearly racist joke as harmless; that shocked me into understanding how thoroughly racism is accepted in our society.

Now, it has never seemed helpful to me to spend time with guilt.  Guilt drags us to a stand still; passionate love; a willingness to listen, learn and honor difference; a commitment to continue to unlearn the millions of unconscious assumptions and behaviors of whiteness – that has been and continues to be my journey.  My only safety net is a practice of openness, integrity, action.  No special perks for each anti- racism learning or action.  But the wonder of love that sometimes brings me closer to my whole human family is the only and best reward.

This has been an especially odd and awe-inspiring month for me – having done my best to reflect all of our amazing, diverse state during my run, I was asked to speak 4 times for black history month.  This month is about black history; it is also about the mostly unspoken role of white history – lots of very bad and some very good.

One amazing speaking event brought me to Bay State Correctional Facility.  I have spoken out about and now filed legislation to change the criminal justice (or shall we say injustice) system because it is too central to lower income and communities of color.  Because of wonderful organizing for CORI reform that will soon win.  And because it exemplifies tax dollar waste.

Like most tax-wasting systems it’s built on devaluing the dignity, and eventually lives, of some constituency.  Because those lives were deemed by the larger society to be worth less, our investment in prevention and early intervention in their lives is morally and financially stripped.  We are left with a life-crushing, end game investment – that also costs all tax payers the most.

When I ran, I repeated my ongoing commitment that there be no proverbial bodies left floating in the water (like New Orleans after Katrina).

At the prison, I was honored to answer questions and tell stories to over 100 inmates.  I passed back to them some life-changing gifts from my African American mentors.  We must have a new commitment to the Beloved community, creating a Beloved Commonwealth.  Even with CORI reform, many of these prisoners when released will face the lack of jobs and housing we all face, the stigma and oppression from so many toward ex-cons as well as simply being mostly men of color.  One of them asked what positive choices they would face coming out of prison? 

I shared with them what sustained me through the campaign (as a woman, the one without money, the first out candidate): to the extent we can, we must surround ourselves with those who will always mirror back to us our inherent value.  Still, many times it will be us (or us and spirit, if you believe in the spirit) alone against that oppression.

We must remember that wherever we are, we are at home: to always give ourselves respect because then no one can take it away.  And to give others respect and expect respect back from them.  This often creates magic.

The most critical thing I have learned about racism, however, is that it is not just a theory or a systemic understanding of a fundamental social wrong.  And although it is somewhat about individual interactions.  It is mostly about unjust policies and large scale actions which require our commitment to policy, behavioral and cultural change – a daily and a life long task that is more rewarding than almost anything else I engage in in my life.

02.25.07

The other night, I was sitting with a number of union activists.  And they were talking about how we have mostly given up asking for not only what we believe is just but even expecting what we need.  One of these labor folks is from a union that is ideally positioned to ask a great deal of the new Governor; they could have asked for enough workers so everyone eligible for food stamps in Massachusetts could get serviced, they didn’t.

Even with the initial burst of hope and optimism from the election, I was struck at the Executive Office of Health and Human Services hearing this week, how almost all the human service advocates either asked for slight increases, reinstatement of cuts, or heart-breakingly begged not to have their programs cut yet again – in the upcoming Governor’s budget.  This coming off of 15 years of Republican rule, with devastating cuts and level funding the norm.  These voices were hauntingly familiar and sad.

We can get nothing if we have already given up.  No matter how bleak the budget projections, we need to act as if we did indeed elect a new administration from a different party.  We also still live in the third highest income state in the richest country in the world.

UNICEF also reported the US is second from the bottom among industrialized nations in our treatment of youth: poverty, violence, lack of healthcare and hope.  This received almost no US media attention although it was all over the British media – Britain placed last.

We MUST be outraged.   With the divide between the wealthy and the rest of us continuing to widen, the situation of low-income folks is simply the future situation of the majority of us.  Unless we act!  Act now…

We cannot accept rhetoric that there is not enough money in the state budget.  Throughout the campaign season I harped on the need for everyone at all income levels to pay their fair share – this is fundamental to turning our economy around.

Finally after suggesting various regressive fees and taxes, Governor Patrick yesterday may have started to listen.  Romney, actually, had proposed a list of corporate tax loopholes to close and Patrick says he may propose  some of those.

Now it’s your turn.  Go the state’s website and put the Governor’s phone number in your address book or cell phone and his email address in your buddy list.  Then make your first call or email this week.  Plan to make him your constant friend like right wing, rich folks do all the time.

Now get a pen out:

Your call this week is to tell him to stop balancing the budget the way Romney bragged he had in this week’s Presidential announcement – tell him to stop balancing it on the back of working class and moderate income folks.  Tell him to stop balancing it by windfalls to the wealthy and cutbacks on the rest of us.

Here’s his to do list (write this down)– close ALL identified corporate tax loopholes, put in combined reporting, stop spending millions on siting deals for large corporations.  Put in property tax relief for everyone who needs it (like I got him to promise during the debates); then tie that to an income tax increase so the state gets more revenue from those who can afford it while protecting the rest of us. 

Institute longer term solutions that will save money over time – like significantly increasing housing vouchers and protecting existing affordable housing so outrageous shelter costs drop over time.  Increase minimum wage which also brings in more revenue and helps local businesses.  Stop practices that lower wages and hurt state revenue, like stopping companies from paying people as independent contractors when they are really employees thereby docking wages and denying benefits.

Go after available federal monies whether to reimburse state programs or get money directly to Massachusetts residents.  Survival money that comes to the state’s residents gets spent by those people immediately – helping all of us survive and boosting our local economies.

You can even call or email today – they take messages on Sunday.  Yeah, I know you are laughing, saying, yeah, sure.  But you aren’t laughing each month when you have to figure out paying your bills.  This is one small behavior change to insure your future and the future of all of us.  Go get that phone number and email now.  Use them.  Often.

You can use a form on the state’s website to make policy suggestions. The web address is mass dot gov. Governor Deval Patrick's and Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray's address at the statehouse is:

Office of the Governor OR
Office of the Lt. Governor
Statehouse Room 360
Boston, MA 02133
Phone: (617) 725-4005

The phone numbers are
(888) 870-7770 (instate use only)
FAX:  (617) 727-9725
TTY:  (617) 727-3666

02.18.07

So this week a huge international report came out on global warming.  Yes we’re glad President Bush finally had to say “global warming.”  Yes, while it weakened the report they got the US to sign off on it.  However, the report itself is devastating.  Even for those of us paying attention to global warming, it is very harsh to see some of our fears in black and white.

It says that for the next one or two hundred years, our environment will be significantly changed, warmer.  A friend asked me, does that mean we’ve reached the tipping point – that it’s essentially too late?  Given what the report’s authors say and my understanding of “tipping point”, the answer is no.  A change that lasts one or two hundred years may seem like eternity to us – but the tipping point is actually the point of no return.  If we act now, stop contributing to global warming and then work to reverse it (which the Earth also already does somewhat naturally), this may be a relatively short period in the long life of a planet.

The tipping point is the point from which our planet will never recover, where the heating itself destroys the planet’s own capacity to reverse the effect.  Will the heating actually bring on a new ice age?  The report is not willing to conjecture.  Personally, I don’t think we should sit still to find out!

Although global warming seems sudden – only the last few decades – we got here over a lot longer period than that – we began significantly impacting carbon levels since the industrial revolution.  We human beings did this, we can undo it.

Too much, we have been waiting for our governments to act.  We have been waiting for the president to sign Kyoto, the international treaty to address global warming.  But just because Bush has mentioned global warming – remember this is the administration that passed  the “no-child-left-behind” law – which did the opposite: leaving so many more of our children behind except from having them tracked down through their school information by military recruiters.  Or the so-called “Clean Skies” act that unravels important parts of our clean air initiatives. 

Just because they give lip service – remember New Orleans and Katrina, or the lives in Iraq, or even supposed welfare reform which was advertised as saving taxes but actually transferred welfare from desperate families to corporations for hiring ex-welfare recipients.  They don’t care about our survival, the survival of most of us regular people.

One thing is critical.  We cannot dodge this global warming assessment however depressing.  As human beings, if we get devastating news and feel powerless, we turn quickly to denial.

It is not too late.  We must act for ourselves, our planet, the seventh generation and our own mental health. 

Find a favorite tree, flower this spring or child you see in your everyday life – and the next time you see them, let them from that moment forward, remind you to act!  If you have some money, put one task each time on your to do list – buy energy saving light bulbs.  Stop heating and cooling the great outdoors; buy a set back thermostat – it’s shocking how much you save not heating your house when you’re out.  Call your utility company and order an energy audit.  Weatherize (yeah, it’s worth the time and money to plastic windows, etc.)  Recycle.  Plant some trees.  Oh, and buy a water filter instead of spring water bottles which hurt us in many ways.  Then sign up for a website (Locate resources through our website, Massblueprint.org), join a local group or congregation.  Start sending emails, calling legislators.  Its our planet, our future. 

Remember that child, that tree, that flower.  Take every moment to cherish them and their future.

02.11.07

I hope I am not the only one asking whether are we going to go through another year of our youth killing each other or not?

Already by Jan. 19^th, I had heard that two 13 year olds were dead in Boston.

Now, just three days after the month long fast called by the Ma’MOMs ended, I am asking each of us to join in the reflection and prayer they called for  - we need to reflect on understanding in our hearts that each of these kids are our kids and what each of us can do.

The Ma’MOMs are an amazing group of mothers who have come together – mothers of those who have committed the crimes and mothers of victims – to work together to support each other and seek real change.  A number of us, including elected officials, were honored to join their fast from midnight to noon at least a few days of the month.

Thing is it does not have to be this way. The high murder rates of the nineties were almost gone by 2000 thanks to many things including a huge commitment to youth workers, working the streets and offering other life paths.

Romney cut the funds those programs and the murder rate went back up.  Our new governor Patrick’s offer?  More police – but did you catch this?  He wants them funded by the very families who are losing their children in this situation to violence if those young people get convicted.

We need real solutions – young people in our communities need options besides drugs, violence, prisons or being cannon fodder for illegal wars.

There are the longer term issues – our local economies, living wage jobs and fair taxation.

For now, though you should know I and others have worked so there is legislation filed now in the Massachusetts: for putting money into youth workers not just cops, summer jobs for youth, requiring the best notification we can for parents and youth to opt out of the military getting their information from the schools.

This year, let’s claim all of our youth as ours, lets help them stop the violence – and bring peace at all levels to our communities.

02.04.07