Bill O'Reilly, Racism and White People

On Easter Sunday President Obama and his family attended church at Shiloh Baptist Church, an historic African American church in Washington, D.C. The pastor of Shiloh Baptist is Dr. Wallace Smith, who along with his pastoral duties is a faculty member and past president of Palmer Theological Seminary, the seminary connected to Eastern University where I also work. Now whenever the President does anything, it is news, but Bill O’Reilly of Fox News went overboard in seeking to attack Obama; he charged that Wallace Smith was a race baiting pastor in the vein of Rev. Jermeiah Wright, and that Obama exercised poor judgment in worshipping there.You remember that Rev. Wright, Obama’s pastor when he lived in Chicago, made strong statements about the nature of racism in the United States that offended the sensibilities of many in the media. Frankly, I thought Rev. Wright was right on point and said so at the time. Nevertheless then candidate Obama was criticized for associating with Rev. Wright and ended up making an historic speech in Philadelphia on his views on racism and the need for racial reconciliation in America. However O’Reilly made in an effort to raise questions about Obama’s judgment and character took issue with Dr. Smith’s perspective on race in America and so called him “Jeremiah Wright Junior” (which was obviously not meant to be a compliment, but probably was!). 

Now O’Reilly’s charge that Wallace Smith was somehow fomenting racial division and the assumptions that led him to make that charge are so outrageous and ludicrous that my first inclination is to simply ignore them (in fact because I rarely watch Fox News I did not know of it until nearly three weeks after the incident). However, in reality O’Reilly and Fox News have such a wide following among political conservatives, one can not simply pass him off as a quack. But more to the point, even though many might object to O’Reilly’s perspective (and in fact in that same show he had a fellow journalist who disagreed with his assessment), the assumptions behind O’Reilly’s statements are ones that are held by many white Americans, including many people of liberal persuasion. For that reason O’Reilly’s statements bear closer examination.

You may see and hear O’Reilly’s statement here. I encourage you to watch the clip at least 2-3 times to become familiar with his statements and move beyond your immediate emotional reaction so as to be able to take a more reasoned and analytical view of what is going on here. There are so many points one could make, space does not allow me to make them all, but let me highlight just a few.

The charge that Dr. Smith is racist is based on a short clip from a lecture he delivered at Palmer Seminary in 2010 on the topic of racism. In the clip he is talking about Jim Crow (i.e. segregation) practices. His point is that while Jim Crow is technically illegal today, it has become sophisticated and mainstreamed. As Smith artistically put it, Jim Crow has “dressed up in a three piece suit” and has become institutionalized not only in public policy but also media outlets such as Fox News. It is this last statement that O’Reilly takes offense at.

O’Reilly begins by calling Dr. Smith a “race activist,” which I find to be a curious term; I’m not sure what exactly it means. O’Reilly is not going for semantic clarity here, he is putting together two politically charged terms (at least for conservatives): “race” and “activist.” The term “race activist” is meant to convey the same kind of fear that “liberal” or “socialist” or “communist” conveys. It is meant to suggest that Dr. Smith is seeking to make white people feel guilty by talking about race and racism, and therefore is being inflammatory and dangerous.

I am part of a group called New Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (NewCORE) of which Dr. Smith is the co-chair and founder. NewCORE’s mission is to facilitate conversations between groups (particularly faith communities) that are predominantly black and predominantly white. On Martin Luther King Day, I participated in a series of inter-racial conversations that NewCORE organized. The purpose of groups like New CORE is not to propagate white guilt, but rather to raise awareness and understanding across racial and ethnic lines. Now for whites one of the first consequences of greater awareness is often a feeling of guilt. As one who has facilitated and participated in such conversations many times, I have come to see that for most whites, including myself, guilt about race is often just beneath the surface. But the goal of raising awareness is not to cause racial division but to create understanding. So if that is what a race activist does, then I am one too.

O’Reilly then says he is insulted and that in all his years at Fox News he has never met anyone who is racist. Like many whites (and in fact many people of color), O’Reilly thinks of racism only in individualistic terms, that a “racist” is a person who uses the n-word and is overtly hostile to people of other races. So in effect what O’Reilly is saying is that he hasn’t met anybody at Fox who goes around using racist language. However racist language and behavior is only the tip of the racism iceberg. What Wallace Smith refers to in the clip O’Reilly airs is institutionalized racism, that is policies, practices and perspectives, which have become normative and socially acceptable yet in their effect consistently treat people of color in a deleterious way. So while O’Reilly or the head of a government agency may not go around spouting racial slurs, the effect of their actions still can have a racist effect.

What makes institutionalized racism so hideous is that fact that it can be accepted as normative. So for instance, as state governments across the country cut their education budgets, poorer urban and rural school districts are taking the biggest hits. Those districts tend to overwhelmingly serve students of color. Those students of color just happen to live in the communities that most often have fewer libraries, city services, grocery stores and clean parks. And it just so happens that the people in those communities happen to be more unemployed and have less adequate healthcare insurance, if they have it at all. And if they do work, it is not in their community but a community far away from where they live. Moreover, it turns out that the young men in these communities are more likely to commit crimes and go to jail creating what Michelle Alexander has called “The New Jim Crow.”

Now did anyone at any point along this chain of causation say “we’re going to stick it to those n-----s.” Not necessarily, but the negative effect of those policies is disproportionately impacts people of color. In fact in his piece O’Reilly refers to U.S. culture as “race-neutral,” which given the history of race relations in this country seems ludicrous, but beyond that is negated by the impact of policies such as I just described.

As long as white people like O’Reilly only see racism in strictly individualistic and personal terms, they miss the larger issue of how our society is structured in such a way that gives white people like me and Bill O’Reilly privileges and advantages most black and Latino people can not assume. I am not profiled because of my race. I am not denied an interview because of my race. Real estate values don’t go down when I move into a neighborhood. When I make a public mistake, people don’t say I am a discredit to my race. Moreover, I don’t even have to be reminded everyday that I am white, except perhaps when I am in a social situation where I am a racial minority --- which by the way is what people of color face everyday in this society. I don’t have to hear people tell me that I am a “good white person” and so “articulate” for a person of my race.

If the kinds of policies and practices that impact communities of color every day were effecting predominantly white communities, O’Reilly would be crying “foul” and “racist,” but because white communities have been disproportionately protected from such effects, O’Reilly thinks people like Dr. Wallace Smith are “race-baiting” and stirring up trouble for simply pointing the disparities out.

While there is so much more that one could say in response to O’Reilly statements, I will leave it at that. What is so disgusting is that his ignorance is willful. He is not only uninformed, he chooses to be uninformed by choosing not to consider the words of an accomplished scholar and man of integrity such as Dr. Wallace Smith. Instead O'Reilly dismisses Smith because his feelings are hurt and he further twists those feelings into an attack on a president whose views he doesn’t like. While those of us who are white would like to distance ourselves from O’Reilly, I think it is important for us to consider and grapple with the ways in which we may think and respond like him. Moreover, we should use this incident as a way of deepening our understanding of how deeply embedded racism is in our society.

In the words of Shakespeare, O’Reilly “protesteth too much” and in fact proves the very point he seeks to criticize.

[Pictures courtesy of Google Images]

Resurrection: Neither Fast Nor Fair

For the last six months or so, I have been struggling with asthma. I woke up on a Sunday morning with a severe shortness of breath, which the next day was diagnosed as “mild persistent asthma.” I was given various medicines, which created a variety of side effects in other parts of my body, such as weakness, tingling, and sleeplessness. Moreover, the shortness of breath seemed to come and go at unexpected times, not lending itself to a clear cause-effect diagnosis. Along with the asthma, acute anxiety has sometimes surfaced, as either a cause or an effect of the asthma or both – I’m not sure. Just when I would think I was getting my health and emotions “under control,” something would happen to send me in a tailspin of anxiety and breathlessness again. I don’t know from day to day if I will feel better or worse, so that now I approach each new morning wondering how I will feel, and how much energy  and breath I will have that day.

Before this struggle began, I was a person who felt like his life was in control.  I had my health and when I faced a health challenge, I was usually able to muster the strength or resolve to “get through it” and feel better again. That strategy no longer works. As a result, at times this whole experience has done a number on my self-esteem and self-confidence, but it also has brought me a new appreciation of the grace that awaits one each day. I no longer struggle like I did back in November; the medicines I take seem to be keeping me in balance and I have a sense of normalcy again, but I certainly don’t take my health for granted like I did before.

As I have reflected on the one year anniversary of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and followed the efforts in Japan to respond to the tsunami and earthquake that occurred in that country, I have been reminded that it is not just my life, but all of life that is beyond our control. Like I did with my health, we can delude ourselves into thinking that we have things in hand, but in fact all of life is flux and change, and we don’t have a stop or reset button to bring things back to zero. Sometimes we must just ride the wave and see where it takes us.

As I have gone through my experience I have sustained myself with the thought that in the Spring I will feel better. Somehow the cycle from winter to spring mirrors our journey from pain through struggle to hope, from losing control to surrender to acceptance. That passage from Winter to Spring is also reflected in the passage through Lent, to Holy Week and to Easter.

Recently, I came a cross a poem by Mary Bernard that compares the passage from winter to spring to Resurrection. One message of this poem is that the passage to Spring does not erase or forget the struggle of Winter, just as the Resurrection of Jesus did not remove the scars of the cross from his body. That is why Jesus could say to Thomas, “Put your hands in the holes in my hands and side” (John 20.25). Though resurrected, Jesus still bore the marks of his suffering. That juxtaposition and paradox is instructive for us. Even as we enjoy grace, hope, life and love, those things come at a price that we bear and carry around with us.

In her poem, Mary Bernard describes the paradox of Resurrection (using the image of winter to spring) this way:

Long before this winter’s snow

I dreamt of this day’s sunny glow

For some fast way to get around

Its hurt and cold. I’ve found

If I had looked at what was there,

That things don’t follow fast or fair

That life goes on, and times do change

And grass does grow despite life’s pain.

Resurrection comes neither fast nor fair, but it comes. And as grass springs from the rock of suffering, so hope comes through the struggle. May those who struggle find strength and hope in this realization.

Taxes and Power

What do Warren Buffet, Alan Greenspan, Barack Obama and my father, a life long Republican, have in common? Normally this is a group that would have little they could agree on politically or economically. However, they all agree that in order to balance the national budget, one thing: we mus raise the taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Now they might quibble about the percentages and what areas of the budget should be cut, but all agree that the tax rate must be progressive and that those who earn more should pay more literally and proportionately in taxes. And all of them would probably pay higher taxes if such a decision was made.

When you are facing trillions of dollars in debt, one doesn’t have to be a genius to know the way you close the gap is to cut expenses and raise revenue. So why are the Republicans in Congress and Republicans in statehouses across the country, including my own state of Pennsylvania, so adamant about not raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations while making major cuts in education, health care, and social services for the poor? Why can they insist that teachers and other public employees must pay more for their benefits –what they call “their fair share” - (essentially cutting their income by making them pay more for those benefits), but not ask those who earn over $250,000 a year to pay more – i.e. their fair share? Why can they propose to make the middle class and poor go without, and yet allow the gap between haves and have-nots get wider and wider?

The argument goes that the by holding down taxes on the wealthy, this will spur economic growth by encouraging the wealthy and corporations to create jobs. The evidence has not born that out. We are currently in the worst recession since the 1930’s and the banks and the corporations have been show to be corrupt and predatory in their practices toward the middle class and homeowners, and yet Republicans in Congress refuse to turn the screws on those who have lined their pockets with PAC and lobbyist money.

Nearly 20 years ago investigative reporters Donald Bartlett and James Steele predicted the vanishing of the middle class because of the two tier tax structure that allows the wealthy and corporations to pay far less than their fair share in taxes. They have revisited that study and their predictions proven to be true. Their study entitled What Went Wrong  indicates that the corporate tax rate has declined from 49% in the 1950’s to 26% in 2010. But that doesn’t tell the whole story because after deductions, credits and other tax write-offs some of the largest corporations like GE and Exxon pay no U.S. taxes. This is not some liberal political rhetoric, but rather information reported on their corporate  statements to the SEC. Which means that the “small businesses” the Republicans keep saying they are trying to protect are probably paying a lot more than 26% so the big boys and the wealthy can get a “free card.”

It does no good to cry “foul” or talk about ethics or equity in this situation. Change will not come about by appealing to values or discussing different worldviews. This is simply an issue of power – who has the power to call the shots.  In Plato’s Republic Book I, Socrates encounters a young man named Thrasymachus whose idea of justice is that the wealthiest and most powerful men make the rules and whatever they say goes. In his mind that is justice. Thrasymachus is not concerned about being fair to the masses, he just wants to get in the seat of power so he can make the rules bend toward his self-interest. Socrates (unsuccessfully) tries to show him that such a short sighted approach will destroy the city of Athens. That doesn’t matter to Thrasymachus because all he cares about is  building his little kingdom.

We used to think that such things only happened in despotic nations ruled by wealthy strongmen surrounded by military power. Rulers like Amin (Uganda), Duvalier (Haiti) and Marcos (Philippines) bankrupted their countries and oppressed their poor masses, even as they amassed obscenely high concentrations of wealth. Well, add the United States to that list, as our political leaders, at the behest of the wealthy and the corporations, head us down that path. Amin, Duvalier, and Marcos were all overthrown by people’s revolutions, in Amin’s case violently. We are heading toward a point where nothing less than a revolution will bring sanity back to the way we distribute the wealth in this country. As Bartlett and Steele point out right now a significant mass of Americans have bought the line that “taxes” is a dirty word like “communism,” and continue to support policies that are not in their best interest. However, we are moving to ward what educator Paulo Freire calls an “untested feasibility” of needing a dramatic revolution not of morals or worldview, but of power.

Do we really want to go there?

A Pacifist Response to Libya

Monday night (March 28) Pres. Obama addressed the nation explaining his reasons for ordering military action to enforce a “No Fly Zone” in Libya. Essentially, he said that (1) he wanted to prevent the slaughter of innocent Libyan citizens by Libyan government forces and (2) that taking that action was in “our national interest.” While he did not spell out what those interests were, it’s pretty certain that a major factor in the decision had to do with the fact that Libya pumps out a lot of oil.

A few days earlier I was indirectly challenged by two people (a close friend who is clearly states he is not a pacifist, and a former student who is considering joining the Navy) to offer a pacifist response to the current situation in Libya; so here it is.

The root of the word “pacifism” is the Latin word “pace” or peace. In Biblical Hebrew the word for peace is “shalom,” which is a robust word not only meaning the absence of  conflict, but also the restoration of people to each other and to the creation. Shalom is celebrated in the passage from Isaiah where  the prophet writes:

            The wolf will live with the lamb

            The leopard will lied dies with the goat

            The calf and the lion and the yearling together

            And a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11.6)

Shalom is a picture of former adversaries living in harmony and trust, devoid of hatred or fear. As a pacifist I yearn for and work toward this vision of the world, realizing we might not get there fully, but we can get closer than we currently are.

Sam Keen, philosopher and author of Fire in the Belly, comes close to my position on war when he writes: “It would be Utopian to wish that men should no longer kill one another … But a much sounder Utopia is that which insists that murder no longer be legitimized” (p. 114). Applied to Libya it means, yes it may have been necessary to send war planes to bomb military sites and advancing armies in Libya in order to save lives, but let’s not try to legitimize or glorify the fact that we had to do it. The foot soldiers in Qadaffi’s army are as blindly “innocent” as the citizens who they threatened and the rebels fighting against Qaddafi. In war there are no winners.

More importantly we need to look at how we got in a position where it was “necessary” for us to invade Libya. Qaddafi has been in power for 40 years. A little less than 40 years ago in the mid-1970’s the United States faced an oil shortage which caused us to ration gas and wait in long lines to fuel our cars. Then-President Jimmy Carter implored the nation to turn down their thermostats, wear sweaters, drive fuel efficient cars and generally change our lifestyles. We didn’t listen, ridiculed Carter, started driving SUVs, chewed up more and more farmland for suburban neighborhoods and generally ignored the early warning the 1970’s gas crisis gave us. Since then we have had the hostage crises in Iran, two Iraq wars, a war in Afghanistan, ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, various crises in Lebanon, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern countries; and now Libya. Moreover, Colonel Qaddafi didn’t become a tyrant 10 days ago; he’s been a tyrant for 40 years; President Obama admitted as much the other night. So what is the common denominator connecting all of these events over the last 40 years? Our dependence on oil. President Carter was right then and is still right today.

I have no objection to a standing military that helps earthquake victims in Haiti or ferries victims of Hurricane Katrina to safety, or is currently helping the Japanese people cope with their recent earthquake. I don’t even object to the military trying to stop innocent slaughter in places like Bosnia in the 1990’s or Libya today. But when we must continually turn to military solutions, let us see these incursions for what they are: a tragic failure of we who are the wealthy of the world to curb our voracious lifestyles. This invasion would not have been "necessary" were it not for the oil. Qaddafi would have been a minor desert warlord were it not for the oil. He would not have been tacitly supported as the world looked the other way, had we been working to change our lifestyles so that we were not so oil-dependent.

In 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor forsook his pacifist stance to take part in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. The plot failed, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned, and was executed for his crime days before the Germans surrendered to the Allies. However as theologian Walter Wink notes Bonhoeffer never considered his participation in the plot a “justifiable action” but rather a sin, and he threw himself on the mercy of God for what he had done. At the time he saw no other option, but he never sought to justify it.

President Obama and the NATO forces are to be commended for the limited role our military has played in the Libyan situation. However, seen in the larger context of our voracious consumptive American lifestyle, and the “interests” we protect to maintain that lifestyle can not be justified. Our continual dependence on carbon based fuels to support our lifestyle continues to lead to wars, destroys the environment, drains resources for addressing desperate needs in our own country, and makes all the world’s people vulnerable to tyrants whose land happens to be sitting over an oil well.

Libya should cause us to heed the call Pres. Carter gave us nearly 40 years ago. The world can not afford us; we can not afford ourselves. A world beyond war, a taste of shalom, can only happen as we not only stop tyrants like Colonel Qadaffi, but also look at ourselves, and ask how are we willing to change so that war does not become necessary to protect our “interests?”

Fairness in Taxation Bill

Rep Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) has introduced the Fairness in Taxation bill, which seeks to have the wealthy pay their share in addressing the current budget problem. What follows is a letter to my Congressman, Rep Pat Meehan, asking him to support this proposed bill. I share it as an example others might want to send to their Representatives. As I suggest in my letter, why must the budget be balanced on the backs of the poor and the wealthy get off scott free?

Dear Rep Meehan,

I am writing to ask that you support the Fairness in Taxation Act that has been introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowlsy of Illinois. While you have supported the effort to present a balanced budget, your efforts thus far have focused on cutting funds designated for health care, education, and other social programs. At the same time you have opposed any efforts to increase revenues through targeted tax hikes on the wealthiest American. In essence that strategy is asking the most socially and economically vulnerable citizens to make sacrifices to balance the federal budget, while not asking the wealthiest Americans to do the same.

The Fairness in Taxation Act would correct this injustice and inequity by asking wealthy Americans to pay their fair share. The bill would establish new tax brackets for incomes starting at $1 million up to a $1 billion bracket. The new brackets would be:

• $1-10 million: 45%
• $10-20 million: 46%
• $20-100 million: 47%
• $100 million to $1 billion: 48%
• $1 billion and over: 49%

The bill would also tax capital gains and dividend income as ordinary income for those taxpayers with income over $1 million. If enacted in 2011, the Fairness in Taxation Act would raise more than $78 billion.

While I know support of this bill would ask you to break with your Republican party colleagues, I believe that you know in your heart that this is fair and just. The terrible debt we are facing right now is largely due to the government’s efforts to compensate for the mistakes and misdeeds of the large financial institutions in this country. They received a bailout that both Pres. Bush and Pres. Obama supported, as did both parties. Now you seek to correct the deficit that has resulted. As the Scriptures say: Those to whom much is given, much is required. This should apply to tax laws as well.

Please support this bill and allow fairness to rule our economic judgments, not the PAC money or lobbyist pressures. Poor people have no lobbyists. People like you and me must be their advocates. Please have the courage to support The Fairness in Taxation Act.

Sincerely,

Drick Boyd

Barack Obama, Guns and People of Faith

This past week Pres. Barack Obama delivered a speech in Arizona in which he proposed that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System be strengthened so as to deny known felons the opportunity to purchase guns. Groups like Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Ceasefire Pennsylvania came out praising the president for calling for this legislation. The irony is that the law already exists; it is just that some states and local jurisdictions don’t abide by the law and faithfully provide the data that is needed. The problem is not the lack of law, but the lack of enforcement. You can bet that those states that have loose gun control laws are also those states that don’t cooperate with this federal law either. Apparently, for the gun lobby any law that might restrict the right of someone, even someone with a history of violent crime, is too much “regulation.” 

If there was any doubt about how far the gun lobby will go to fight any and all gun regulations, following his speech, Pres. Obama invited leaders of the NRA to meet with members of his Justice Department to discuss gun legislation they could agree on. NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre rejected the invitation saying that Obama was only using a “political maneuver” designed to “take away our Second Amendment rights.” However, as Obama pointed out in his speech, his administration has expanded the rights of gun owners, and he now supports the Supreme Court’s specious interpretation of the Second Amendment.  Moreover he waited two years before filling the directorship of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF),  and did not extend the assault weapons ban. Barack has been the best friend the NRA has ever had, Republican or Democrat. However, as far as La Pierre and the NRA is concerned, any gun law apparently is a bad law, even though they apparently have Obama eating out of their hands. 

Recently, I made a presentation on the gun lobby at a conference. In the context of that presentation, I referred to a comment made by James Carville, Bill Clinton’s political advisor in the 1990’s. In 1993 then Pres. Clinton signed the Brady Bill, establishing the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (that Obama says we now must enforce), and pushed through the Assault Weapons Ban (which Obama let expire). In the 1994 midterm elections, the Democrats took a beating at the polls much like they did this past year. Carville attributed that defeat in part to Clinton’s support of these two significant pieces of gun control legislation. Ever since that time Democrats have been running scared of the NRA and the gun lobby, backing away from any efforts to enact common sense gun legislation such as requiring more extensive background checks that would include things such as mental health records, and repealing the Tiahrt Amendment a bill that exempts the BATF from releasing data on the gun shops that are the source of the most guns used in crime. By his tepid call to ask states to follow the laws that already exist, Obama and his Democratic cohorts continue in their timid inaction on gun legislation. (To read the full story see Dennis Henigan's book, Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy).

What the Obama and the rest of the Democrats fail to grasp is that any policy of conciliation with the ultra conservatives is fruitless. For the conservatives is no compromise, only hard ball. The gun lobby is not satisfied with the status quo, they are pushing hard for legislation that would allow guns to be carried onto college campuses and on public transportation, and laws that would release the ban on all efforts to regulate the sale of guns of any size or firepower. Only by being as hard nosed and persistent as the gun lobby can those of us who seek to limit the sale of handguns (whose only purpose is to kill and injure other people), hope to see  significant changes need in gun control legislation to be enacted.

Comedian John Stewart has often made fun of the Democrats for being “wimps” on the issues they say are important to them. They have no spine to speak up for strong legislation whether it deals with health care or gun legislation. The truth be told, some of these “wimpish”  Democrats are probably as much in the pocket of the gun lobby as their conservative counterparts. Ironically, Gabrielle Giffords was one of those pro-gun Democrats; look where it got her.

In my presentation, I argued that the only effective response to the insane gun-mania and power of the gun industry and gun lobby is a grass roots movement. Christians and other faith groups can and must play a part in developing that movement.  Just as the gun lobby speaks of the values that support the right to own and use a gun, so too people of faith deal in the realm of values, but only those that speak to the need for peace and harmony among people. While we may not have the money the gun lobby can throw around ($2.1 million int he 2010 elections alone), we can galvanize people to act with their voice and their vote. This is why grassroots, faith based groups like Heeding God’s Call are essential to the gun violence prevention movement. If we wait for our political leaders to act,  even our supposed progressive president, we will be waiting a very long time.

Madison and Why Unions Matter

I have never been particularly strongly for or against unions. I knew that they had played an important role in creating a more humane workplace – 40 hour work week, child labor laws, work safety standards, Social Security, work benefits, and so on  - but just had not considered why a strong union presence in the economy was so important today. I was also aware of some of the ways unions had abused their power in the mid-twentieth century by excluding racial minorities in the early. I also remembered that the Teamsters had been used by California growers as thugs trying to intimidate the Farmworkers in the 1960’s and 1970’s. So I knew unions served a purpose, but I also knew they were not made up of angels.

Then the Miracle of Madison occurred, when Wisconsin governor Scott Walker not only sought to reduce the benefits paid to public employee unions, but also wanted to take away their bargaining rights to advocate for themselves. Scott Walker found out that his "mandate" was not as strong as he had imagined. The people have stood up to the governor for three weeks now, and the power of their movement grows each week. As I said in my last blog posting, to take away people’s bargaining rights is to rob them of the very tools of democracy. 

These events have gotten me thinking about what happens when unions aren't allowed to operate. I have been reminded of how union jobs in places like Philadelphia were moved to the South and then to Mexico. Now in the Maquiladora area around Juarez, Mexico (just across the river from El Paso, TX), people work for $5-15/day in unsanitary and unsafe conditions for major corporations trying to escape having to pay living wages and benefits, and other work-related items that we in this country take for granted. There are no unions in Juarez and the conditions are not only horrible, they are patently inhumane. All in the name of profit and capitalism. 

This past weekend I was in Madison, WI and marched around the capital with school teachers, firefighters, Teamsters, grandmothers, elementary school kids, and representatives from just about every other slice of humanity currently living in Wisconsin. I happened to be there when filmmaker Michael Moore showed up and delivered an incredible speech putting the Madison conflict in the context of a larger class war. His Major point was that Wisconsin, like the United States is not broke; it’s just that a very few millionaires and billionaires are awash in money, while the rest of the population can’t pay their mortgages, are taking pay cuts, and being told that their benefits are being cut. The problem is not a lack of money, but a need for redistribution of the wealth in this nation.

You can watch Moore’s speech here or read it here. He was clear, uncompromising and to the point.

What is happening in Madison is only the tip of the iceberg. As Moore and other speakers said that day, this is only the beginning of a long struggle to return some sanity and balance to economic power in this country (and I would add around the world). The scenario being played out in Wisconsin is being repeated in Ohio, Indiana and probably many other states. Unions will play a vital role in this struggle, not only in offering support (groups like the Teamsters, firefighters and police were not affected by the governor’s proposals but have been visibly present in solidarity), but also in their vast experience in bringing folks together to stand up to the corporate and political leaders who would seek to steal their right to self-determination and silence the voice of everyday folks.

I see now why unions matter and expect that I will learn much more in the months and years ahead.

Cairo, Madison and the Nature of Grassroots Democracy

Tunisia … Cairo … Jordan … Iran… Bahrain … and now Madison, Wisconsin. Something is happening around the globe in this age of instant telecommunication – there is an outbreak of democracy the likes of which have not been seen in a long time. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker won last November’s election by 52% to 46%, got his party’s majority in both houses and so felt he had a “mandate” to do whatever he liked to balance his state’s budget, but he overplayed his hand when he sought to take away the bargaining rights of unionized state workers. In so doing he sought to eliminate the rights of state employees to have a voice in determining their own economic future. The people reacted strong and loud. What was at stake is the meaning of democracy, as Lincoln said, government of, for and by the people.

Walker stands in a long line of leaders going back to the Founding Fathers and even Plato, the author democracy, who only believed in a limited kind of democracy. Their view of democracy says: “We’ll give you a chance to vote every 2, 4, or 6 years from a limited list of candidates that we will provide you. Then we’ll open up the doors to folks with money – namely the wealthy and the corporations – to finance this electoral show, a winner will be announced, and you good people just trust us until the next election.” However, something changed. First, the Tea Party folks said – wait a minute, we have a voice that needs to be heard. Now while I realize that some of the Tea Party moves were orchestrated by conservative corporate interests and big media, and I don’t agree with much of their politics, there were lots of normal folks who just were not willing to sit back and wait for two more years. Now finally, the progressive grassroots has awakened and the message that is coming out of Madison is “we want a seat at the table too; we will not be rendered voiceless and powerless.”

The Bradley Foundation, the major supporter of Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign states that its mission in part is “committed to preserving and defending the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise that has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the entire Western world to flourish intellectually and economically.” They go onto say that what that commitment means is to “support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual, and cultural activity; and a vigorous defense, at home and abroad, of American ideas and institutions.”  Sounds well and good, so why support an effort to take away one of those rights, the right to advocate for oneself and one’s interests? Could it be those vaunted “American ideas” are only applicable to the select few who have the money and power to influence decision makers?

The Koch brothers, other major funders of Walker’s campaign and major donors to the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, are not interested in what works for the average person, but rather removing all restrictions and guidelines to those who seek economic gains in the name of unbridled capitalism. Why else would Walker opt not to tax the wealthy or the corporations but instead demand the union give back benefits, and give up bargaining rights? The Koch brothers want democracy in the sense that limits the benefits to them and others of their ilk.

The response to this kind of doublespeak and hypocrisy is long overdue. The challenge to the ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots in this country has been slowly emerging. The poor have completely dropped out of the conversation, but now the assault has come on the middle and working class folks, and they are better organized than the poor. The middle class working folks are earning less and being asked to give up more, while the wealthy and the corporations continue to get favored status. Something had to give … maybe it has started to do so.

The challenge going forward is not simply to protest on capitol steps or march on Washington, but rather to build a kind of process where folks gather to discuss issues and concerns in coffee shops, town hall meetings, Facebook pages and blogs. It will require that progressives to talk with Tea Party folks and the working poor interact with CEOs, where shouting and chants can be transformed to listening and true dialogue. Sounds ideal but the folks with the power – the corporate leaders, the wealthy political donors, the huge lobbying organizations – are not going to be easily persuaded to let go of their privileged positions in the shadows and come out for an honest, open forum. There is still much work to be done do to force them into the light, before these conversations can happen. The issue is not about Republicans or Democrats, because both parties are active players in the rigged game. It goes beyond the choices we have been publicly presented to those who are pulling the strings from behind. For in the end the real enemy of grassroots democracy are not the political front men like Scott Walker, but the economic interests he and most politicians serve. Revealing and challenging that enemy will require research, analysis and dogged perseverance.

Just as countries such as Egypt must build an entirely new political infrastructure, so too we in the United States are only at the beginning of building a new understanding of what democracy means and how it works. This view of democracy is radically different than what has been practiced recently in this country. It is radical because it takes the onus out of the state houses and into the communities. It is radical because it challenges us to be informed and active. It is radical because it challenges the economic policies and structures that have benefited the few at the expense of the many, and to which most Americans have become all too accustomed, and to which they have resigned themselves.

Frankly, I don’t know what to expect in the months and years ahead. I hold a cautious optimism that people can wake from their blind political stupor, and let the Scott Walkers of the country, and even more so those funding his campaign, know that the game has changed, and that democracy as we have known it is in fact becoming more democratic.

Process and Promise at West Philadelphia High School

We tend to think dictatorships only exist in places like Tunisia and Egypt, and when the masses rise up and force the dictators out, we consider that to be a good thing. Well, there is a dictatorship in Philadelphia that is facing an uprising of its own, and as far as I am concerned, it is about time. I am referring to the Philadelphia School District (PSD) and series of community responses to the Superintendent’s newest round of proposed reforms.

On Monday, February 7 I attended a public meeting at West Philadelphia High School (WPHS), which had just been designated a“Promise Academy”  by PSD Superintendent Arlene Ackerman the week before. Two members from the district gave a brief presentation and then the floor was open for questions and feedback. The Promise Academy program is a series of reforms designed to improve the quality of education in failing schools. The reforms include a longer school day, more enrichment program, uniforms, Saturday school and a summer program. The key to success is the hiring of a new principal with a “proven track record of turning around failing schools”  and the requirement that all teachers re-apply for their positions in the school with only a maximum of 50% being hired back for the next year. The goal is to “change the culture of the school” and to create an atmosphere of achievement and success.

Sounds great – who can challenge such a plan? No one at the meeting denied that WPHS is a school in trouble that fails to adequately educate its students. Nonetheless, many challenges were raised to the proposal not about the desire to improve the school, but over the way PSD has disregarded the input of the West Philadelphia High School community for several years. The objections were not over the promise of a renewed school, but over the way the decision-making process was handled.

A year ago the Superintendent had announced that WPHS would become a Renaissance Academy, one of four versions of PSD’s reforms. The difference is that in the Renaissance Academy the school is paired with an outside provider, whereas the Promise Academy was run directly out of the district office. Both models have the same essential goal: turnaround a failing school. A year ago the school had a popular principal, Saliyah Cruz, who had led the school through a dramatic culture change. Discipline issues had dramatically decreased, a restorative practices model of discipline had been instituted, and 9^th grade test scores and attendance had begun to show marked improvement. Students and teachers expressed great hopefulness for the future of the school as it looked move into a new building in 2011. John Hopkins University had consulted with the school and University of Pennsylvania was actively involved in the school. John Hopkins had applied to be the Renaissance partner. So the local community group of which I was a part, the WPHS Community Partners, recommended that WPHS be partnered with Johns Hopkins. This request was ecohed by a School Advisory Council made of up parents and community members. Despite her calls for community input, Superintendent Ackerman went directly against the community desires; the principal and 40% of the teachers were transferred from the school and John Hopkins’ application was rejected. A caretaker principal was installed ( the first of three this year) and the school unraveled, violent incidents increased and morale plummeted.

This year when the idea of the school becoming a Promise Academy was proposed, the School Advisory Council, the local community group for the school again asked to be a Renaissance Academy (that is being paired with an outside provider), and again despite the request for community input, that input was ignored. These were the issues being raised by the group that Monday night. Three-quarters of the comments had to do with process, and the districts continued dictatorial ways. Parents wanted assurance that there would be a commitment to real change. Community members raised questions about PSD’s commitment to working with the community and parents, given their actions in the past. Several folks raised concern about the fact that after a 40% teacher turnover last year, why did there have to be a 50% turnover this year. Others wondered where this miracle-working “turnaround principal” was going to be found and whether the community group would have any input in selecting that person (the answer was “no”).

While the meeting was civil, there was a great deal of frustration. Thus, it was not surprising that at 1 pm the following Friday (Feb 11) approximately 100 students walked out of school in protest of the fact that their concerns were not being addressed or even respected. Moreover, they objected to the fact that there was an atmosphere of repression in the school for teachers and students who spoke out against the process. All the while thousands of people were protesting in Egypt about a repressive dictator and demanding that their voices be heard.

I would have thought that this experience was unique to WPHS given its unique history with the district, until I read that a very similar reaction was being voiced in South Philadelphia, where the Audenried High School was being told they were to become part of a “Promise Neighborhood Partnership” (following the model of the Harlem Children’s Zone developed by Geoffrey Canada and promoted by the Obama administration). From the reports the crowd reaction was much more vitriolic than at WPHS and police had to be brought into restore order. Parent, students and community members were asking for data on why their school was being taken over and saying that there had been no opportunity for their concerns to be heard. So apparently the process was similar as to that in West Philly.

In a time when urban schools are failing to provide an adequate education, there is no question that change must come. However, so often school officials want to find a quick fix. The Promise Academy promises an infusion of resources, but in a time when PSD must trim its budget by $400-500 million, how long will this infusion of resources last? In a time when a Republican governor favors school vouchers over equalizing the playing field between urban and suburban school districts, how long until the money for the Promise Academy is diverted? In an environment where parents and community members are asked to give input, and then that input is categorically ignored and when a principal was initiating genuine cultural reform and then was removed, when committed teachers who have chosen to work in a difficult environment are told they are not measuring up, and when students must contend with a revolving door of principals and teachers, isn’t it just possible that Superintendent Ackerman should listen to their concerns, and truly engage the community in the process?

There is no doubt that Superintendent Ackerman is a reformer facing a difficult job of transforming a troubled school system in a time of acrimony and declining resources. However, as educator Paulo Freire warned in his classic work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that if they do not honestly work in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized people they are seeking to help, they will become as dictatorial and oppressive as the leaders they sought to replace. Authentic social change comes when reformist leaders work honestly with the oppressed, rather than simply seeking to do things to and for them, and then expecting them to go along. Promises are not enough; following an appropriate process bring meaningful and lasting change.

The mild “uprisings” in West Philadelphia and South Philadelphia are a sign that people in those communities care about education and their kids and they want an authentic seat at the table. They don’t want to be pawns in quick fixes or faddish educational ideas. More than anyone, they know that the future of precious lives are at stake, because those lives are either theirs (students) or the lives of people about whom they deeply care (parents and community members). While the uprisings don’t need to lead to the ouster of a leader as in Egypt, but they are a sign that PSD can’t just make promises of some miracle transformation, they need to involve the people they claim to serve in the process of leading that transformation.

*** Photos used permission of the Notebook (www.notebook.org))

Letter to My Congressman re: Health Care

NOTE: I received an email from my new Republican representative, Patrick Meehan, about his support of his party's efforts to repeal the Health Care Reform bill passed last year under the guidance of Pres. Obama. His rationale was basically that the bill as it stands is too costly, directs "unfunded mandates," to the states and was passed through "closed door" deals (welcome to Washington Congressman! As if your party never did anything like that!) - the same tired arguments that have been all along

What follows is my email response. I share it as an example of how we need to keep the pressure on to maintain the modest gains that have been made in the last two years in providing justice for the poor in our midst.

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Rep Meehan,

I received your message regarding your participation in the effort to repeal the current health care reform bill. I am writing to strongly urge you NOT TO CONTINUE SEEKING REPEAL of the bill. Nearly 50,000 people are without adequate health care insurance in this country, and the actions of those seeking repeal is both cruel and misguided. The bill as passed did not go far enough in providing the necessary supports to the needy and controls on the health insurance companies. If there are ways to improve the current bill by tightening controls and easing access, then work on those. However, to simply reject the bill because of costs is duplicitous and hypocritical, when your party has (1) refused to tax wealthiest Americans and (2) refused to curb military spending (in this instance you share responsibility with the Democrats). It is neither prudent nor just to cut services to the most vulnerable Americans, when you refuse to do it to those who are most economically secure. Such actions only show you are beholden to the corporate powers and you fail to think outside of the "lockstep" directives of your party. Your role as a representative is not to oppose the president in order to score political points, but rather to serve the needs of the people, no matter what your political bosses tell you do.

Rep Sestak who preceded you was no "flaming liberal" (no matter how your party tried to portray him), but he laced his politics with compassion. This is something I hope and expect that you will continue.

Sincerely,

Darrell Boyd
Broomall, PA

Imagination and Gun Violence Prevention

Over the past couple weeks I have been researching the gun industry in preparation for a workshop I will be doing in March on faith-based approaches to gun violence prevention. Through my research I keep bumping up against two realities in the ongoing debate between advocates of gun rights and advocates of gun control. First, I am deeply impressed with the ability of gun rights advocates to frame issue in terms that resonate deeply with a significant percentage of the American people. All one needs to do is go the website of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and click on one of their many videos and you will hear a heartfelt appeal for protecting the rights of individuals to have and use guns that taps into the American values of freedom, patriotism, individualism, and family. Whether one agrees with the NRA not, one has to be impressed with how they present and package their message.

Second, I have been equally impressed with the number of studies from such places as Harvard University, John Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania, and University of California-Davis that have put forth compelling evidence that the proliferation of firearms in American society leads to an increasing number of deaths by those firearms. One thing that is startling to most casual observers is that the number of suicides by guns significantly outstrips the number of homicides by guns, and that the presence of a gun in a home is significantly more likely to be used against the gun owner’s friends and loved ones than an outside intruder. So there is compelling and overwhelming evidence that one way to reduce the number of gun-related deaths is to reduce the availability of gun is our society.

These two realities have brought me face to face with the dilemma for those of us who would like to limit the presence of guns in our society, and thereby reduce the number of gun-related injuries and death: the argument will not be one by more facts, figures, and logical arguments because the other side is not convinced by research, but by something much deeper in their psyche. While the society as a whole is divided over how much gun control is the right amount, generally speaking those who advocate for gun rights are far more motivated and passionate than those who think the laws might have to change. Because of the recent shootings in Tucson, the debate has heated up again, but if the pattern of the past repeats itself, pretty soon gun violence will go back to being a non-issue for most Americans, especially those who say there ought to be tighter restrictions. We who are working to change the laws need a mechanism to convince folks that this is an issue worth fighting for, because the other side is primed and ready to respond.

While logic and research are vitally important if we are to make wise decisions as a society, they will not win the day; we need to appeal to the cultural values that move and drive folks. Moreover our objective should not be so much to change the minds of the true believers on the gun rights side, but rather to motivate those who think the laws ought to change to put the issue on their front burner rather than the back burner. The key is to appeal to people’s sense of imagination and to tap into values that run deep in their spirits. In his book, The Hopeful Imagination, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann (referring to philosopher Paul Ricouer) says “people are changed not by ethical urging, but by a transformed imagination” (p. 24). What Brueggemann and Ricouer say to those of us in the gun violence prevention movement is that we have to go deeper than facts and logic and tap into the deep recesses of what makes people human.

This is why I think the faith community, in particular the Christian community, is vital to the efforts to reduce the number of guns on our streets and in our homes because as people of faith we deal in symbols and the deep things of the spirit. We tap into the deep recesses of the human soul by singing songs, telling stories, and saying prayers. We share food and life together in a way that shapes and forms who we are as people. Stuart Murray,speaking about the Anabaptist Christian tradition of which I am a part says our churches need to “nurture unconventional reflexes and free our imaginations to explore creative possibilities” in dealing with issues of violence and conflict (Naked Anabaptist, p.132).

When I think of the history of the Civil Rights movement, I see this capacity to “nurture unconventional reflexes” and “free people’s imaginations” at work. How else would people walk in to fire hoses, refrain from resorting to violence and walk hundreds of miles for the dream of equality? What Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders did was touch something deep in the soul of many people, black and white, so much so that they were willing to go up against the huge wall of Jim Crow segregation. Ultimately what won the day was something that resonated deeply with most Americans. That’s why the “I Have A Dream Speech” can still stir us 48 years after it was first spoken.

As I continue to explore this issue, I am encouraged that there are many people of deep faith, who likewise have taken on the gun violence issue in creative ways. I will share just one. Recently, I talked with a young woman, a victim of gun violence herself, who is organizing a campaign to go into urban communities, and telling her story and calling people to look at other ways of dealing with issues of violence and to put away the guns. She plans to start in the community where she grew up in and then go to other places. She hopes to mobilize young people and local organizations to work together to reduce the violence in their communities. I have no doubt she will be successful in her work because she can speak to the fears, doubts and hopelessness that often lead people to succumb to a life of violence. She is driven by her experience and by her faith in God that a different way of life is possible.

My hope is to come across many more folks like this woman, who can speak to the deep parts of people’s lives, whose imaginations have been set free by their faith in God, and who have been nurtured to respond in way counter to the culture of fear and violence that has so deeply gripped us as a nation and a people. My hope is that the efforts of which I am a part can draw on the creativity of people in such a way that something is touched in them, and compels them to take a stand for gun violence prevention. I know that is what grabbed me. I knew all the arguments and some of the relevant facts, but it was man’s story about the death of his brother that got me moving. I have no doubt that we can turn the tide of this debate, but I now realize more studies and compelling logic will not by themselves move folks to action. We need to find ways to tap into people’s  imagination and move them in the place within that lies beyond words.

Remembering and Learning From the Ugliness of Our Past

Each January we are invited to remember the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This weekend many folks will be engaged in service projects, special worship services and cultural events. This year I will be participating on the “Conversation of Kings: From Dream to Sacrifice Toward a More Perfect Union” sponsored by the New Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (NewCORE) in Philadelphia being held at Girard College (9 am) and South Philadelphia High School (1 pm). If you are around, come join us.

For me the Martin Luther King holiday is a day to remember the history of racism and to reflect on my efforts to overcome the effects of that racism in our nation and in my own personal life. For that reason I was particularly intrigued by a recent column by Leonard Pitts, Jr, “Don’t Let Others Define Us.” In this article Pitts writes of a trip he once took to Auschwitz, the Nazi prison camp where thousands of Jews were killed during World War II. During his time there, he was surprised to learn that Israeli school groups regularly visit the site to continually remind the next generations of the genocide that killed six million of their fellow Jews. Pitts wrote that he was “impressed with the way Jews have institutionalized Holocaust education.” By contrast he says that generally speaking African Americans tend to distance themselves from their past of suffering. He quotes one woman who witnessed a lynching in 1930, and who refused to talk about it with anyone and countered by saying “Why bring it up. It’s not helping anything. People don’t want to hear it.”

The point that Pitts makes is that if a people does not work hard to remember their history and allow it to shape and guide their actions in the present, others who have a vested interest in sanitizing the ugliness of their past will do it for them. I think this tendency to sanitize the ugliness of history is powerfully at work in our remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr.  This is true not only of African Americans, but also most certainly among White Americans as well. These days people like to quote a few choice lines from the “I Have A Dream” speech without focusing on King’s advocacy for the poor, his opposition to militarism, and his continual battle with local governments to change laws that treated African Americans as less than human. We forget that the FBI spied on him and spread lies about him, and that only when the brutality of racism was dragged onto the world stage did the Federal government begin acting to change discriminatory laws and practices that had been institutionalized for centuries. We forget that King and his followers were beaten and regarded as communist subversives, and that King himself was assassinated as he was participating in a strike by underpaid garbage workers in Memphis.

We also forget that while there was virulent minority of whites who participated in violent acts of racial hatred and intimidation, and a activist minority of whites who publicly allied themselves with the Civil Rights Movement, there was a much larger percentage of whites who sat on the side and did nothing. King’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” written while he was in jail was written to this “silent majority. While in jail King had being criticized by “white moderates” for not being patient and creating a social disturbance. They said that he should be patient and trust that prayer and time would bring about racial reconciliation. King responded at length to these charges and said that such an attitude was exactly why the racial injustices were allowed to continue. Of those who sat on the sidelines and preached patience, King wrote the following:

“I have reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’  than to justice, who prefers a negative peace, which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

What King was saying then, still resonates today, that in matters of equality and social justice, there can be no fence sitters. To step aside and to not act is to reinforce the unjust status quo.

I would hope that on this Martin Luther King, Jr. day that both African Americans and White Americans would take time to reflect on the ugliness of our racist past, not so whites can feel shame and guilt and African Americans can feel anger and disgust, but so we can learn from, and hopefully not repeat, the same actions today. When I listen to how the immigration debate is framed, or why the Dream Act has not been passed, or how my fellow citizens treat Muslim-American with disgust and suspicion, I fear we have not learned from the past. The actions, words and rationalizations for our anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attitudes are hauntingly similar to the actions, words and rationalizations used to deny basic civil rights to African Americans 60 years ago.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. asks his fellow African-Americans to remember their past and teach it to the next generation. I would ask White Americans to do the same. Just as a doctor can not provide a healing solution without uncovering the underlying disease, so too we can never reach King’s dream of racial justice and reconciliation without continually coming to grips with the racist past that brought us to this moment, and hinder our efforts to overcome the racial brokenness that afflicts us.

*** For those in the Philadelphia area, one place one might start to come to grips with that past is the Lest We Forget Black Holocaust Museum of Slavery in the Port Richmond section of the city. This private museum was put together by the descendants of former slaves and graphically illustrates what slavery, Jim Crow and institutional racism was and still is, and how history lives on in our interactions today as whites and people of color. I have taken several student groups there, and it has had a powerful effect on everyone.

Blowin in the Wind

Many people who came of age in the 1960’s remember the Bob Dylan song, “Blowin in the Wind,” which asked a series of questions that probed the ethos of that age. Today as I read of the shooting deaths of nine people in Tucson, AZ and the serious injury to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the words of the third verse of that song seemed particularly pertinent:

                How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?

                How many ears must one man have,

                                                      before he can hear people cry?

                How many deaths will it take till he knows

                                                     that too many people have died?

                The answer my friend is blowin in the wind; 

                                                     the answer is blowin in the wind.

Not a day goes when we don’t hear of another senseless death due to proliferation of guns. Tragically and ironically, one of the people killed in the Tucson murders was U.S. District Judge John Roll, who had recently ruled against more stringent background checks on gun purchasers. The man who committed these latest murders had put up YouTube videos indicating his mental and emotional imbalance, and his disgust for politicians. Rep Giffords herself had boasted during last fall’s campaign that she packed a gun and knew how to use it. Ironically, the same model gun was used to shoot her in the head. While our government spends billions of dollars to protect us from outside terrorists, and more billions to keep out immigrants, it is the people who we pass on the street or the mall everyday who represent the greatest threat to our safety.

Not long ago, a friend of mine had a gun pulled on her at a gas station because a woman thought she my friend had cut her off. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it was yet another example of the danger we face from total strangers, or in some case neighbors, and even loved ones wielding guns in a moment of rage or at the end of their emotional rope.

Now I am sure the pro-gun lobby and the NRA are spinning their tired response that it is not guns that kill people but people who kill people. However, as this and every other senseless killing indicates, it is people with guns that kill people. Therefore we must have laws and policies that carefully and regularly monitors those have been granted the right carry a gun.  The U.S. is the only developed country in the world that allows such lax laws when it comes to the management and control of firearms. As Bob Dylan asks: How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died, and that one way to address that question is to put common sense controls and background checks on those people who desire to own and use guns, especially guns designed solely for killing people.

The answer my friends is blowin in the wind, but it need not. The answer is right there is front of us, if we pressure our legislators to require stronger background checks on all gun purchases, and that we regularly monitor those who have been granted the right to carry a handgun (whose only purpose is to shoot people), and to determine if they have a legitimate need for such a firearm.

How many tears must be shed, before we can hear people’s cries? How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people died? How many Columbines, Virginia Techs and Tucsons will it take. The answer is there…. if we only bother to listen.