Flint, Michigan. Not a place you'll hear mentioned in the "Pure Michigan" tourism spots. And it sickens me to hear that a Republican Governor who appointed Republican cronies to run a bankrupt city is still in office after poisoning the water of a city of 100,000 people by use of untreated Flint River water.
Would this disaster have happened if the people affected were rich and white? Probably not. One of the mantras of the GOP is mindless cost cutting - if one breaks with the orthodoxy of "no new taxes". They have no compassion for the poor, and months after the water mains were contaminated by leached lead, neither the governor nor the government of which he is in charge has any plan on how to fix this problem.
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The other day, I had the privilege of having a conversation with a "person of color" who is in my circle of acquaintances. I noted that thanks to the internet and our mass media, it is now impossible for an intelligent person to ignore the racism that has been built into the structure of society. (Before we go too far here, I have to note that "racism" is only a partially correct word here. Although these problems mostly affect people of color, they also affect poor whites in similar ways.) We've seen how Ferguson, Missouri's law enforcement policies hurt the predominantly Black community. We've seen how Chicago's police department has had a "hall pass" for many years, where police could easily get away with killing innocent people of color because of a "Blue code of silence" and institutionalized corruption in the police department. And now we're seeing the poisoning of the people of Flint - with no one having a clue about what to do next, because of the size, complexity, and cost of fixing this major problem.
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I don't like using the word "Racism", because it only talks about the problems that affect people of color. The word doesn't talk about the structural problems that affect isolated poor whites in places such as Appalachia, many of which are associated only with people of color. For example, in many states, when a person is convicted of a felony (and has served his/her time), that person is disenfranchised for life - no longer is he/she able to vote in public elections. Many rights and privileges are never restored to the felon - even when none of them were abused in the act of committing the crime for which he/she was convicted.
Structural problems beset both the rural poor (who are predominantly white) and the urban poor (who are predominantly people of color). Jobs that pay a livable wage have left their communities. In Appalachia, coal mines have shut down, leaving large numbers of isolated towns to live on the government dole. In the inner cities, the manufacturing jobs that once provided a leg up for the urban poor are gone, leaving only those service jobs that have salaries well below the poverty line for those lower skilled people looking to work. (In both cases, higher education is unavailable to them, as both the local schools leave them unprepared for college work, and that the effective price of college (even with grants and loans) is way too high for many to afford college. This leaves many of the poor (in both rural and urban settings) to do business in the "shadow economy".
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The "Shadow Economy" is one of great risk. For some, it is turning what were once "Food Stamps" into cash by trading "food stuffs" (which in some states include sugary, carbonated beverages) for cash, goods, and services. In one online article I read, the effective price of sexual favors in a rural shadow economy (net cash, after translation from food stamps) was as little at $13.50. That's much cheaper than the price of legally provided sexual services in a Nevada bordello, where oral sex costs roughly $100, and Coitus costs roughly $200 - as of 2002. For others, it is the ability to participate in the drug trade - where one's criminal record has no standing on whether one gets hired or not. With the exception of the drug kingpins, people on the low end of the drug trade (e.g.: street dealers) make less money per hour (according to the people who wrote "Freakonomics") than they would if they flipped burgers at the local McDonald's.
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So where do we go to fix this problem? The rural poor see the people in the "big city" as the enemy. How else could Ted Cruz have gotten away with slandering Donald Trump for having "New York Values"? But one has to contrast this with the Reverend Al Sharpton's knee jerk defense of Tawana Brawley - even though her claims were discredited later on. His constituency has just as much disdain for rural areas of this country, as the rural areas help to perpetuate the racist myth that the poverty in urban poor areas is caused by the poor alone.
To me, the only way to answer this question is the way LBJ answered it. Remove color from the equation and look at the problem as an issue of both socially and physically isolated communities which have been effectively alienated from the larger society. My question becomes: How do we integrate both rural and urban poor back into the larger society. Hopefully, we can answer this question sooner, rather than later....
P.S.: It looks like the Flint Water Poisonings may now be treated as a criminal matter.
I don't often put a advocacy group's graphic on my page without some editing. But I was a little lazy today, and I also did not want to take anything out of context.
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The folks that organize around the phrase "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) have been getting a lot of press these days. But what are they really campaigning for (or against)? As I see it, they are trying to get society to deal with the structural racism hidden in society, rules and regulations that most white people take for granted as benign, but have become very harmful to poor blacks. And they have some good points....
One of the things we've learned from the Ferguson, MO incidents is that the municipality made a good amount of money from poor people being unable to advocate for themselves after minor contact with the law. For example, a jaywalking infraction (when was the last time anyone you know got ticketed for this in the USA?) could require a person to appear before a court. Without adequate and inexpensive mass transit (and convenient court schedules), this person might not be able to appear, causing a default judgement to be assessed against the person. This person, not being able to afford paying the assessment would have a warrant issued to bring the person into the local jail, causing this person to have a record - and not be able to get a job. The police did not reflect the makeup of the community, and were totally alienated from the people whom they were supposed to serve. Therefore, BLM has a point to make when it comes to "broken windows policing". (This was also a factor in the Baltimore riots....)
All communities should be overseeing their police forces. All too often, the law enforcers get a "hall pass" on the degree which they can stretch the law in enforcing the law. How often in the past was the Billy Club used to "Tenderize" a suspect? All too often.
In today's world, the police are still much better, but not perfect. In McAllen Texas, there was a recent incident where a police officer wrongfully slammed a 15 year old black girl to the ground - and this was the same officer who wrongfully pulled out his gun during the same incident - would he have done this to a white girl? No. This is why we need citizen oversight - to hold the police accountable to the public they serve.
I'm not sure about you, but I want to limit the police force's ability to use force. Given the above mentioned incident, it frightens me that we depend on violence to keep our citizenry in line. What is the next step? Yes, the threat (and potential use) of violence is often needed. But we tend to abuse it in this country - we forget to be civil and polite first, then things escalate out of control.
Now, I'm concerned about the militarization of the police in this country. If the police get military surplus equipment, they will want to find excuses to use it. And they do. This could help America become a police state if the wrong demagogues get elected. (Can you imagine what would happen if a bombastic real estate developer actually ran a local police force? I'd be very afraid - and we have a person like this running for POTUS!) Years ago, this country made the decision to separate military aircraft development from civilian aircraft development, as they had their own unique needs. The same now goes for the tools used to impose a nation's or community's will - a military needs to impose its rule without much regard to those in opposition, while a police force must be sensitive to the needs of the entire community.
I could write several entries on the issues raised by BLM/Campaign Zero. But instead, I figure it best that their manifesto be examined, as they make some very good points....
Do not interpret this post as an endorsement of Hillary. As much as I am not a fan of any of the GOP candidates so far, I am not a fan of Hillary. At the time of writing this entry, I know more about where the 3 GOP candidates stand than I do of where of where Hillary stands - and that's a big problem. Hillary is a Machiavellian Sphinx.
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The democrats have a big weakness - they have no fallback candidates. Elizabeth Warren does not want to run for president - her power, like Ted Kennedy's power, is to influence the debate from the Senate chamber. She is a true liberal, and has more access to the levers of power as a senator than she ever would as a presidential candidate. If she were to run against Hillary, she would only force Hillary to move to the right, instead of being able to pull Hillary to the left, as she could from the Senate floor.
Next comes Bernie Sanders. I respect him because he's a true, honest liberal. He will likely run for president, even though he can't win. The taint of the "Liberal" brush has made it impossible for him to capture any of the "Red States". Yet, he has ideas which must be included in the presidential debate, although he has no chance against Hillary.
But who is left in the Democratic party to challenge Hillary? If there is anyone, then who is he/she, and what does he/she stand for?
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Let's say that Hillary loses. Who does the Democratic party have on its bench for the 2020 run? I see no one who can capture enough Red states to make a difference. This is very important. Although demographics are favoring the left over the long term, they strongly favor the right in the short term. Gerrymandering, abuses of political powers, stacking of the courts, and other tactics will make it much harder for the left to gain power in the normal cycle of the political pendulum - and this is dangerous, as it will make the stakes even greater each election cycle, and authoritarians tend to abuse power to stay in power.
If we look at the recent problems in Ferguson, MO, we find that there is a political district whose officials are not representative of the community as a whole. A large percent of the community has been disenfranchised (made ineligible to vote) because of minor legal infractions. Even though these people have paid their time for their crimes, their rights have not been restored. Add to this, a government which is financed mostly by predatory law enforcement, and one has a pot ready to boil over.
What happens when the pot boils over? The most recent time it did, we had riots - which makes the people from the community look bad. These riots are disorganized, and do not serve much than to be a collective release of anger. This is inexcusable, as much as it is ineffective. But what would happen if these same people were to get illegal weapons and overthrow the police using selective assassinations? We could see a situation similar to that occurring in Central Europe in the 1920's - where Fascists and Communists fought in the streets, and a relatively unknown Austrian found a voice and a forum to gain power after a short stint in prison. You might have heard of his most famous book - its English title is "My Struggle".
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"My Struggle" is not the name most people associate with this book. They are more familiar with its German title "Mein Kampf". Years ago, I had a conversation with a friend whose political views shifted far to the right, a friend from whom I disconnected to preserve my sanity. And at that time, we both came to the conclusion that the political left decays much more quickly, as it tends to place more emphasis on the rights of the individual than the political right. The political right puts a greater emphasis on the needs of the tribe (its tribe) over that of the individual, though it uses misleading language stressing individual and collective liberty.
We've seen this problem before. Leaders (from the right) stir up hatred for selected minorities who do not have the power to fight back - and the average person follows, as a herd mentality takes over. In 1934, it was hard to believe how quickly a free Germany changed into an authoritarian state. People got tired of the political battles, and surrendered power to an authoritarian government simply to end the fighting - and instead, got war. We have that same danger in today's America - give those authoritarians power, and they will keep us poor and in forever wars. So it is extremely important for the political left to again have a strong back bench of people who know how to use the levers of power - if only to check and balance the political right.....
