Ooops..... update to the Barriers to Entry..... it seems that the $17,000 I made in 2011 exceed the $15,600 threshold I need for the fee waiver on the application fees. It doesn't matter that in the last year I haven't made $5600 dollars, only that over a year ago I made slightly more than the threshold. What about now? What about that I haven't made much of anything since and have been living off of the assistance of others right now? As if the only people that need fee waivers are the perpetually poor, not the recently unemployed or underemployed. Does poverty only exist in line with the tax year? No, it is endemic and symptomatic of American society, yet we can't even offer education for our citizens to bring themselves out of poverty. Basically, the system that's fucked you, just keeps on fucking you. That's no meritocracy. That's capitalism.
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
The Barriers to Entry
So I am applying to PhD programs again this year. But as is the American motto, it takes money to make money (or even to try to get the chance to learn how to make money). This is an issue for me. I am poor. I have made maybe 4 to 5,000 dollars this year so far. I've been staying places for free, working whenever I could find money - political fundraising, childcare, construction, catering, whatever. All the while looking for real work and doing volunteer stuff. Nothing has been materializing in my over/underqualified world.
So here I am, back to the old dream and applying for schools. This of course is met with a broad smack in the face at America's true shame: the barriers to entry faced by low income individuals. To get into programs I need to "apply widely" (as I've been advised) to increase my chances of entry. This is something I intended to, but did not do last year for various reasons mostly revolving around my involvement with Occupy. But the shear barriers to be able to apply to a number of programs are immense. Between application fees, the cost of sending GRE scores ($25 per school), and transcripts ($25 to send them from all three schools that I attended), is a lot of money. If I want to apply to ten schools, that is $250 for the GRE scores, and then another $250 for one set of transcripts each (though many schools require you to send two), before you even look at application fees. The cost of fees which are usually between $75 and $100. So that's $12-1500 to apply to ten schools. I have 18 on my short list and 12 that I feel that I need to apply to. So I'd be looking at $1600 minimum and over $2000 to apply to the bulk of them and give myself the best shot at getting in. NOt to mention the cost of my time to do the research and write the applications.
Now granted some schools offer application fee waivers for low income applicants. But not all. Three of my first six don't. And it is $275 for those three. I had been counting on them all having waivers, but there are solid schools for me that I really have to apply to for the best chances of admission. Two of these I have connections at already working for me that are strongly encouraging me to apply. But I may not be able to now. To everyone that thinks America is a meritocracy take a second look. I may not even be able to apply to some schools because just I don't have enough money. And one of these mentioned is my fall back school. I have to apply, it is the only way to try to guarantee my acceptance.
But what if I was rich? I could apply to 20 schools, 30 school, whatever. My chances of getting in would be greater, thus my chances of success in this field greater. But no. Not mine. I'm low income. I have to make strategic decisions (such as the one that I made last year and then didn't get in anywhere). I have barriers to my entry. The Lohan's, Kardashian's, and Hilton's, and Drake's of the world throw money around on glitter, bottles of champagne, strippers, and superficial material things, yet a person looking to go back to school and make both themselves and hopefully some day the world a better places can not do it for the simple cost of one of those bottles of champagne.
How can anyone say this is the greatest country there is? We claim to be a place where you can do anything! Well I may not be able to apply to go to school because I am not wealthy enough. In most places in Europe, school tuition is free, never mind applications. If you are good enough to go, you get to go. I may not even be able to apply, and for no other reason than that I am poor.
So here I am, back to the old dream and applying for schools. This of course is met with a broad smack in the face at America's true shame: the barriers to entry faced by low income individuals. To get into programs I need to "apply widely" (as I've been advised) to increase my chances of entry. This is something I intended to, but did not do last year for various reasons mostly revolving around my involvement with Occupy. But the shear barriers to be able to apply to a number of programs are immense. Between application fees, the cost of sending GRE scores ($25 per school), and transcripts ($25 to send them from all three schools that I attended), is a lot of money. If I want to apply to ten schools, that is $250 for the GRE scores, and then another $250 for one set of transcripts each (though many schools require you to send two), before you even look at application fees. The cost of fees which are usually between $75 and $100. So that's $12-1500 to apply to ten schools. I have 18 on my short list and 12 that I feel that I need to apply to. So I'd be looking at $1600 minimum and over $2000 to apply to the bulk of them and give myself the best shot at getting in. NOt to mention the cost of my time to do the research and write the applications.
Now granted some schools offer application fee waivers for low income applicants. But not all. Three of my first six don't. And it is $275 for those three. I had been counting on them all having waivers, but there are solid schools for me that I really have to apply to for the best chances of admission. Two of these I have connections at already working for me that are strongly encouraging me to apply. But I may not be able to now. To everyone that thinks America is a meritocracy take a second look. I may not even be able to apply to some schools because just I don't have enough money. And one of these mentioned is my fall back school. I have to apply, it is the only way to try to guarantee my acceptance.
But what if I was rich? I could apply to 20 schools, 30 school, whatever. My chances of getting in would be greater, thus my chances of success in this field greater. But no. Not mine. I'm low income. I have to make strategic decisions (such as the one that I made last year and then didn't get in anywhere). I have barriers to my entry. The Lohan's, Kardashian's, and Hilton's, and Drake's of the world throw money around on glitter, bottles of champagne, strippers, and superficial material things, yet a person looking to go back to school and make both themselves and hopefully some day the world a better places can not do it for the simple cost of one of those bottles of champagne.
How can anyone say this is the greatest country there is? We claim to be a place where you can do anything! Well I may not be able to apply to go to school because I am not wealthy enough. In most places in Europe, school tuition is free, never mind applications. If you are good enough to go, you get to go. I may not even be able to apply, and for no other reason than that I am poor.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
The Meaning of September 17th.
September 17th - the start of the Occupy Wall St. protests - was the day that would start a true test for the United States of America. Whether you believe in the message of the Occupy protests or not, what truly has been tested here, to me, is whether America still stands for the freedoms generally thought to be our founding values (the historical validity of those values/freedoms are an entirely different story). Thus far, one year in to the Occupy protests, I do not believe that we do uphold our ideals. Freedom of speech, the right to peaceful assembly, to march through the streets and act out against injustice and tyranny? These are principles deeply ingrained within the America's principles tough to so many from such a young age. These ideas are what we are said to be founded upon.
What I have seen though, through my involvement with the Occupy protests, is a systemic crack down on freedom of speech, on protest, and on messages that the people ruling the cordons of American power do not seem to want disseminated. From the top down, federal, state, and local governments have colluded and systematically squelched or failed allow the movement to be heard. Most importantly though it is not just the government but the politico-industrial complex that has stifled what they consider atypical political expression. Collusion and corruption of the corporate and governmental apparatus has been amazingly efficient and effective. What have you heard of the occupy protests of late? Maybe you heard something on May 1st, maybe you if you looked for it you read something last week about Occupy supporting the unionization and victory of restaurant workers at Hot and Crusty in NYC, or supporting stop and frisk protests. Maybe if you get our newsletter you know more. But most people don't. It hasn't been covered by the main stream media, or even much of the marginally mainstream media, since not long after the park was cleared. Occupy "was no longer a story", something without need to be covered. Even when an unprecedented collaboration of labor, activist, and community contingents teamed up to put perhaps as many as 100,000 people on the streets of NYC alone on May 1st, the media's coverage solely reported a claim that Occupy snarled traffic and 25 people were arrested. They did not report why, or the reasons for the protests that day. No witness accounts, no ground level reporting.
The police were at the same time doing everything they could to suppress and divide the protesters on that May 1st . The top down collusion between Mayor Bloomberg, police chief Ray Kelly, and the entire NYPD has been criminal. It lead to a 200 page report by the NYU and Fordham law schools that universally condemned the police's response as continually violating the 1st amendment and human rights.
Mayor Bloomberg of ourse has a tremendous amount to gain in all of this. Worth billions of dollars, the message that occupy pushes - ending corporate and governmental corruption and bringing economic and social justice to everyone (the 99% & the 1% included) - is not something the wealthy and powerful in this country and world seem want heard. We are looking for better schools, living wages, sustainable employment, and a functioning electoral system. Regulation of the banks, public private collusion, and the environment. Equal opportunity for all races, ethnic groups, sexual preferences, genders, etc. We want a world where the 1% does not control everything. Where power is dissipated more towards the rest of us.
Now I can understand that those in positions of power would not want this. They like being in charge. But I can also tell you that as per America's bespoke values and purpose their personal power-lust should. not. matter. If we are a country based on freedom, equal opportunities civil liberties, and justice, then it should not matter how much money you have, you should be able to have a voice. That voice should be able to be heard - and not just once a year in the ballot booth where the electoral options are already rigged by the powerful. We should be able to see and have solid ethical journalism that is not controlled by private interests, that covers real people's stories, and the way real people live (75% of America lives on less than $50,000 a year, 20% below the poverty line. We are not the Khardashian's nor aspire to be). We should have elected officials that we can actually chose, not a one on one winner take all corporately controlled election of the rich. We should have economic and educational opportunities that include everyone - no matter their socio-economic status at birth . I mean our America today does not provide basic healthcare 50,000,000 people. We are diving down a long steep slope and need to be allowed to speak up and slow this process. To stop it.
What I have realized over the last year are in fact that our oppressors are powerful and deep rooted. But the minute you squelch free speech - in AMERICA - the "land of the free and the brave" - you are quickly nothing more than an oppressor. Federal, state, and local, governments have done this. Local and federal law enforcement offices have done this. Corporate money and back room dealings have done this. The media has done this. Thus, the general public has done this as well - if you believe we live in a Democracy.
September 17th to me is the day that America tested itself. And one year later, if I am the one giving out the grades? We've failed miserably. The top down control has managed the information and propaganda and its social control mechanisms, while the bottom up will of the people has not materialized. Will we rise up to the challenge and make amends? Will we recapture our core values and freedoms? Even in the face of losing power for some, will they do what is right and say, hey, this is America "home of the free and the brave", we have to let these people speak! My inclination is no, they won't. They will not, and that is why Sept 17th is the start of us trying to take our country back from our oppressors. Sadly, that oppression started in the 18th century when the country was founded by the same people stifling us today. The same rich, white, monied interests that didn't see African-Americans, Native Americans, or even woman as people of equal merit, but as tools, pawns, or niceties. Amazing how we are fighting the same fight today that we fought back then. Maybe that should tell us something, that those ideals of freedom and such are not actually what America has always been about... but maybe still, what it should be about, and what it will someday actually be!
What I have seen though, through my involvement with the Occupy protests, is a systemic crack down on freedom of speech, on protest, and on messages that the people ruling the cordons of American power do not seem to want disseminated. From the top down, federal, state, and local governments have colluded and systematically squelched or failed allow the movement to be heard. Most importantly though it is not just the government but the politico-industrial complex that has stifled what they consider atypical political expression. Collusion and corruption of the corporate and governmental apparatus has been amazingly efficient and effective. What have you heard of the occupy protests of late? Maybe you heard something on May 1st, maybe you if you looked for it you read something last week about Occupy supporting the unionization and victory of restaurant workers at Hot and Crusty in NYC, or supporting stop and frisk protests. Maybe if you get our newsletter you know more. But most people don't. It hasn't been covered by the main stream media, or even much of the marginally mainstream media, since not long after the park was cleared. Occupy "was no longer a story", something without need to be covered. Even when an unprecedented collaboration of labor, activist, and community contingents teamed up to put perhaps as many as 100,000 people on the streets of NYC alone on May 1st, the media's coverage solely reported a claim that Occupy snarled traffic and 25 people were arrested. They did not report why, or the reasons for the protests that day. No witness accounts, no ground level reporting.
The police were at the same time doing everything they could to suppress and divide the protesters on that May 1st . The top down collusion between Mayor Bloomberg, police chief Ray Kelly, and the entire NYPD has been criminal. It lead to a 200 page report by the NYU and Fordham law schools that universally condemned the police's response as continually violating the 1st amendment and human rights.
Mayor Bloomberg of ourse has a tremendous amount to gain in all of this. Worth billions of dollars, the message that occupy pushes - ending corporate and governmental corruption and bringing economic and social justice to everyone (the 99% & the 1% included) - is not something the wealthy and powerful in this country and world seem want heard. We are looking for better schools, living wages, sustainable employment, and a functioning electoral system. Regulation of the banks, public private collusion, and the environment. Equal opportunity for all races, ethnic groups, sexual preferences, genders, etc. We want a world where the 1% does not control everything. Where power is dissipated more towards the rest of us.
Now I can understand that those in positions of power would not want this. They like being in charge. But I can also tell you that as per America's bespoke values and purpose their personal power-lust should. not. matter. If we are a country based on freedom, equal opportunities civil liberties, and justice, then it should not matter how much money you have, you should be able to have a voice. That voice should be able to be heard - and not just once a year in the ballot booth where the electoral options are already rigged by the powerful. We should be able to see and have solid ethical journalism that is not controlled by private interests, that covers real people's stories, and the way real people live (75% of America lives on less than $50,000 a year, 20% below the poverty line. We are not the Khardashian's nor aspire to be). We should have elected officials that we can actually chose, not a one on one winner take all corporately controlled election of the rich. We should have economic and educational opportunities that include everyone - no matter their socio-economic status at birth . I mean our America today does not provide basic healthcare 50,000,000 people. We are diving down a long steep slope and need to be allowed to speak up and slow this process. To stop it.
What I have realized over the last year are in fact that our oppressors are powerful and deep rooted. But the minute you squelch free speech - in AMERICA - the "land of the free and the brave" - you are quickly nothing more than an oppressor. Federal, state, and local, governments have done this. Local and federal law enforcement offices have done this. Corporate money and back room dealings have done this. The media has done this. Thus, the general public has done this as well - if you believe we live in a Democracy.
September 17th to me is the day that America tested itself. And one year later, if I am the one giving out the grades? We've failed miserably. The top down control has managed the information and propaganda and its social control mechanisms, while the bottom up will of the people has not materialized. Will we rise up to the challenge and make amends? Will we recapture our core values and freedoms? Even in the face of losing power for some, will they do what is right and say, hey, this is America "home of the free and the brave", we have to let these people speak! My inclination is no, they won't. They will not, and that is why Sept 17th is the start of us trying to take our country back from our oppressors. Sadly, that oppression started in the 18th century when the country was founded by the same people stifling us today. The same rich, white, monied interests that didn't see African-Americans, Native Americans, or even woman as people of equal merit, but as tools, pawns, or niceties. Amazing how we are fighting the same fight today that we fought back then. Maybe that should tell us something, that those ideals of freedom and such are not actually what America has always been about... but maybe still, what it should be about, and what it will someday actually be!
Monday, August 27, 2012
My posts are starting to suck!
Usually I write a post at some point when an idea pops into my head, then I come back to it and edit it later. I have been systematically going through these unpublished posts and trying to edit them and get them up dated when they were written. What I am finding is that a lot of the ones that seem to have been written of late, as in the last couples months or so, are not very good. I always felt for such a long time that there was a critical insight, an analysis that made sense and had a point in my writing. Much of what I have just read though in the last couple days has been scattered and fragmented, with the point getting lost somewhere between start and end.
I used to write a great deal about the conflict within us and our society. But that is not coming out in these posts of late. I was out there in the world, doing, working, and critiquing. Now I am mostly holed up in a basement trying desperately to find something to do, someplace to live. I have to say that this is dispiriting and seems to be effecting me on a subconscious level. It is amazing to read about the unemployed and about skills being lost, while I sit in a basement without any outlet to really use mine. I don't think I am losing anything, in fact I feel like I am gaining perspective and a deeper understanding of struggle, nevermind desire and drive (that feels more like desperation, lol). This additional contextual clarity will aid me some day, but still, the things I am editing right now need rewriting not editing.
Where was I when I wrote those things? Both literally and cognitively? Was I out and about, writing on my phone maybe? Or more importantly, what was my mindset? Perhaps I am or was scattered to the point of desperation. When you have a million things to do, you just do them. It is the stress of all these things that makes you unable to get them done, not the tasks themselves. When that stress takes the form of not knowing where you will live, how you will pay for food, and what the future holds, not to mention the stress of the loss of a special someone all at once, things seem easily scattered.
Basically, I guess what I am saying is there is little coherent social critique in emotions. My feelings of stress from a lack of employment and the subsequent prospect of homelessness are just that: raw feelings. They are not analysis. Granted, if I could turn those feelings into an analysis of themselves, where they come from and why, I would be looking at avenues for alleviating the issues generating that stress. But I think it takes a clear mind to provide solid analysis, and when you are worrying about food and shelter, that clarity of mind doesn't readily exist. You become desperate, reaching for things that you think could solve those emotions, rather than the fog that makes them worse. You want permanence and career jobs rather than the retail or server work that can replace your short term desperation with longer term despair. But what then when they meld together over years? Struggle compounds.
I am seeing this transition of self expressive capacity - the the wavering between analytical writing, and desperation and the discombobulation of a page - and can't help but wonder how we can still talk about doing away with things like school lunch programs, public housing, and other such "entitlement programs" that so directly affect children coming from disadvantaged homes. How could they not be affected? How could they be considered to have the same opportunities as others? When you go home to a nice happy home with a family, food, and human security, you wake up the next morning ready to go back to school - homework done, familially supported, relaxation time had. But what about those without that? I can physically see the toll its taken on me - and I'm an adult! Imagine a 7 or 8 year old kid without food or stability? Of course it is going to affect their outputs.
Anyway, again, I'm all over the place. There is a lot of stress on me, as there is on the millions of un/under employed and poor in this country and world. Those of you with jobs and wealth don't see it, you don't see the struggle, the pain. You don't see the strength it takes every day. You just want to tell us how easy it is and what to do to make it all work. As if I had complete and total control over someone else giving me a job. Bottom line is, there just aren't enough jobs out there for everyone, many of those that are don't pay living wages or offer career value, and there isn't enough money to get funding to start your own. Whether I can do the work or not doesn't matter. My biggest task has become dealing with the pain and stress of not knowing what's going to happen next...
Sympathy accepted, job interviews rewarded!!
I used to write a great deal about the conflict within us and our society. But that is not coming out in these posts of late. I was out there in the world, doing, working, and critiquing. Now I am mostly holed up in a basement trying desperately to find something to do, someplace to live. I have to say that this is dispiriting and seems to be effecting me on a subconscious level. It is amazing to read about the unemployed and about skills being lost, while I sit in a basement without any outlet to really use mine. I don't think I am losing anything, in fact I feel like I am gaining perspective and a deeper understanding of struggle, nevermind desire and drive (that feels more like desperation, lol). This additional contextual clarity will aid me some day, but still, the things I am editing right now need rewriting not editing.
Where was I when I wrote those things? Both literally and cognitively? Was I out and about, writing on my phone maybe? Or more importantly, what was my mindset? Perhaps I am or was scattered to the point of desperation. When you have a million things to do, you just do them. It is the stress of all these things that makes you unable to get them done, not the tasks themselves. When that stress takes the form of not knowing where you will live, how you will pay for food, and what the future holds, not to mention the stress of the loss of a special someone all at once, things seem easily scattered.
Basically, I guess what I am saying is there is little coherent social critique in emotions. My feelings of stress from a lack of employment and the subsequent prospect of homelessness are just that: raw feelings. They are not analysis. Granted, if I could turn those feelings into an analysis of themselves, where they come from and why, I would be looking at avenues for alleviating the issues generating that stress. But I think it takes a clear mind to provide solid analysis, and when you are worrying about food and shelter, that clarity of mind doesn't readily exist. You become desperate, reaching for things that you think could solve those emotions, rather than the fog that makes them worse. You want permanence and career jobs rather than the retail or server work that can replace your short term desperation with longer term despair. But what then when they meld together over years? Struggle compounds.
I am seeing this transition of self expressive capacity - the the wavering between analytical writing, and desperation and the discombobulation of a page - and can't help but wonder how we can still talk about doing away with things like school lunch programs, public housing, and other such "entitlement programs" that so directly affect children coming from disadvantaged homes. How could they not be affected? How could they be considered to have the same opportunities as others? When you go home to a nice happy home with a family, food, and human security, you wake up the next morning ready to go back to school - homework done, familially supported, relaxation time had. But what about those without that? I can physically see the toll its taken on me - and I'm an adult! Imagine a 7 or 8 year old kid without food or stability? Of course it is going to affect their outputs.
Anyway, again, I'm all over the place. There is a lot of stress on me, as there is on the millions of un/under employed and poor in this country and world. Those of you with jobs and wealth don't see it, you don't see the struggle, the pain. You don't see the strength it takes every day. You just want to tell us how easy it is and what to do to make it all work. As if I had complete and total control over someone else giving me a job. Bottom line is, there just aren't enough jobs out there for everyone, many of those that are don't pay living wages or offer career value, and there isn't enough money to get funding to start your own. Whether I can do the work or not doesn't matter. My biggest task has become dealing with the pain and stress of not knowing what's going to happen next...
Sympathy accepted, job interviews rewarded!!
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Guns
So I've got to weigh in on this gun debate given the rash of large scale shootings that seem to litter the news every other day now. At what point are we going to stop saying that these are individual actors acting singularly and in isolation? There is just too many of them:
Lets just take this most recent rash of incidents. A doctoral student reportedly to have schizophrenia loses it and kills/wounds over sixty people trying to watch a movie. Then a white supremest kills another six "dark people" while they're trying to exercise their religious freedom and go to the equivalent of church on a Sunday. Today, a man starts firing indiscriminately when someone tries to show up to evict him from his home? Doesn't take much to put together pieces of a decrepit puzzle together here.
I have a cousin with schizophrenia that lives in Colorado. The care is atrociousness. He just can't really get any. He hasn't been able to get on disability, can't keep and income or a home, has gone after his mother with a knife, and was found naked in over a foot of snow having walked up a mountain in the Rockies. He thinks he is Jesus Christ, King James, and himself all together as if time was nonlinear. But even with all that, he can't get proper care. He's tried going to Minnesota and California but still can't sort it out. I wonder what kind of care the Aurora shooter was getting? I also wonder how much student debt he had (or that his relatives now have as it can roll over with death). What do you think his job prospects were for when he finished school? Or those around him that he cared about?
Fast forward to Wisconsin and we find a white supremacist trained by the army to kill, and perhaps even trained in the army to kill "colored" people. A whole army base becomes notorious for issues with basically breeding white supremacist communities in the nineties, yet has anything been done about it? And what about his life now? He lost his home not to long ago, foreclosed on of course (at least he didn't shoot the people that came to kick him out - they were probably white). How did this happen? He couldn't stick in the army long enough for a pension, reportedly due to his racist tendencies (but maybe due to spending cuts). So he's thrown out to the wolves, but he's trained to kill, he should be fine, right? So he struggles to make ends meet as a truck driver, ends up down on his luck. Hate fostered deep within him, a scapegoat right around the corner, and what it seems he must have thought was nothing to lose.
Now what about Texas today? "You aren't gonna evict me from my house!" I can just hear him yelling out the window. How do you think he felt about his luck? About his prospects for the future? What do you think his socio-economic situation was? I'm pretty willing to bet he wasn't so close to the 1% (despite apparently living on George Bush Blvd).
It's pretty obvious here people. What we have is a society in decline and disrepair. Disparity of incomes have sky rocketed over the last several decades, poverty is rampant - 15% of the population, almost 50 million people (most of which are children). Unemployment nationally is above 15% when you include everyone not working that wants to, but some places like California have unemployment rates over 20%. All these numbers are pretty similar to the numbers of people that have no health care. Sadly, these are not all the same people in each of these statistics. House after house is being foreclosed upon, job after job is being shed, a drought stricken heartland is collapsing while the government subsidizes making fuel out of corn to feed our car addiction, our inner cities are seeing rising poverty levels, epidemic crimes statistics, brutal police repression, and overflowing prisons, while everywhere is seeing shrinking service programs for the needy and plummeting education budgets. Yet our "leaders" go on vacation while their approval ratings have flirted with single digits. And lets not even get started on 20% of our GDP going to servicing a national debt mostly owed to China and various middle eastern enclaves that we claim we need to defend ourselves from, or on the walls we are putting up around our boarders, or definitely on the rich sitting on their verandas buying political power.
This disaster is of course all happening while we are bombarded with useless distractions throughout our daily existence. Billboards pollute our eyes with visions of uselessness, TV's fill our ears with aimless chatter of "real" world scenarios that none of us will ever live, medications "alleviate" joint pain only to cause, dry mouth, headaches, runny noses, occasional aches and pains, impotency, possible cardiac arrests, insanity, and in "a very small percentage of test cases" death. Advertisements for giant manly trucks help dry up the Midwest, toys, clothes, bags, TV's, video games, cars, boats, whatever! We don't need them all, but our whole lives have become about obtaining them all - consuming them. The message is all sitting there directly in front of us. Obtain everything, you need it. It will help distract you from all the things that suck about the world we live in.
But we don't seem to be able to put two and two together. To recognize that we have created a cycle of disrepair and disrepute. This sordid society is eating itself from within, and giving itself the tools to do it more quickly - guns.
Personally, I think a gun is too much power for one person to hold in there hands at one time. I don't want to have the power to so easily kill in my hands. A simple twitch of a finger and you're dead. Not for me. But I also, who am I to tell others what to do and how to think? I can only lead by example and express my views with little or no expectations. So, I'm not going to tell you not to have your guns, but I am going to tell you that you must live with the repercussions of a society foundationally infused with them. In a perfect world guns could exist, no one would use them. But we don't live in utopia. We live in the the real world, and that world is falling apart. People are desperate, they want, they need, and they can't have - they just simply don't have the means, and it is becoming entrenched. As a society we are no longer moving up the class ladder in ways we did in the past. Real wages have been dropping for decades, yet we've learned to live with the expectations of a society built decades ago on different parameters and with different rules. We have become full of desperate, hungry, angry, disenfranchised people and are having problems with it. But you give all those people access to guns, and you've got a massacre. Just like in Aurora, Wisconsin, Texas, and every major city in the US everyday.
And this is the saddest thing about the society we've created. There was on average 280 people shot today in America. But we only heard about seven of them. This shit happens EVERY day, all the time, yet we do nothing. 70,000 people a year don't act alone. They are not isolated individuals. They are a large part of a society that glorifies guns and criminality, and then gives people every reason and desperate desire to resort to crime, anger, and despair during the last desperate moments of their struggles.
Yes, I AM for much stricter gun control, draconian control actually given the way our society is today. And maybe it wouldn't always have to be like that. Maybe someday we could live in a society without the desperation and hopelessness that we see more and more today. A society that's taken the desire to kill away from people. If the Aurora killer had proper medical care and didn't think he had to get an advanced degree he couldn't pay for to get a job he believed he had to have to be able to survive, would we still be in this place today? Would I still be awake writing this crap? Maybe, because we'd also have to stop creating killer after killer in the name of controlling oil wealth and mineral rights across the world with desperate "volunteers" from our failed education and economic systems. These issues are so big, so intertwined and never ending. What the biggest thing I'm for is a country that starts realizing that WE are the problem. Yes, us, our country, our society, and our choices are creating the images and society we see in the news and the individuals that perpetrate this news. Is individual choice and culture so different in England where they have 58 something gun murders a year? Or what about in Germany where the police shoot 85 bullets PER YEAR IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!!?! In America we can drop that on one "perp" in one night.
Our society is sick. It is sick at it's core. And just as it is rotting away from the inside, we must heal it from the inside. We have to focus on the sick and gangrenous parts: the unemployed, the destitute, the impoverished, the uninsured, the indebted, the marginalized, the hopeless. Because they are in fact our brightest asset, the part of America with the biggest up side, the most talent and aspiration left unfulfilled. Now of course there are a lot of different philosophies on how to do this. But I can assure you that if we don't start there with every ounce of our efforts, it doesn't mater what we do with taxes, marriage equality, abortion rights, or even guns, we'll go straight downhill no matter what - just like we are right now. The problem that we're having within all this though, is that we're neither controlling our anger and despair, or what we do with that anger when we are consumed by it. Until we can figure out how to support and provide for our entire society, we can't allow people the means to so easily take others with them to the deepest depths of their despair.
Oh, and that cop that got shot today, yeah, he had a gun on him - didn't help him much though did it?
"More than 32,000 people in the US die from gunshot wounds yearly—five times the number of US servicemen and women killed in over a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 70,000 or so are wounded by guns presenting the troubling statistic of an average of 280 Americans shot daily."America has a societal problem, and it's of epidemic proportions. We have a society that is rotting from the inside, and practically handing out the lethal tools to act out our angers and aggressions. But, this issue is so much deep than the economy or guns, its about a country and a society in decline.
Lets just take this most recent rash of incidents. A doctoral student reportedly to have schizophrenia loses it and kills/wounds over sixty people trying to watch a movie. Then a white supremest kills another six "dark people" while they're trying to exercise their religious freedom and go to the equivalent of church on a Sunday. Today, a man starts firing indiscriminately when someone tries to show up to evict him from his home? Doesn't take much to put together pieces of a decrepit puzzle together here.
I have a cousin with schizophrenia that lives in Colorado. The care is atrociousness. He just can't really get any. He hasn't been able to get on disability, can't keep and income or a home, has gone after his mother with a knife, and was found naked in over a foot of snow having walked up a mountain in the Rockies. He thinks he is Jesus Christ, King James, and himself all together as if time was nonlinear. But even with all that, he can't get proper care. He's tried going to Minnesota and California but still can't sort it out. I wonder what kind of care the Aurora shooter was getting? I also wonder how much student debt he had (or that his relatives now have as it can roll over with death). What do you think his job prospects were for when he finished school? Or those around him that he cared about?
Fast forward to Wisconsin and we find a white supremacist trained by the army to kill, and perhaps even trained in the army to kill "colored" people. A whole army base becomes notorious for issues with basically breeding white supremacist communities in the nineties, yet has anything been done about it? And what about his life now? He lost his home not to long ago, foreclosed on of course (at least he didn't shoot the people that came to kick him out - they were probably white). How did this happen? He couldn't stick in the army long enough for a pension, reportedly due to his racist tendencies (but maybe due to spending cuts). So he's thrown out to the wolves, but he's trained to kill, he should be fine, right? So he struggles to make ends meet as a truck driver, ends up down on his luck. Hate fostered deep within him, a scapegoat right around the corner, and what it seems he must have thought was nothing to lose.
Now what about Texas today? "You aren't gonna evict me from my house!" I can just hear him yelling out the window. How do you think he felt about his luck? About his prospects for the future? What do you think his socio-economic situation was? I'm pretty willing to bet he wasn't so close to the 1% (despite apparently living on George Bush Blvd).
It's pretty obvious here people. What we have is a society in decline and disrepair. Disparity of incomes have sky rocketed over the last several decades, poverty is rampant - 15% of the population, almost 50 million people (most of which are children). Unemployment nationally is above 15% when you include everyone not working that wants to, but some places like California have unemployment rates over 20%. All these numbers are pretty similar to the numbers of people that have no health care. Sadly, these are not all the same people in each of these statistics. House after house is being foreclosed upon, job after job is being shed, a drought stricken heartland is collapsing while the government subsidizes making fuel out of corn to feed our car addiction, our inner cities are seeing rising poverty levels, epidemic crimes statistics, brutal police repression, and overflowing prisons, while everywhere is seeing shrinking service programs for the needy and plummeting education budgets. Yet our "leaders" go on vacation while their approval ratings have flirted with single digits. And lets not even get started on 20% of our GDP going to servicing a national debt mostly owed to China and various middle eastern enclaves that we claim we need to defend ourselves from, or on the walls we are putting up around our boarders, or definitely on the rich sitting on their verandas buying political power.
This disaster is of course all happening while we are bombarded with useless distractions throughout our daily existence. Billboards pollute our eyes with visions of uselessness, TV's fill our ears with aimless chatter of "real" world scenarios that none of us will ever live, medications "alleviate" joint pain only to cause, dry mouth, headaches, runny noses, occasional aches and pains, impotency, possible cardiac arrests, insanity, and in "a very small percentage of test cases" death. Advertisements for giant manly trucks help dry up the Midwest, toys, clothes, bags, TV's, video games, cars, boats, whatever! We don't need them all, but our whole lives have become about obtaining them all - consuming them. The message is all sitting there directly in front of us. Obtain everything, you need it. It will help distract you from all the things that suck about the world we live in.
But we don't seem to be able to put two and two together. To recognize that we have created a cycle of disrepair and disrepute. This sordid society is eating itself from within, and giving itself the tools to do it more quickly - guns.
Personally, I think a gun is too much power for one person to hold in there hands at one time. I don't want to have the power to so easily kill in my hands. A simple twitch of a finger and you're dead. Not for me. But I also, who am I to tell others what to do and how to think? I can only lead by example and express my views with little or no expectations. So, I'm not going to tell you not to have your guns, but I am going to tell you that you must live with the repercussions of a society foundationally infused with them. In a perfect world guns could exist, no one would use them. But we don't live in utopia. We live in the the real world, and that world is falling apart. People are desperate, they want, they need, and they can't have - they just simply don't have the means, and it is becoming entrenched. As a society we are no longer moving up the class ladder in ways we did in the past. Real wages have been dropping for decades, yet we've learned to live with the expectations of a society built decades ago on different parameters and with different rules. We have become full of desperate, hungry, angry, disenfranchised people and are having problems with it. But you give all those people access to guns, and you've got a massacre. Just like in Aurora, Wisconsin, Texas, and every major city in the US everyday.
And this is the saddest thing about the society we've created. There was on average 280 people shot today in America. But we only heard about seven of them. This shit happens EVERY day, all the time, yet we do nothing. 70,000 people a year don't act alone. They are not isolated individuals. They are a large part of a society that glorifies guns and criminality, and then gives people every reason and desperate desire to resort to crime, anger, and despair during the last desperate moments of their struggles.
Yes, I AM for much stricter gun control, draconian control actually given the way our society is today. And maybe it wouldn't always have to be like that. Maybe someday we could live in a society without the desperation and hopelessness that we see more and more today. A society that's taken the desire to kill away from people. If the Aurora killer had proper medical care and didn't think he had to get an advanced degree he couldn't pay for to get a job he believed he had to have to be able to survive, would we still be in this place today? Would I still be awake writing this crap? Maybe, because we'd also have to stop creating killer after killer in the name of controlling oil wealth and mineral rights across the world with desperate "volunteers" from our failed education and economic systems. These issues are so big, so intertwined and never ending. What the biggest thing I'm for is a country that starts realizing that WE are the problem. Yes, us, our country, our society, and our choices are creating the images and society we see in the news and the individuals that perpetrate this news. Is individual choice and culture so different in England where they have 58 something gun murders a year? Or what about in Germany where the police shoot 85 bullets PER YEAR IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!!?! In America we can drop that on one "perp" in one night.
Our society is sick. It is sick at it's core. And just as it is rotting away from the inside, we must heal it from the inside. We have to focus on the sick and gangrenous parts: the unemployed, the destitute, the impoverished, the uninsured, the indebted, the marginalized, the hopeless. Because they are in fact our brightest asset, the part of America with the biggest up side, the most talent and aspiration left unfulfilled. Now of course there are a lot of different philosophies on how to do this. But I can assure you that if we don't start there with every ounce of our efforts, it doesn't mater what we do with taxes, marriage equality, abortion rights, or even guns, we'll go straight downhill no matter what - just like we are right now. The problem that we're having within all this though, is that we're neither controlling our anger and despair, or what we do with that anger when we are consumed by it. Until we can figure out how to support and provide for our entire society, we can't allow people the means to so easily take others with them to the deepest depths of their despair.
Oh, and that cop that got shot today, yeah, he had a gun on him - didn't help him much though did it?
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Fighting for Fair Labor!! (just not yours)
Really?!? Hypocrisy knows no bounds? I just spent a few hours working on an application for an organization working for "fair" labor practices throughout the world. Yes, I'm going to name them:
I considered doing a number of things. A, walking away from the application on principle. But B, I believe in what the organization is trying to do. And then of course most importantly there is C: I have no job. I have no home in a few weeks, and little prospect of alleviating any of this in a desirable manner. In short, I am desperate. Exactly the emotion that they and every other power hungry capitalist business is preying on regarding labor issues. They hold the key and strings to power over us. Force us to compete on only their terms: with a lack of power for the people.
So what do I do? If I send it in with no salary history it won't be considered. But I don't believe in reaffirming that power structure by giving them my salary history – even if I could rummage up the mish-mash of corporate, academic, retail, construction, football, and nannying work I've done and translate the currencies, dated exchange rates, and cost of living indexes – especially as they are supposed to be an organization fighting for MY rights as a worker. Just like I never denote my race, sexual disposition, or any other categorization I do not agree with on anything. No, I think I'm going to have to make a stand on this one, and hope that they respect it. You want someone passionate about labor issues? Someone that is going to fight for them? Yeah, well I'm starting right now - with you! That's the only way I could respect myself in the morning. And frankly, there just isn't enough of that in the world. We all stand for something bigger than ourselves.
So you u want to know my salary history? Well my salary history is that of an expropriated laborer. I have spent my whole life working for people, companies, and organizations that have tried to pay me as little as they possibly could in order to get the maximum amount of work out of me. I don't own any of the means of production; I've volunteered, I've worked and not been paid, I've interned, I've worked hourly, for tips and a for a salary, I've even been used by a university as an athletic beast of burden to fill their coffers. As with most all of us, it has never been enough. The struggles I have been through, the actual dollar amounts that I have obtained though are my business: my economic, my political, and my personal business. I do not want to compete in a rigged power struggle with you before I've even met you, and I don't want you to choose whether to interview, hire, or dismiss my application based on whether I am willing to divulge personal and political information about myself. I want to do a job for you - with you.
As is, while I now have serious reservations about this organization, I can only hope this is simply an isolated theoretical miss-step and that this note is the change needed. Still though, I really would like to do this work and would surely entertain any offer the "Fair" Labor Association gave me.
The Fair Labor Association (FLA) combines the efforts of industry, civil society organizations, and colleges and universities to protect workers’ rights and improve working conditions worldwide by promoting adherence to international labor standards.Sounds great right? And then they put this great disclaimer on the bottom of the job advertisement:
FLA is an equal opportunity employer. It is the FLA's policy to employ, compensate and advance personnel without regard to race, color, religious creed, citizenship, political activity or affiliation, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, veteran status, family care status, sex or gender.But then at the very bottom they say, "applications without salary history will not be considered."
Wait, you mean you don't discriminate against any of those things, and you are fighting for fair and equitable working conditions for people all over the world, but then you start any relationship with your own future employees by reaffirming the same abusive power relationship
that capitalist ownership has held over their workers for centuries.
You know what, I am not comfortable giving you my socio-economic
status. I am not interested in telling you how I am doing
financially, or giving you a glimpse into – what in this country –
is my social and political capacity. The amount of money I make (or
don't make) is personal to me and should not be coerced out of me by
an employer. I understand why you could want to know this; so that
you can pick a person or weigh several candidates based on how much
it is going to cost you to employ them. Right there you have
betrayed the entire purpose of your mission as an organization. You
are now evaluating – and in fact discriminating against – me
based on my willingness to give you intimate details about my life
and doing it in a way that is manipulative and laced with power
implications of an extortionary nature. You are a labor
organization, you are fighting for the rights of individual laborers,
yet you have just told me that I, the prospective employee, have to
furnish you, the prospective employer, with certain personal details
of my life that strengthen your position and control over me as a
potential worker or else you will not consider me for a
position in your company. During the worst economic downturn since
the great depression, where people are dying for jobs, you are going
to bludgeon prospective employees with a take it or leave it position
of blatant and expropriative power that exemplifies the principle
hold of capital and ownership over the rights of labor.
I am truly amazed.
I considered doing a number of things. A, walking away from the application on principle. But B, I believe in what the organization is trying to do. And then of course most importantly there is C: I have no job. I have no home in a few weeks, and little prospect of alleviating any of this in a desirable manner. In short, I am desperate. Exactly the emotion that they and every other power hungry capitalist business is preying on regarding labor issues. They hold the key and strings to power over us. Force us to compete on only their terms: with a lack of power for the people.
So what do I do? If I send it in with no salary history it won't be considered. But I don't believe in reaffirming that power structure by giving them my salary history – even if I could rummage up the mish-mash of corporate, academic, retail, construction, football, and nannying work I've done and translate the currencies, dated exchange rates, and cost of living indexes – especially as they are supposed to be an organization fighting for MY rights as a worker. Just like I never denote my race, sexual disposition, or any other categorization I do not agree with on anything. No, I think I'm going to have to make a stand on this one, and hope that they respect it. You want someone passionate about labor issues? Someone that is going to fight for them? Yeah, well I'm starting right now - with you! That's the only way I could respect myself in the morning. And frankly, there just isn't enough of that in the world. We all stand for something bigger than ourselves.
So you u want to know my salary history? Well my salary history is that of an expropriated laborer. I have spent my whole life working for people, companies, and organizations that have tried to pay me as little as they possibly could in order to get the maximum amount of work out of me. I don't own any of the means of production; I've volunteered, I've worked and not been paid, I've interned, I've worked hourly, for tips and a for a salary, I've even been used by a university as an athletic beast of burden to fill their coffers. As with most all of us, it has never been enough. The struggles I have been through, the actual dollar amounts that I have obtained though are my business: my economic, my political, and my personal business. I do not want to compete in a rigged power struggle with you before I've even met you, and I don't want you to choose whether to interview, hire, or dismiss my application based on whether I am willing to divulge personal and political information about myself. I want to do a job for you - with you.
I view
it as my political and social right to tell you that for fear that my
application could be discriminated against on socio-economic and political grounds that I
chose not to divulge my personal information. That this is my political
stance on corporate power over workers, and I will definitively take a
stand against a labor organization trying to exercise such excessive
power. I hope that as per your disclaimer you won't
discriminate against me for exercising that political right, but it
would be even better if you would step up to your mission statement
and reverse this expropriative power structure between management and
labor in our - and now your - world today.
As is, while I now have serious reservations about this organization, I can only hope this is simply an isolated theoretical miss-step and that this note is the change needed. Still though, I really would like to do this work and would surely entertain any offer the "Fair" Labor Association gave me.
I work because I believe in what I do, and I'd work for
them because I believed in what they do. But their statement about salary
histories tried to make work with them just about money, which everyone knows it is not. It is about making the lives of expropriated
workers throughout the globe better, sadly though, that is going to have to start
right here at home with our own mindsets.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Learning to Pay
So I'm spending a decent amount of time on kids issues these days obviously, and am struggling with the idea that people have to move because of school districts. Why should people have to move to suburbia to get good schooling? Or enter some lottery and hope to get in to local schools? Or pay some exorbitant amount to go to private school from nursery school through high school? And by exorbitant I mean, 20, 30, even 45,000 dollars a year - for preschool!!
Our education system is failing our kids and in turn failing us. So many children don't have enough food, they don't have stable parenting, and then they get to a school where they don't have enough materials, are packed into classrooms, and now are forced into programs styled simply on reaching quantified outcomes that force an emphasis of accountability that has nothing to do with true education. In stead it is a way for the state to feel like it can measure accountability for "failing schools" through nothing but numbers.
It is not about failing schools, but a failing system. And we are of course right now moving away from funding public schools. Moving towards charter schools, with another private option seemingly popping up everyday.
I don't purport to have the answer right here today, but I do know that if we started by funding our schools it would alleviate a lot! One of my colleagues at Occupy has a son who's school after going from 22 to 30 kids per class last year (among other cuts) is going to see another classroom size change this year and will also lose their library. Yes, teaching kids with no books...?!? We have to find a way to provide attention to kids education, not penny pinching quantified accountability focused programs that take the emphasis off educating kids, and put it on bureaucratic accountability, money, and privatization. Too many people get left behind; like an entire city of kids that either can't afford private school, or can't win the lotteries it takes to get into special schools. But hey, with suburban flight all those big retail big box chains get more business, and housing starts can go up, and those poor kids - mostly minorities - that can't move out to find better schools, what do they "matter" anyway, right? WRONG. Fund education so these kids can go to good schools in their own communities, and then stay in these communities and help develop them in ways that don't require gentrification that then force them out into worse neighborhoods with worse schools when the rents go up. And we wonder why we are becoming more economically segregated? It's not be choice, its by systemic decree and economic necessity - which unfortunately usually falls (or is meant to fall) along racial lines.
Our education system is failing our kids and in turn failing us. So many children don't have enough food, they don't have stable parenting, and then they get to a school where they don't have enough materials, are packed into classrooms, and now are forced into programs styled simply on reaching quantified outcomes that force an emphasis of accountability that has nothing to do with true education. In stead it is a way for the state to feel like it can measure accountability for "failing schools" through nothing but numbers.
It is not about failing schools, but a failing system. And we are of course right now moving away from funding public schools. Moving towards charter schools, with another private option seemingly popping up everyday.
I don't purport to have the answer right here today, but I do know that if we started by funding our schools it would alleviate a lot! One of my colleagues at Occupy has a son who's school after going from 22 to 30 kids per class last year (among other cuts) is going to see another classroom size change this year and will also lose their library. Yes, teaching kids with no books...?!? We have to find a way to provide attention to kids education, not penny pinching quantified accountability focused programs that take the emphasis off educating kids, and put it on bureaucratic accountability, money, and privatization. Too many people get left behind; like an entire city of kids that either can't afford private school, or can't win the lotteries it takes to get into special schools. But hey, with suburban flight all those big retail big box chains get more business, and housing starts can go up, and those poor kids - mostly minorities - that can't move out to find better schools, what do they "matter" anyway, right? WRONG. Fund education so these kids can go to good schools in their own communities, and then stay in these communities and help develop them in ways that don't require gentrification that then force them out into worse neighborhoods with worse schools when the rents go up. And we wonder why we are becoming more economically segregated? It's not be choice, its by systemic decree and economic necessity - which unfortunately usually falls (or is meant to fall) along racial lines.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Blood in an open container...
So there was a sort of surreal moment the other night here in "timistan". After a late night at a rather ritzy potluck dinner party with OWSers in Williamsburg (thanks MTA for sucking - yes that's the same MTA that's been raising rates and cutting services), I dragged myself out of bed Saturday and ran to work at the hiking store. I spent the day in Park Slope selling high end hiking gear and chatting with local outdoorsy types. From there it was off for a quick shower and then a celebration of a superfriend's Phd graduation (yes, she wore a cape all night!). It was about a 7 or 8 block walk through Bed-Stuy to get there.
Saturday night in Bed-Stuy is an interesting occurrence. Cops upon cops everywhere. Barbeques on front steps and walkways, loud Afro-Caribbean beats pumping from blocks away. It has a sort of gritty festive feel to it, the kind of thing that turns of many, but is the utmost of fun for those willing to scratch through the tough exterior and find the fun being had underneath.
We got to our friend's and had a little good conversation, a drink, some nachos and some more conversation. The true surreality of the evening really kicked in when the chips were down and I went out to get some more at the local bodega. Of course I wasn't barely out the door yet when I happened upon an older man laying face down at the corner. I couldn't see his head as it was blocked by a fence. I thought, well its NYC, I've seen some odd things and people laying face down on the sidewalk is not uncommon (the last time I saw this a guy was humping the sidewalk). But once I came fully upon him and saw the awkwardness he lay there with I was a bit more concerned. As I got to the other side of him to try to catch a glimpse of his face I saw a large pool of blood gushing out of him. It was the same as you see it in a movie. You know, the kind that is slowly expanding and flowing down hill as it pours out of a person? I was joined by a group of other people right away as well. One older gentleman and myself were assessing the situation as a younger group of people were checking in to see what was going on. He was unconscious with his neck and head cocked in a very awkward way. I called 911 and with the other man we tried to make sure no one moved the injured guy and that he had space.
No one seemed to have seen what happened. While we waited for help people speculated about it all. Some say they heard a thump and looked over to see him laying there with no one around him, others that they saw him drinking earlier, he apparently lived just two buildings down. The contents of his one pocket were strewn about, lotto tickets and some dice. A couple of kids wondered if he'd been mugged or had his pocket contents snatched after he fell. There was only speculation among by-standers, it seemed to me that if he was drunk he might have just simply stumbled over the curb and smacked his head on the ground. It didn't really matter at this point though. He lay there awkward and unconscious.
While waiting for the ambulance he started to move a bit, an arm and then a bit of his head. This was very much a relief for me. All that time playing football makes me very leery of neck injuries, and to see him moving his head was big. I kept trying to get him to stay still but he seemed completely lost as he was awakening, kind of taking stock of all his bits and pieces. He picked his head up to show a massive gash on his eyebrow/temple area. He was completely out of it, dazed and wobbly. At this point a cop car puled up and he all of a sudden got very nervous. He tried to stand up and subsequently fell straight back down onto his backside. Varying consistencies of blood covering the whole side of his face and arm. The bleeding had slowed down, but it was certainly still bleeding.
The police officers came out and tried to get him to sit back down and to remain calm and subdued till the ambulance got there. He was visibly agitated and claiming nothing on the ground was his. He definitely seemed to be quite nervous and maybe even afraid of the police. But nothing about him seemed certain of anything. There didn't seem to be any reason to be afraid of these two officers though as they seemed harmless enough. They were just trying to help the guy and were very thankful to those of us around him, but who knows the context of his life and the complexity of the neighborhood. The cops got him pretty settled down though until the ambulance pulled up. At that point the officers told us we could head out upon our way as everything was under control. I went over to the bodega and got tostitos and water before heading back. I checked in on the way and they said everything was ok - he'd be fine. They had him sitting up on the back of the ambulance and were cleaning the blood from his arm at that point. He seemed resolved to accepting the care from the EMT's and what had happened to him.
I went back to the party. We fired up the nachos, got another drink, and no one else really seemed too bothered by it all past an initial query. As the evening winded down, we headed out towards home. We past the corner were it had all happened and there was still a huge blood soaked spot of the sidewalk next to some of the bits of his pocket that were strewn about. We paused and then kept walking.
Another couple blocks away up Franklin we saw some police lights and commotion in front of us. There were 7 police officers and a cruiser surrounding a kid who couldn't have been much out of his teens. He looked befuddled, annoyed, and all together caged; standing with a semi-circle of officers around him and his back to a wall. We asked him if he was ok, he said yes with some thankfully assured and bonding eye contact. We thought to continue on but lagged as we listening to the banter between them all:
It went on, a constant verbal berating of him. We decided it just didn't seem right, so we stayed and videoed it. The police reacted with some surprise, as if this type of stuff didn't happen out here in the hood. A couple of white passers-by videoing them stop and frisk and shake down a kid on the street. The one police officer of course tried to get us to move away:
The police think somehow that their presence automatically makes people feel safe. But fact of the matter is that the NYPD has killed 6 people this year. There are video's upon video's of cops beating and harassing people all over youtube everywhere from the hood to Occupy. The police do not make me feel safe. You can argue with me all you want, but that is the way I FEEL. I have been pushed, I have been berated, I have had all sort of unlawful, hypocritical, and arbitrary abuse of power dealings with cops at Occupy, and every one of them pales in comparison to what happens in black and brown communities every day of their lives. No I do not feel safe. I saw a statistic two days ago that in the whole of Germany last year the entire police force fired their guns 85 times - total! In America police have dispensed that in one incident and on one person - multiple times! We have a very specific mentality of law enforcement in this country that does not make me feel safe around police officers.
But that is not where the absurdities lie within that evening's stories as my feelings for the police are not what's important. The true concern to me is that a young male walking through Bed-Stuy with a fountain soda cup spiked with alcohol merits seven plus cops and a car, yet it takes over ten minutes for officers to arrive on the scene of a man laying unconscious in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. They weren't but a couple blocks from each other. The whole place was crawling with cops and no one could run over and check on it?
Anyway, eventually they get the kid's summons written and he grabs the ticket and takes off. Literally as if he was a penned up animal given an open gate - half used to it, half ready to just expand his wings and fly as high as could be. With that we exchanged a few snippy pleasantries with the cops and went upon our way.
We weren't a block away though when out of some odd hallucinogenic cartoon movie these two white hipster kids riding completely impractically tall bikes ride straight through a red light. It was like sitting in a film watching Armageddon when all of a sudden the film stops, the lights in the theater come on, and a purple elephant struts across the front of the screen... Poof! The lights go back off and the bombs and guns start again!
The whole evening was such an odd slice of Americana. Face down and bloodied in a island of coplessness in a sea of cops, a text book stop and frisk harassment of a kid with the same spiked cool aid we've all had in our hands so many times, the absurdly princely white hipster kids perched so obliviously high atop their hobby bikes without a care in the world, gentrifying the neighborhood with each pedal, all the while while a couple of white people wander around one of the roughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn never once feeling unsafe amidst the carnage and chaos, as if our skin somehow created some sort of force field that shielded us from the atrocities of others' lives. Resting in an island of aloofness, amidst a storm of uncertainty and social paradigms. Such an odd, surreal world we live in.
Saturday night in Bed-Stuy is an interesting occurrence. Cops upon cops everywhere. Barbeques on front steps and walkways, loud Afro-Caribbean beats pumping from blocks away. It has a sort of gritty festive feel to it, the kind of thing that turns of many, but is the utmost of fun for those willing to scratch through the tough exterior and find the fun being had underneath.
We got to our friend's and had a little good conversation, a drink, some nachos and some more conversation. The true surreality of the evening really kicked in when the chips were down and I went out to get some more at the local bodega. Of course I wasn't barely out the door yet when I happened upon an older man laying face down at the corner. I couldn't see his head as it was blocked by a fence. I thought, well its NYC, I've seen some odd things and people laying face down on the sidewalk is not uncommon (the last time I saw this a guy was humping the sidewalk). But once I came fully upon him and saw the awkwardness he lay there with I was a bit more concerned. As I got to the other side of him to try to catch a glimpse of his face I saw a large pool of blood gushing out of him. It was the same as you see it in a movie. You know, the kind that is slowly expanding and flowing down hill as it pours out of a person? I was joined by a group of other people right away as well. One older gentleman and myself were assessing the situation as a younger group of people were checking in to see what was going on. He was unconscious with his neck and head cocked in a very awkward way. I called 911 and with the other man we tried to make sure no one moved the injured guy and that he had space.
No one seemed to have seen what happened. While we waited for help people speculated about it all. Some say they heard a thump and looked over to see him laying there with no one around him, others that they saw him drinking earlier, he apparently lived just two buildings down. The contents of his one pocket were strewn about, lotto tickets and some dice. A couple of kids wondered if he'd been mugged or had his pocket contents snatched after he fell. There was only speculation among by-standers, it seemed to me that if he was drunk he might have just simply stumbled over the curb and smacked his head on the ground. It didn't really matter at this point though. He lay there awkward and unconscious.
While waiting for the ambulance he started to move a bit, an arm and then a bit of his head. This was very much a relief for me. All that time playing football makes me very leery of neck injuries, and to see him moving his head was big. I kept trying to get him to stay still but he seemed completely lost as he was awakening, kind of taking stock of all his bits and pieces. He picked his head up to show a massive gash on his eyebrow/temple area. He was completely out of it, dazed and wobbly. At this point a cop car puled up and he all of a sudden got very nervous. He tried to stand up and subsequently fell straight back down onto his backside. Varying consistencies of blood covering the whole side of his face and arm. The bleeding had slowed down, but it was certainly still bleeding.
The police officers came out and tried to get him to sit back down and to remain calm and subdued till the ambulance got there. He was visibly agitated and claiming nothing on the ground was his. He definitely seemed to be quite nervous and maybe even afraid of the police. But nothing about him seemed certain of anything. There didn't seem to be any reason to be afraid of these two officers though as they seemed harmless enough. They were just trying to help the guy and were very thankful to those of us around him, but who knows the context of his life and the complexity of the neighborhood. The cops got him pretty settled down though until the ambulance pulled up. At that point the officers told us we could head out upon our way as everything was under control. I went over to the bodega and got tostitos and water before heading back. I checked in on the way and they said everything was ok - he'd be fine. They had him sitting up on the back of the ambulance and were cleaning the blood from his arm at that point. He seemed resolved to accepting the care from the EMT's and what had happened to him.
I went back to the party. We fired up the nachos, got another drink, and no one else really seemed too bothered by it all past an initial query. As the evening winded down, we headed out towards home. We past the corner were it had all happened and there was still a huge blood soaked spot of the sidewalk next to some of the bits of his pocket that were strewn about. We paused and then kept walking.
Another couple blocks away up Franklin we saw some police lights and commotion in front of us. There were 7 police officers and a cruiser surrounding a kid who couldn't have been much out of his teens. He looked befuddled, annoyed, and all together caged; standing with a semi-circle of officers around him and his back to a wall. We asked him if he was ok, he said yes with some thankfully assured and bonding eye contact. We thought to continue on but lagged as we listening to the banter between them all:
"No, come on, tell us you're a drug dealer. Come on, tell us you are please."
"No, I'm not a drug dealer." He said almost seeming bored of it.
It went on, a constant verbal berating of him. We decided it just didn't seem right, so we stayed and videoed it. The police reacted with some surprise, as if this type of stuff didn't happen out here in the hood. A couple of white passers-by videoing them stop and frisk and shake down a kid on the street. The one police officer of course tried to get us to move away:
"You're too close to the officer here, please go back there or across the street."The officer seemed to hesitate, kinda of surprised be our lack of immediate compliance. He then offered another side where we still could see and hear everything. So we swiveled around to that spot. The kid seemed glad to have the support. It was no longer seven to one.
"Then we can't see or hear what's happening." We said as we stayed.
"Yeah, film this! This is bull shit, seven cops cause I got a little something extra in my cool-aid."That's what it was all about. As he'd said when we walked up, they were writing him a summons for an open container. Seven cops and a squad car for an open container violation. He started telling them what he really thought. As if he'd never had the chance to tell the cops what he actually thought about how they treated him and people in his neighborhood. With us there filming, the cops couldn't do anything even if they wanted to. Who is to know what would have happened if we hadn't shown up. They could have given him his citation and parted ways, or they could have hassled him, pushed him around or who knows. As he was telling them all about their business though, the one main cop told us we should get back:
"We don't know what he's got on him."We responded:
"It's not him we're worried about."
The police think somehow that their presence automatically makes people feel safe. But fact of the matter is that the NYPD has killed 6 people this year. There are video's upon video's of cops beating and harassing people all over youtube everywhere from the hood to Occupy. The police do not make me feel safe. You can argue with me all you want, but that is the way I FEEL. I have been pushed, I have been berated, I have had all sort of unlawful, hypocritical, and arbitrary abuse of power dealings with cops at Occupy, and every one of them pales in comparison to what happens in black and brown communities every day of their lives. No I do not feel safe. I saw a statistic two days ago that in the whole of Germany last year the entire police force fired their guns 85 times - total! In America police have dispensed that in one incident and on one person - multiple times! We have a very specific mentality of law enforcement in this country that does not make me feel safe around police officers.
But that is not where the absurdities lie within that evening's stories as my feelings for the police are not what's important. The true concern to me is that a young male walking through Bed-Stuy with a fountain soda cup spiked with alcohol merits seven plus cops and a car, yet it takes over ten minutes for officers to arrive on the scene of a man laying unconscious in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. They weren't but a couple blocks from each other. The whole place was crawling with cops and no one could run over and check on it?
Anyway, eventually they get the kid's summons written and he grabs the ticket and takes off. Literally as if he was a penned up animal given an open gate - half used to it, half ready to just expand his wings and fly as high as could be. With that we exchanged a few snippy pleasantries with the cops and went upon our way.
We weren't a block away though when out of some odd hallucinogenic cartoon movie these two white hipster kids riding completely impractically tall bikes ride straight through a red light. It was like sitting in a film watching Armageddon when all of a sudden the film stops, the lights in the theater come on, and a purple elephant struts across the front of the screen... Poof! The lights go back off and the bombs and guns start again! The whole evening was such an odd slice of Americana. Face down and bloodied in a island of coplessness in a sea of cops, a text book stop and frisk harassment of a kid with the same spiked cool aid we've all had in our hands so many times, the absurdly princely white hipster kids perched so obliviously high atop their hobby bikes without a care in the world, gentrifying the neighborhood with each pedal, all the while while a couple of white people wander around one of the roughest neighborhoods in Brooklyn never once feeling unsafe amidst the carnage and chaos, as if our skin somehow created some sort of force field that shielded us from the atrocities of others' lives. Resting in an island of aloofness, amidst a storm of uncertainty and social paradigms. Such an odd, surreal world we live in.
Monday, May 14, 2012
A call back from the abyss!!
Started on 4/29..
So the political party called me back. They wanted me to do some campaign work for them. Not fundraising stuff, but door to door, advocating stuff in New Jersey. I got a vague voice message and then had a quick but nondescript conversation about doing something with them for a few days till that campaign ended. The lead guy on it was going to get back to me. I heard nothing for a week.
I then got a call from the one HR guy that I had originally interviewed me (and mislead me). I had questions about it all and he was a bit taken aback that I was questioning it all. I wanted to know the candidates name and a bit about them before I just jumped in. He had this air of arrogance and bewilderment in his stance though, as if I actually had bought into the sh*t they were shoveling over there and had really wanted to work for them; that I would be unconditionally involved with whatever candidate and issues that they were pushing and how they were doing it. No... I'm sorry, I am skeptical of you. I am skeptical of your party. I am skeptical of your means, your methods, and definitely the entire system you operate in and can't separate yourself from. You are after all just another political party, you stump for money first, and ask about votes later. No, I do not trust you. After all, I was let go because while I could get you votes and turn people's opinions, I could not raise you money. You are bought and you are sold.
Mind you, this HR call came on April 30th, and he asked me if I could start the next day - May Day!! Yes, the same international labor May Day that is celebrated all over the globe and would see a massive Occupy and labor coalition action that had been in the planning for the entire year! He was oblivious, yes the "political arm of the unions" was completely oblivious to the largest planned day of action for labor and workers issues in decades. This both amazes and scares me. I had pushed for observance of it while I was working there to no avail. I had gotten the same type of bull sh*t politically obfuscated response I had gotten to my questions about some of their fundraising leads came from. Deflection, subtle dismissal, and general plea of not being responsible. It was all bull sh*t at the time and I knew it. On the call of course this was completely apparent. I mentioned May Day to him and he was clueless and taken aback again that I would think people like them shouldn't be working that day. The unions and Occupy are talking general strike and you not only aren't supporting it with your workers, but you don't even know about it. Wow!!
I told him I'd get back to him after I looked into it. Two days later exhausted from May Day (yes, a looong reportage of that day has been undertaken and will be posted in an amazingly untimely fashion!), I ran into another guy from Occupy that happened to start working on this same campaign jsut a few days earlier. He was mortified. A complete disaster. He was working for the party, but was paid through a separate union maybe, yet could say none of this when he went to the doors. He had to say he was a part of some specific New Jersey organization for change type of name that was supposedly unaffiliated with any part of the party, unions, whatever. Yeah... Shady Super PAC stuff. The essence of what Occupy's push for campaign finance reform - and that party's own campaign finance reform push - where specifically against! Here it was, politics in America at its sleaziest.
Yeah, sure, that's how the system works. That's what Democracy looks like in America. Shady organizations, cutting around shady corners, in shady ways, using shady money trails. How does one get involved with that? Yeah, it's money, an income that I need, but I am sorry. I am in Occupy because our political and socio-economic system is corrupt almost beyond reproach and we have to change it. Yeah, you could look at it all and say how can you work for this or that, retail, capitalist, etc. But retail is a guy trying to put food on the table in a sh*ty system. While I don't condone the system, I don't fault the singular person. Politics on the other hand is the method to our madness, the means to bring about change. Sure, it's idealistic to think the system is going to change from within without using the funding methods instilled within the system. But I personally have barriers. Things I won't do. Lines I won't cross. And I am not going to stand on someone's door and lie to them. I am not going to tell them I work for someone I don't, and I am not going to pretend that money is more important than even the most basic forms of integrity. At least when I sell someone an expensive sleeping bag I don't have to lie to them about where it's produced or what company made it. I have no respect for this party or our political system at this point. It must be changed. It can not be run by money. It can not be run by the rich, the powerful, and/or the corrupt for the rich, the powerful, and/or the corrupt. It must be run by people. One person, one vote. Not one dollar, one vote.
So the political party called me back. They wanted me to do some campaign work for them. Not fundraising stuff, but door to door, advocating stuff in New Jersey. I got a vague voice message and then had a quick but nondescript conversation about doing something with them for a few days till that campaign ended. The lead guy on it was going to get back to me. I heard nothing for a week.
I then got a call from the one HR guy that I had originally interviewed me (and mislead me). I had questions about it all and he was a bit taken aback that I was questioning it all. I wanted to know the candidates name and a bit about them before I just jumped in. He had this air of arrogance and bewilderment in his stance though, as if I actually had bought into the sh*t they were shoveling over there and had really wanted to work for them; that I would be unconditionally involved with whatever candidate and issues that they were pushing and how they were doing it. No... I'm sorry, I am skeptical of you. I am skeptical of your party. I am skeptical of your means, your methods, and definitely the entire system you operate in and can't separate yourself from. You are after all just another political party, you stump for money first, and ask about votes later. No, I do not trust you. After all, I was let go because while I could get you votes and turn people's opinions, I could not raise you money. You are bought and you are sold.
Mind you, this HR call came on April 30th, and he asked me if I could start the next day - May Day!! Yes, the same international labor May Day that is celebrated all over the globe and would see a massive Occupy and labor coalition action that had been in the planning for the entire year! He was oblivious, yes the "political arm of the unions" was completely oblivious to the largest planned day of action for labor and workers issues in decades. This both amazes and scares me. I had pushed for observance of it while I was working there to no avail. I had gotten the same type of bull sh*t politically obfuscated response I had gotten to my questions about some of their fundraising leads came from. Deflection, subtle dismissal, and general plea of not being responsible. It was all bull sh*t at the time and I knew it. On the call of course this was completely apparent. I mentioned May Day to him and he was clueless and taken aback again that I would think people like them shouldn't be working that day. The unions and Occupy are talking general strike and you not only aren't supporting it with your workers, but you don't even know about it. Wow!!
I told him I'd get back to him after I looked into it. Two days later exhausted from May Day (yes, a looong reportage of that day has been undertaken and will be posted in an amazingly untimely fashion!), I ran into another guy from Occupy that happened to start working on this same campaign jsut a few days earlier. He was mortified. A complete disaster. He was working for the party, but was paid through a separate union maybe, yet could say none of this when he went to the doors. He had to say he was a part of some specific New Jersey organization for change type of name that was supposedly unaffiliated with any part of the party, unions, whatever. Yeah... Shady Super PAC stuff. The essence of what Occupy's push for campaign finance reform - and that party's own campaign finance reform push - where specifically against! Here it was, politics in America at its sleaziest.
Yeah, sure, that's how the system works. That's what Democracy looks like in America. Shady organizations, cutting around shady corners, in shady ways, using shady money trails. How does one get involved with that? Yeah, it's money, an income that I need, but I am sorry. I am in Occupy because our political and socio-economic system is corrupt almost beyond reproach and we have to change it. Yeah, you could look at it all and say how can you work for this or that, retail, capitalist, etc. But retail is a guy trying to put food on the table in a sh*ty system. While I don't condone the system, I don't fault the singular person. Politics on the other hand is the method to our madness, the means to bring about change. Sure, it's idealistic to think the system is going to change from within without using the funding methods instilled within the system. But I personally have barriers. Things I won't do. Lines I won't cross. And I am not going to stand on someone's door and lie to them. I am not going to tell them I work for someone I don't, and I am not going to pretend that money is more important than even the most basic forms of integrity. At least when I sell someone an expensive sleeping bag I don't have to lie to them about where it's produced or what company made it. I have no respect for this party or our political system at this point. It must be changed. It can not be run by money. It can not be run by the rich, the powerful, and/or the corrupt for the rich, the powerful, and/or the corrupt. It must be run by people. One person, one vote. Not one dollar, one vote.
Friday, April 27, 2012
No politics!!
So a guy came in to the hiking store today, apparently he's a regular, and he started talking about Chicago and the NATO/G8 events there towards the middle of May. He was talking about the whole city being evacuated, actually claiming all of Illinois was being evacuated and was off on some details. Obviously given my position within Occupy circles I had some things to had. So I stuck in a few general facts about Obama moving the G8 to Camp David and some facts and figures on the police ramp up and supposed tactics being discussed by them. Nothing too profound, just some point of information type stuff. The conversation went on and I was pretty neutral and subdued, GMO's came up, occupy, etc. The other guy working in the store was staying out of it. He left to get something to eat and I got a bit further into things. When he came back we were fully into GMO's. I should also say, the guy was full on conspiracy theorist, so if anything, I was tampering his fervor. But anyway, we finally get to a closing point and he says "ok, one last question..." which I probably could have guessed. "9/11, inside job?" lol. My colleague was back and declined to answer, I give a politically correct no and brief explanation which the colleague added to.
Once the guy leaves, pleading the whole way that it was an inside job, my colleague tells me nope, natta, we can't engage in politics. He states that the owner will of course at times (especially amongst ourselves) and sometimes you have to, but that the store can't be seen as taking a political stance. From a business perspective I see his point wholly and respect it, sounds rational and prudent for business.... but not for life. I mean think about the world we live in. We have this unwritten rule in America that in "polite company" we don't talk about politics and religion; two things probably most often gone to war over in human history. Yeah and maybe on the surface that's a good reason to stay out of it, but come on, what is politics if not your daily life?! We make choices all the time, choices that are political and can be even more political. To not engage in dialog about the most contentious aspects of our social existence is to ignore them. To ignore the most important parts of our lives.
This to me seems to be just more of the same old dumbing down of America and its politics. I remember on numerous occasions while in Europe sitting places and speaking to both friends and strangers about politics and religion, and having them express how odd they thought it was that in America they were taboo topics that people didn't want to talk about. It has become such a part of life here in the US to not express your political and spiritual beliefs - in the land of the free!! Somehow we don't feel comfortable engaging in this type of dialog, nevermind seeing people protest about it.
My personal opinion is that it is not about the subject matter, but about our manner of discussion. The way we talk to each other and the respect that we have for other people. Our political system has become so polarized, and so entrenched with its poles, that these discussions to easily lead to black and white stances with little room for common ground and grey areas to agree upon. But more importantly, I think these arguments so easily come about because of how we've become as people. I don't see a mass populace will to listen or taught to be open to new or different people and ideas. We are brought up to believe in our beliefs as we come to learn them at all costs and not to waver. Pride and arrogance - and ugly combination. An open mind it seems is a terrifying thing to possess in America.
Yes, I am generalizing and perhaps detrimentally so. But I believe on the whole, we have created a country that is unwilling and incapable of simple person to person political dialog in both our friendly and professional circles. What does this do but simply make us less capable of discussion over time and also less informed. Person to person dialog is invaluable. It is the only way to truly understand the lives and politics of other people. The only politics most people end up getting in their lives is the politics of hand picked - and in many cases agenda driven - sound bites and/or the repetitive voices of well funded political pundits. That is not politics. That is large scale social engineering. I won't get into the American media and the disaster that it is in this post, but its pretty simple, if you really want to learn about people, ask them. If you really want to understand politics, ask people. And not just people like you, but ask people you don't know and don't identity with what they think about things. Random people on the subway, at the mall, the supermarket, wherever: Occupy, Obama, stop and frisk, Romney, banking, Iran, whatever. As a society we will never learn anything if we can't engage in honest open - nonrepehensible - dialog about our lives, our neighborhoods, our stores, our countries, our world, whatever. Politics should NEVER be off limits. Just like stifling protest should never happen. But I suppose it would be best if first we actually made it acceptable to both have different beliefs, and to accept others with different beliefs. Talk freely amongst yourselves!!
Once the guy leaves, pleading the whole way that it was an inside job, my colleague tells me nope, natta, we can't engage in politics. He states that the owner will of course at times (especially amongst ourselves) and sometimes you have to, but that the store can't be seen as taking a political stance. From a business perspective I see his point wholly and respect it, sounds rational and prudent for business.... but not for life. I mean think about the world we live in. We have this unwritten rule in America that in "polite company" we don't talk about politics and religion; two things probably most often gone to war over in human history. Yeah and maybe on the surface that's a good reason to stay out of it, but come on, what is politics if not your daily life?! We make choices all the time, choices that are political and can be even more political. To not engage in dialog about the most contentious aspects of our social existence is to ignore them. To ignore the most important parts of our lives.
This to me seems to be just more of the same old dumbing down of America and its politics. I remember on numerous occasions while in Europe sitting places and speaking to both friends and strangers about politics and religion, and having them express how odd they thought it was that in America they were taboo topics that people didn't want to talk about. It has become such a part of life here in the US to not express your political and spiritual beliefs - in the land of the free!! Somehow we don't feel comfortable engaging in this type of dialog, nevermind seeing people protest about it.
My personal opinion is that it is not about the subject matter, but about our manner of discussion. The way we talk to each other and the respect that we have for other people. Our political system has become so polarized, and so entrenched with its poles, that these discussions to easily lead to black and white stances with little room for common ground and grey areas to agree upon. But more importantly, I think these arguments so easily come about because of how we've become as people. I don't see a mass populace will to listen or taught to be open to new or different people and ideas. We are brought up to believe in our beliefs as we come to learn them at all costs and not to waver. Pride and arrogance - and ugly combination. An open mind it seems is a terrifying thing to possess in America.
Yes, I am generalizing and perhaps detrimentally so. But I believe on the whole, we have created a country that is unwilling and incapable of simple person to person political dialog in both our friendly and professional circles. What does this do but simply make us less capable of discussion over time and also less informed. Person to person dialog is invaluable. It is the only way to truly understand the lives and politics of other people. The only politics most people end up getting in their lives is the politics of hand picked - and in many cases agenda driven - sound bites and/or the repetitive voices of well funded political pundits. That is not politics. That is large scale social engineering. I won't get into the American media and the disaster that it is in this post, but its pretty simple, if you really want to learn about people, ask them. If you really want to understand politics, ask people. And not just people like you, but ask people you don't know and don't identity with what they think about things. Random people on the subway, at the mall, the supermarket, wherever: Occupy, Obama, stop and frisk, Romney, banking, Iran, whatever. As a society we will never learn anything if we can't engage in honest open - nonrepehensible - dialog about our lives, our neighborhoods, our stores, our countries, our world, whatever. Politics should NEVER be off limits. Just like stifling protest should never happen. But I suppose it would be best if first we actually made it acceptable to both have different beliefs, and to accept others with different beliefs. Talk freely amongst yourselves!!
Friday, April 6, 2012
Politics, the Art of Making Money
So here I sit in my cubicle, thinking I'm fighting for the good cause, fighting the political fight, trying to raise the minimum wage in NY. Turns out that while that might happen at some point in a future as of yet unseen, really I'm just here to try to make money. Actually its a little more nuanced than that, I'm not exactly here to 'make' money but here to get people to give me money. And while the difference in wording is really just about semantics, in reality, politics is as much a business of making money as anything else in America. Where I am REALLY struggling with all this is that I spend my days and weekends protesting to get money out of politics, and then I am spending my evenings trying to get money in to politics. Now granted, at this organization we don't take corporate money and I'm simply calling individuals and asking for small monthly contributions, $5-10 in most cases. But all the same, even politics 'light" in America is all about money.
It doesn't matter how many people I get "involved" (sign petitions, write letters, pledge to vote for the party, or just activate and inform), its all about money at my job. I am blowing away the quotas for everything but the fundraising goals. Yup, that's right, I'm having lots of interesting and informative conversations about the issues, getting people excited and activated, engaged with the issues and the party itself, but this isn't enough. I have now seen first hand of how politics really all works. I guess it would be really easy if they took large sums of corporate money, but they don't (hence their appeal to me and many others) so the whole operation becomes simply about making money. I suppose that is why the entire organization is a group of fundraisers. The two ways into the organization are through door-to-door "canvasing" and telephone "organizing" (both just fancy names for asking for money either on foot or by phone). The organization only promotes from within, i.e. from either of those two avenues.
This is of course proving to be an issue for me. For while I'd love to be doing some solid research and analysis on the issues I don't seem to be successful in fundraising like this. Thus, that chance may simply never present itself as its money or nothing!!! I of course find this really sad. Here I sit with all this experience; almost two masters degrees, years of business, developmental, and whatever other kinds of experience I have, and yet there doesn't seem to be much of a place for me. Sad, guess I'll just have to keep Occupying! ;)
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