Milwaukee Renaissance |
Why Are Presidential Candidates Silent re Industrial Food System’s Devolutionary Implications?Perhaps 100 e-mails to Bill Moyers around this theme might make a difference.
moyersonpbs@thirteen.org) Dear All, Does anyone have any thoughts that would help explain to a simple roofer
The silence of our presidential candidates regarding the
There have been New York Times article about every week
But, to my knowledge, not one of the democratic or republican candidates
Why not? Why don’t we entertain a vision of 100 “urban agrarians”
Win attention to what we are about in the
If you would like to be on record as having been one of the 100
Viva, urban agrarians! Cold spring day in Milwaukee, 2008
Obama’s Youtube Basketball Filmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mimaNFEbg6U
Youth & Elder Summer Hostels in the Holy City of the Sweet Water SeasDear All, Might any of you know sweet ones of the Holy City
Six Months of Glorious Weather Awaiting Us!
The Agora and Green Weekly Web Platforms at the Renaissance Are Your On Line Bulletin Boards & KiosksDear All, If you would like to offer information, visions, research, articles, poems, whatever, to the Agora, Green Weekly, and Growing Power web platforms of the Renaissance please send your offering to “Tyler Schuster” <catofmanyfaces@gmail.com> and cc myself at “James Godsil” <godsil.james@gmail.com>. There are 200 unique visitors to the Renaissance each day these days, the largest number of whom stop at the Agora, Growing Power, and/or Green Weekly sites. They are for you to advance your/the cause(s). And your friends too! Invite them to take advance of the incredibly democratizing power of wiki, e-mail, and google. Viva Wiki!
Olde
Making Green the New Black - Video of Talk by South Bronx Activist, Majora Carter…about fighting for environmental justice, creating a green ghetto, and creating green jobs in under-served communities; a good “case study” for Milwaukee’s Inner Core. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/53 Howard
Green Collar Jobs: An AnalysisPlease send an e-mail to Godsil.james@gmail.com if you would like the full report. Green job corps case study online
San Francisco State University Prof. Raquel Pinderhughes has completed a case study of implementing a green job corps in Berkeley, CA - GREEN COLLAR JOBS: An Analysis of the Capacity of Green Businesses to Provide High Quality Jobs for Men and Women with Barriers to Employment. The study can be used as a guide for developing Green Job Corps programs in other cities across the countries. Dr. Pinderhughes had spoken with me earlier this year about this research as part of her work developing a green collar job corps with the Ella Baker Center’s Reclaim the Future initiative. Green collar jobs are “blue collar jobs in green businesses, manual labor jobs in businesses whose products and services directly improve environmental quality.” This report shows that “preparing men and women with barriers to employment for entry level green collar jobs, and ensuring that these jobs are consistently made available to them, are very effective ways to bring the opportunities and benefits associated with green economic development to low-income residents and communities in the Bay Area.” The study addresses seven major questions: 1.To what extent are green collar jobs good jobs?
The study is a great example of collaboration between city planners, academics and local environmental justice advocates and can serve as a planning tool for extending green collar workforce development to other communities across the country. -
Great Lakes WATER Institute,Growing Power, and the Urban Aquaculture Center Partnership Will Provide the Foundation for Urban Aquaculture Industry. GROWING POWER
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Here is reassuring news for all of us who are fans of the Wisconsin fish fry in general and the gloriously
To keep the fish happy and healthy, Growing Power’s enclosed system circulates the water through aquatic plants, edible garden plants, and other living filter materials that extract and use the nitrates and solid wastes from the fish. “It’s a system that closely replicates nature,” says Will Allen, CEO and founder of Growing Power. “In this instance there is a symbiotic relationship between the fish and the plants. The plants function in much the same way as a wetland, filtering the water and making the nutrients available to plants. We have been able to build a functioning system inside of our greenhouses, and effectively increase our overall production of food. We’ve been raising tilapia (Nile tilapia, O. niloticus) using this method for twelve years. The only difference is the perch like cooler water.” The system is of great interest to other potential perch producers. According to Leon Todd, who with Jon Bales, is striving to launch an urban aquaculture center in Milwaukee , “Such business venture systems can replenish lake perch for the dinner table… and fill up empty buildings, providing employment in Milwaukee and elsewhere.” Based upon the Growing Power model, the Urban Aquaculture Center hopes to offer aquaculture training to entrepreneurs who wish to produce fish, and educational opportunities to school groups and others with regard to natural systems, working with nature, and sustainable strategies. Todd, Bales, the Great Lakes Water Institute and others are interested in the work at Growing Power because it is providing “proof of concept” data. Says Bales of the first Growing Power trial, “Not only did the perch survive this ecologically designed system but, from one who knows, the fish tasted just great!” Here is some background from Fred Binkowski of the Great Lakes Water Institute: Aquaculture related commerce within the US Great Lakes locality continues to be an emerging industry. This region is home to approximately 29% of the US population that consumes more than one billion pounds of seafood products per year. However, the commercial aquaculture industry in this region generates less than 4% of all US production. This raises the obvious question: What are the constraints that are limiting aquaculture production within the US Great Lakes locality, and what action is required to address this problem? The Great Lakes Aquaculture Center (GLAC) at the UW Great Lakes WATER Institute has been conducting fundamental and applied research as a function of improving aquaculture technology for Great Lakes species production. This research encompasses a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines including reproduction, engineering, nutrition, fish health, genetics, and animal husbandry principles. In addition, the GLAC has been a leader in an aquaculture Training/Outreach/Education program relative to workshops, providing resource information, on-site assistance, technology transfer, etc. In cooperation with Growing Power Inc, we propose to demonstrate the potential of utilizing the existing and current urban greenhouse aquaponic systems to allow for year-round and cost-effective fish production for human consumption in a northern climate in conjunction with herb and vegetable production in a bio-secured system. This technological approach can be applied to a rural location and within an urban community. Urban aquaculture can reduce shipping costs, place the product at the center of consumer demand, and create jobs in economically deprived urban areas. We are confident that the cooperative effort between the Great Lakes WATER Institute, Growing Power, and the Urban Aquaculture Center will provide the foundation for the establishment of an urban aquaculture industry. Specific Study Parameters
We believe our efforts will result in Milwaukee being recognized as “The” urban aquaculture city in America.
Toward A Planetary Real Food MovementFrom: James Godsil
Dear All, The American Community Garden Association List Serve may well find
Why not? Sunny Spring Day in Milwaukee From: Ellen Kirby
Dear Friends, I like Amy’s suggestion that we be reminded of listserve etiquette. I also
Perhaps a good New Year’s resolution if for all of us to try to make the
Here are my personal guidelins to supplement what has already been
1. Keep on community garden topics (with a very wide concept of community
2. Find ways to be supportive, just by listening, suggesting, writing
2. Know that community gardening includes as vast array of related topics
4. Use the delete button when you aren’t interested or don’t care about a
5. Try to keep expanding the base 6. Give good info about horticulture 6. Support ACGA by joining the organization that makes the listserve and
7. Give us a chance to laugh. Happy New Year. Ellen Kirby The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's
Obama and Palestinian Causehttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obamamideast10apr10,1,128034,full.story Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama
April 10, 2008 CHICAGO — It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York. A special tribute came from Khalidi’s friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking. His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases… It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire world.” Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years. And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say. Their belief is not drawn from Obama’s speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed. At Khalidi’s 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.” One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.” Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House. “I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a “moral imperative” in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions. “That’s my personal opinion,” Ibish said, “and I think it for a very large number of circumstantial reasons, and what he’s said.” Aides say that Obama’s friendships with Palestinian Americans reflect only his ability to interact with a wide diversity of people, and that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been consistent. Obama has called himself a “stalwart” supporter of the Jewish state and its security needs. He believes in an eventual two-state solution in which Jewish and Palestinian nations exist in peace, which is consistent with current U.S. policy. Obama also calls for the U.S. to talk to such declared enemies as Iran, Syria and Cuba. But he argues that the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, is an exception, calling it a terrorist group that should renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist before dialogue begins. That viewpoint, which also matches current U.S. policy, clashes with that of many Palestinian advocates who urge the United States and Israel to treat Hamas as a partner in negotiations. “Barack’s belief is that it’s important to understand other points of view, even if you can’t agree with them,” said his longtime political strategist, David Axelrod. Obama “can disagree without shunning or demonizing those with other views,” he said. “That’s far different than the suggestion that he somehow tailors his view.” Looking for clues But because Obama is relatively new on the national political scene, and new to foreign policy questions such as the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides have been looking closely for clues to what role he would play in that dispute. And both sides, on certain issues, have interpreted Obama’s remarks as supporting their point of view. Last year, for example, Obama was quoted saying that “nobody’s suffering more than the Palestinian people.” The candidate later said the remark had been taken out of context, and that he meant that the Palestinians were suffering “from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel” and to renounce violence. Jewish leaders were satisfied with Obama’s explanation, but some Palestinian leaders, including Ibish, took the original quotation as a sign of the candidate’s empathy for their plight. Obama’s willingness to befriend Palestinian Americans and to hear their views also impressed, and even excited, a community that says it does not often have the ear of the political establishment. Among other community events, Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign “against settlements, against Israeli apartheid.” The use of such language to describe Israel’s policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel’s defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said’s keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University. Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an “even-handed” approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama’s specific criticisms. Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East. Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn’t talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say. Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah’s account could not be independently verified. “In no way did he take a position privately that he hasn’t taken publicly and consistently,” Axelrod said of Obama. “He always had expressed solicitude for the Palestinian people, who have been ill-served and have suffered greatly from the refusal of their leaders to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.” In Chicago, one of Obama’s friends was Khalidi, a highly visible figure in the Arab American community. In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia. He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a “war crime” and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi’s opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians’ right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel. While teaching at the University of Chicago, Khalidi and his wife lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the Obamas. The families became friends and dinner companions. In 2000, the Khalidis held a fundraiser for Obama’s unsuccessful congressional bid. The next year, a social service group whose board was headed by Mona Khalidi received a $40,000 grant from a local charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, when Obama served on the fund’s board of directors. At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said. The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times. Though Khalidi has seen little of Sen. Obama in recent years, Michelle Obama attended a party several months ago celebrating the marriage of the Khalidis’ daughter. In interviews with The Times, Khalidi declined to discuss specifics of private talks over the years with Obama. He did not begrudge his friend for being out of touch, or for focusing more these days on his support for Israel -- a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S., just as wooing Chicago’s large Arab American community was important for winning local elections. Khalidi added that he strongly disagrees with Obama’s current views on Israel, and often disagreed with him during their talks over the years. But he added that Obama, because of his unusual background, with family ties to Kenya and Indonesia, would be more understanding of the Palestinian experience than typical American politicians. “He has family literally all over the world,” Khalidi said. “I feel a kindred spirit from that.” Ties with Israel Even as he won support in Chicago’s Palestinian community, Obama tried to forge ties with advocates for Israel. In 2000, he submitted a policy paper to CityPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, that among other things supported a unified Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a position far out of step from that of his Palestinian friends. The PAC concluded that Obama’s position paper “suggests he is strongly pro-Israel on all of the major issues.” In 2002, as a rash of suicide bombings struck Israel, Obama sought out a Jewish colleague in the state Senate and asked whether he could sign onto a measure calling on Palestinian leaders to denounce violence. “He came to me and said, ‘I want to have my name next to yours,’ “said his former state Senate colleague Ira Silverstein, an observant Jew. As a presidential candidate, Obama has won support from such prominent Chicago Jewish leaders as Penny Pritzker, a member of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and who is now his campaign finance chair, and from Lee Rosenberg, a board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas. One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama’s outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright. “In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, …that’s what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League. peter.wallsten@latimes.com
Obama Talks All Things LGBT With The AdvocateIn an exclusive Chicago sit-down with The Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld, Democratic front-runner Barack Obama discusses “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Reverend Wright, and what he would do for LGBT Americans if he becomes president.
Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama has been weathering a small storm lately in the LGBT community for being too tight-lipped with gay and lesbian news media. Unlike his rival Hillary Clinton, who’s given interviews to Logo and several local papers since appearing on the cover of The Advocate last fall, the Illinois senator has talked only once, to The Advocate, to address the Donnie McClurkin controversy. But last week his campaign offered our magazine an exclusive sit-down in Chicago with the man who may well become the next president of the United States. To some extent, it symbolizes the brilliance of a protracted primary contest where candidates continually pivot and adjust in order to engage ever more voters. Had the race stopped cold in the snows of New Hampshire, gays and lesbians would have been left with one interview of record for each Democratic candidate in total. But in a wide-ranging interview this Monday, Obama discussed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Reverend Wright, and why LGBT folks should lead on marriage equality, not politicians. Some may call the chat a shrewd political move by the Obama camp ahead of the April 22 Pennsylvania primary. We call it access. Kerry Eleveld and Barack Obama (provided by Kerry) | Advocate.com The Advocate: Let’s start with what’s hot -- why the silence on gay issues? You’ve done only one other interview with the LGBT press. I know people wish they were hearing more from you. Senator Obama: I don’t think it’s fair to say “silence” on gay issues. The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough love. But basically, all press feels that way at all times. Obviously, when you’ve got a limited amount of time, you’ve got so many outlets. We tend not to do a whole bunch of specialized press. We try to do general press for a general readership. But I haven’t been silent on gay issues. What’s happened is, I speak oftentimes to gay issues to a public general audience. When I spoke at Ebenezer Church for King Day, I talked about the need to get over the homophobia in the African-American community; when I deliver my stump speeches routinely I talk about the way that antigay sentiment is used to divide the country and distract us from issues that we need to be working on, and I include gay constituencies as people that should be treated with full honor and respect as part of the American family. So I actually have been much more vocal on gay issues to general audiences than any other presidential candidate probably in history. What I probably haven’t done as much as the press would like is to put out as many specialized interviews. But that has more to do with our focus on general press than it does on… I promise you, the African-American press says the same thing. And Spanish-language? And Spanish-language had the same gripe. Just generally, we have generally tried to speak to broader audiences. That’s all that is. I think the underlying fear of the gay community is that if you get into office, will LGBT folks be last on the priority list? I guess my point would be that the fact that I’m raising issues accordant to the LGBT community in a general audience rather than just treating you like a special interest that is sort of off in its own little box -- that, I think, is more indicative of my commitment. Because ultimately what that shows is that I’m not afraid to advocate on your behalf outside of church, so to speak. It’s easy to preach to the choir; what I think is harder is to speak to a broader audience about why these issues are important to all Americans. If you were elected, what do you plan to do for the LGBT community -- what can you reasonably get done? I reasonably can see “don’t ask, don’t tell” eliminated. I think that I can help usher through an Employment Non-Discrimination Act and sign it into law. You think it’s transgender-inclusive? I think that’s going to be tough, and I’ve said this before. I have been clear about my interest in including gender identity in legislation, but I’ve also been honest with the groups that I’ve met with that it is a heavy lift through Congress. We’ve got some Democrats who are willing to vote for a noninclusive bill, but we lose them on an inclusive bill, and we just may not be able to generate the votes. I don’t know. And obviously, my goal would be to get the strongest possible bill -- that’s what I’ll be working for. The third thing I believe I can get done is in dealing with federal employees, making sure that their benefits, that their ability to transfer health or pension benefits the same way that opposite-sex couples do, is something that I’m interested in making happen and I think can be done with some opposition, some turbulence, but I think we can get that done. And finally, an area that I’m very interested in is making sure that federal benefits are available to same-sex couples who have a civil union. I think as more states sign civil union bills into law the federal government should be helping to usher in a time when there’s full equality in terms of what that means for federal benefits. I assume you’re talking about the Defense of Marriage Act. Absolutely, and I for a very long time have been interested in repeal of DOMA. Do you think it’s possible to get full repeal of DOMA? As you know, Senator Clinton is only looking at repealing the plank of DOMA that prohibits the federal government from recognizing state-sanctioned unions. I don’t know. But my commitment is to try to make sure that we are moving in the direction of full equality, and I think the federal government historically has led on civil rights -- I’d like to see us lead here too. Back to “don’t ask, don’t tell” real quick -- you’ve said before you don’t think that’s a heavy lift. Of course, it would be if you had Joint Chiefs who were against repeal. Is that something you’ll look at? I would never make this a litmus test for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Obviously, there are so many issues that a member of the Joint Chiefs has to deal with, and my paramount obligation is to get the best possible people to keep America safe. But I think there’s increasing recognition within the Armed Forces that this is a counterproductive strategy -- ya know, we’re spending large sums of money to kick highly qualified gays or lesbians out of our military, some of whom possess specialties like Arab-language capabilities that we desperately need. That doesn’t make us more safe, and what I want are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who are making decisions based on what strengthens our military and what is going to make us safer, not ideology. Both you and your wife speak eloquently about being told to wait your turn and how if you had done that, you might not have gone to law school or run for Senate or even president. To some extent, isn’t that what you’re asking same-sex couples to do by favoring civil unions over marriage -- to wait their turn? I don’t ask them that. Anybody who’s been at an LGBT event with me can testify that my message is very explicit -- I don’t think that the gay and lesbian community, the LGBT community, should take its cues from me or some political leader in terms of what they think is right for them. It’s not my place to tell the LGBT community, “Wait your turn.” I’m very mindful of Dr. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” where he says to the white clergy, “Don’t tell me to wait for my freedom.” So I strongly respect the right of same-sex couples to insist that even if we got complete equality in benefits, it still wouldn’t be equal because there’s a stigma associated with not having the same word, marriage, assigned to it. I understand that, but my perspective is also shaped by the broader political and historical context in which I’m operating. And I’ve said this before -- I’m the product of a mixed marriage that would have been illegal in 12 states when I was born. That doesn’t mean that had I been an adviser to Dr. King back then, I would have told him to lead with repealing an antimiscegenation law, because it just might not have been the best strategy in terms of moving broader equality forward. That’s a decision that the LGBT community has to make. That’s not a decision for me to make. Is it fair for the LGBT community to ask for leadership? In 1963, President Kennedy made civil rights a moral issue for the country. But he didn’t overturn antimiscegenation. Right? True enough. As I said, I think the LGBT community has every right to push for what it thinks is right. And I think that it’s absolutely fair to ask me for leadership, and my argument would be that I’m ahead of the curve on these issues compared to 99% of most elected officials around the country on this issue. So I think I’ve shown leadership. What event or person has most affected your perceptions of or relationship to the LGBT community? Well, it starts with my mom, who just always instilled in me a belief that everybody’s of equal worth and a strong sense of empathy — that you try to see people through their eyes, stand in their shoes. So I think that applies to how I see all people. Somebody else who influenced me, I actually had a professor at Occidental — now, this is embarrassing because I might screw up his last name — Lawrence Golden, I think it was. He was a wonderful guy. He was the first openly gay professor that I had ever come in contact with, or openly gay person of authority that I had come in contact with. And he was just a terrific guy. He wasn’t proselytizing all the time, but just his comfort in his own skin and the friendship we developed helped to educate me on a number of these issues. Did you have a chance to ask him about being gay? I’m sure we did, but as I said, he was really comfortable in his own skin, and the relationship was a strong friendship and I never felt as if I had to get over any mental hurdles to be close to him or to learn from him. He’s probably somebody who had a strong influence. How old were you then? Eighteen … 19. It does remind me, though, I remember in my first two years of college that was when I first saw students who were self-identified as gay and lesbian come out and start organizing around gay issues, so that would have been in 1979 and ‘80. I think what’s encouraging is just to see how much progress has been made in such a relatively short period of time. Just draw that thought out a little bit in terms of comparing it to the African-American civil rights movement. You always want to be careful comparing groups that have been discriminated against because each group’s experiences are different. I think that the transition toward fuller acceptance of the LGBT community has happened without some of the tumult and violence that accompanied the civil rights movement. But we still have a long ways to go, and I think that it also obviously varies geographically. I think in urban communities, you can’t say there’s full equality, but in terms of the LGBT community daily round they’re not as likely to experience certainly the discrimination that they experienced 25 years ago. Whereas, in the African-American community, you can still see some fairly overt racism. On the other hand, in rural communities, I think attitudes are slower to change. There’s plenty of homophobia to go around, but you have a unique perspective into the African-American community. Is there a… I don’t think it’s worse than in the white community. I think that the difference has to do with the fact that the African-American community is more churched and most African-American churches are still fairly traditional in their interpretations of Scripture. And so from the pulpit or in sermons you still hear homophobic attitudes expressed. And since African-American ministers are often the most prominent figures in the African-American community those attitudes get magnified or amplified a little bit more than in other communities. Do you think there’s a specific prescriptive, which is not to say that there’s more homophobia in the African-American community. But is there a different answer to… Well, I think what’s important is to have some of that church leadership speak up and change its attitudes, because I think a lot of its members are taking cues from that leadership. Do you have any regrets about the South Carolina tour? People there are still sort of mystified that you gave Donnie McClurkin the chance to get up onstage and do this, and he did go on sort of an antigay rant there. I tell you what -- my campaign is premised on trying to reach as many constituencies as possible and to go into as many places as possible, and sometimes that creates discomfort or turbulence. This goes back to your first question. If you’re segmenting your base into neat categories and constituency groups and you never try to bring them together and you just speak to them individually -- so I keep the African-Americans neatly over here and the church folks neatly over there and the LGBT community neatly over there -- then these kinds of issues don’t arise. The flip side of it is, you never create the opportunity for people to have a conversation and to lift some of these issues up and to talk about them and to struggle with them, and our campaign is built around the idea that we should all be talking. And that creates some discomfort because people discover, gosh, within the Democratic Party or within Barack Obama’s campaign or within whatever sets of constituencies there are going to be some different points of view that might even be offensive to some folks. That’s not unique to this issue. I mean, ironically, my biggest … the biggest political news surrounding me over the last three weeks has been Reverend Wright, who offended a whole huge constituency with some of his statements but has been very good on gay and lesbian issues. I mean he’s one of the leaders in the African-American community of embracing, speaking out against homophobia, and talking about the importance of AIDS. And so nobody is going to be perfectly aligned with my views. So what I hope is that people take me for who I am, for what I’ve said, and for what I’ve displayed in terms of my commitment to these issues, but understanding that there’s going to be a range of constituencies that I’m reaching out to and working on issues that we have in common, even though I may differ with them on other issues. And that’s true, also, by the way … well, I think that’s going to be true so long as I’m reaching out beyond the traditional Democratic base.
20TH ANNIVERSARY PERFORMANCES of the EARTH POETS and MUSICIANS, April 18 and 19th 20TH ANNIVERSARY PERFORMANCES of the EARTH POETS and MUSICIANS, April 18 and 19th For their 20th Anniversary Performances, four of the original poets, Jeff Poniewaz, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Suzanne Rosenblatt, and Harvey Taylor, and the two musician members of the group, Jahmes Finlayson and Holly Haebig, will continue to transform inconvenient truths into conscientious action.
 FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008
SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 2008
The Death of Dr. King In The Words of Robert KennedyRobert Kennedy’s speech the night Martin Luther King was killed. As you watch it is easy to discern that he was not working from notes, but from his heart. Some say, this is one of the most important political speeches of our times. The last two minutes of this Video is sound track from Kennedy’s own assassination 2 months later. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPYNb4ex6Ko
David Luce Race Stories from 1940s to 21st Century USAThis is from a highly respected Milwaukee professor(retired). The “Al” I’m writing to is a retired professor living in Oregon. He and Maria had been classmates at the Hollabunner Gymnasium, in Austria. Al was distressed by the highly publicized statements made by Senator Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and I wrote the letter you see, below, as a way of expressing my own view of the matter. It turned out to be a rather personal narrative, including some rough language. I hope no one is offended Dear Al, I promised to write you to explain how racism and racial segregation and dis crimination in the United States have touched my life -- indeed, have in some measure shaped my life. I have thereby acquired attitudes, different from yours, relating to the recently publicized statements about race by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I can agree that those statements were badly phrased and impolitic. But they hardly deserve the blast of negative publicity they have been receiving. The statements point to important truths about Americans and American history -- and beyond that, to truths about democracy and the human condition, and to a truth that Calvinist and other Christian traditions call “Original Sin.” (Wright’s denomination has Calvinist roots.) The thesis I would urge is this: A good many well-meaning white Americans can honestly say that as far as they themselves, personally, are concerned, they have good intentions (or are indifferent) on matters of race. But they also think that as good neighbors (or as good citizens, or as legitimately concerned businessmen, etc.), they have to recognize, and defer to, the strong negative feelings about race that “others” have. And it is that deference that determines their conduct. Let me explain my personal connections with the matter. I could begin with my parents -- good people, if not better than average. But when I brought one of my high school buddies home with me on the school bus, so that we could listen to 78 rpm records and continue our never-ending argument as to who was the greater, Gene Krupa or Duke Ellington -- my parents were concerned. He was black. Their worry was, “What if his parents should invite *us* to *their* house? While still in high school I enlisted in the U.S. Navy. I was called to active duty in August, 1944. It was there, at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, that I had my first encounter with official government-enforced segregation: an all-black unit in training -- “hup, two, hup two” -- right across the street from the main entrance. A year and a half later I was stationed in Key West. On my way back to Key West after a holiday leave, I had another disturbing encounter with segregation. The train from New York made its first Florida stop in St. Augustine. Almost everyone in the car I had been traveling in went out on the platform for the fresh balmy air. But a lady who had been quietly sitting across the aisle from me all the way from New York was not allowed to return. The conductor stopped her and told her to get her things and move to “the car for colored people,” newly attached to the end of the train. I really felt bad. I wanted to do something. But I felt so helpless! It was clear that no one on the platform was at all inclined to intervene. No one rebuked the conductor. No one demanded that the woman be allowed to return to her seat. I had another encounter with segregation on my very last day in Key West. It had a happier resolution. I and a buddy were on our way to our respective discharge centers: mine in Boston, his in Baltimore. The first leg of the journey for both of us was the bus trip to Miami. Our conversation in the waiting room was disrupted by a sharp command addressed to my buddy, “Boy, the waiting room for coloreds is over there.” Well, at that point we didn’t want to challenge The System by attempting to integrate the Colored Waiting Room. (In uniform or not, we might get arrested.) So I said to my buddy, “Let’s wait outside,” which we did. No further problem. It was not too long a wait. Hanover, New Hampshire, two or three years later. Dartmouth. I’m taking a sociology course on race relations in the United States. Our assigned readings are the various studies that entered into Gunnar Myrdal’s great work, *The Negro in America*, then fresh off the press. There is one student (not a member of the class) whom I enjoy teasing. He’s from the deep south: a nice guy, but a staunch supporter of the segregation he was brought up in -- and not very well informed about it. I put a question about voting rights to him, but I can predict his answer. Yes, that very response is forthcoming: “But they’re not ready for it.” Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1955. A nice liberal college town, right? Well, not according to the long-time black residents. And I have two stories. One is a grim story of finding an apartment for myself and a black roommate. I had been evicted from my apartment downtown when my black friend moved in. But it was summer, and there were many “Apartments for Rent” notices. I didn’t think there would be a problem. Each time I checked out a notice, though, I would ask the landlord or landlady -- before concluding the deal -- whether the fact that my roommate was a Black American made any difference. And time and time again I would get the response: “Oh! I’m afraid that does make a difference. I’m not prejudiced, you understand. I love people of all races and colors. But I have to think of my neighbors and how they might react. I’m afraid I cannot rent you these rooms.” (One lawyer with an apartment to rent behind his office told me, “The clients visiting my office might see him!”) All this, of course, was several decades before “Fair Housing” rules became routine in many localities. (I’m pleased to think that here in Milwaukee, my marching with Father Groppi had made a difference. I remember the great time when I and my two boys celebrated communion around the altar at St. Boniface with Father Groppi officiating. He was celebrating his release from jail -- he had disrupted a session of the State Legislature. It had been an act of civil disobedience and he had been duly punished.) The fun story from my Ann Arbor days involves a factory on the edge of town. (Small towns in Michigan often have their auto parts factories. Many of the workers come from the Appalachian regions, where factory work is scarce. The migrants I came to know were all white; it could be that the factories just didn’t hire black workers.) It sounds hard to believe, now, but I was almost thirty years of age, working in one of those auto-parts factories, when I heard, for the first time, a woman use the word “shit.” She was from Tennessee, and she stretched the word into a full three syllables: “Oh, shee-yit!” (I’m sorry, but at this point my story, to be rightly told, has to include some even rougher language.) The guy sharing my work-station, on the left, was from Kentucky. We didn’t have many common interests. But at one point he turned to me and asked, “Didja ever fuck a nigger?” The question startled me but I allowed that I had not. He assured me that he could make the arrangements, if I’d like to try it. I just let it all pass. But it occurred to me how utterly shocked that fellow from Kentucky would be, if I told him something that was in fact true: that at that very time I was dating a young black woman, a student studying Art at the University. This nasty talk makes me think of one of my drinking companions in Key West -- Leroy Sims, as he would proudly introduce himself -- Leroy Sims, from Anniston, Alabama. “I’m from the South,” he would add. One time the conversation around the beer table turned to sex. (Surprise!)
“What!” said Leroy. “I’m from the South, and you ask me if I’ve ever had sex with a Negro!” (Actually, the words used were the common vulgar verb and the equally vulgar noun.) Leroy went on to describe the time he was left at home alone with the housemaid -- the rest of the family was out shopping -- and he took the housemaid upstairs and raped her. “Rape” was not the word Leroy used, but rape it surely was: resistance, or any complaint from her, and she loses her job. If she goes to the police, the police will hear Leroy’s denial and she -- if she persists -- will be accused of bringing false charges against an upright young man. So here you have something of my background, Al. But stay with me: racial segregation Southern style was to hit me even harder. The account of my Arkansas adventure that follows is from a letter I wrote to the Philosophy Department at the University of Michigan on December 9, 2004. In 1957 I received my degree and happily went off to my first job, at the University of Arkansas -- in Fayetteville, northwest corner of the state, some 250 miles from Little Rock. But I found that all the talk there, in Fayetteville, was about Little Rock. The Arkansas NAACP won a lawsuit asking for the de-segregation of the public schools in Little Rock. The de-segregation of Central High School was the first step. A small group of black students were to be admitted in September. Community groups all over the city had been working hard to ease the strains and the tensions of de-segregation. The prevailing view was that it would be accomplished without violence. But Orval Faubus was Governor, and he was of a different mind. As you probably know, he called out Arkansas’ National Guard to *prevent* the de-segregation of Central High. The segregationists discovered they had a friend in a very high place, and the political situation wholly unraveled. In the course of the year that followed, the Arkansas Legislature investigated the NAACP and officially declared it to be a subversive organization. It implemented its finding with a statute prohibiting any agency receiving State funds from employing any member of the NAACP. The statute had teeth: the head of the agency would have to reimburse the state out of his or her own pocket if any salary money went to members of the NAACP. But how do you recognize members of the NAACP? The legislature solved that problem easily. It enacted another statute (“Act 10″) requiring all public school teachers (the language included university professors) to file affidavits listing all the organizations that they were members of, or contributed to, or had belonged to or contributed to within the past five years. (Act 10 had one loop-hole: it said nothing about the organizations that one’s *spouse* belonged to. In fact many faculty wives at the University of Arkansas belonged to the NAACP.) The U. of A. Chapter of the AAUP led the battle against Act 10, and the national AAUP carried the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The AAUP won: “Shelton v. Tucker”, 364 U.S. 479(1960). (See AAUP Bulletin for September 1959, March 1960, December 1963.) But to us in the U. of A. Philosophy Department in 1958, that ultimate Supreme Court victory was of no avail. Two of the three senior professors in the Department had mortgages on their homes and kids they were sending to college. They would sign the affidavits. The third senior professor was planning to retire in two years, and had just purchased a farmhouse on a hill-top as the place where he and his wife could spend their final years. But Fritz Friedman knew oppression. He was a German Jew. When Hitler came to power he moved to Italy. He found some degree of security there — one of his students was the son of the head of Mussolini’s secret police. (Fritz enjoyed telling that story.) But then the Anti-Semitic laws were passed, and Fritz had to get out his student’s connections made it possible. When he arrived in England, however, World War II had already begun; he carried a German passport; and he and his family were thrown into a concentration camp as enemy aliens.
Well, he and his family did manage to make it to the United States. He found the security he wanted at the University of Arkansas. But he was not going to sign that Act 10 affidavit!
So we three younger persons in the Philosophy Department had a model to follow. If Fritz was willing to put at risk his job, his pension, and that farm, what excuse could we have, with so much less at stake!
In the summer of 1959 there were dismissals and the six-person Philosophy Department was reduced to two.
I had it easy, however. Through correspondence with Herbert Feigl I managed to get a temporary 1-year appointment at the University of Minnesota. So I was able to resign my position at Arkansas “before push came to shove.”
(This ends the excerpt from my letter of 12/9/04) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - And in the actions of the Arkansas legislature one sees democracy rampant: majority rule unchecked by law, majority rule unchecked by concerns about human rights, majority rule unchecked by the sense of outrage felt by the rest of the world. Isn’t this the occasion for speaking of Original Sin? (Is it the temptations of the flesh that are so dangerous? The glorification of Race and Nation seem much more dangerous.) One point to make is that Democracy is not a self-correcting enterprise. If the great mass of the citizenry become obsessed by some passion -- be it a fear of witches or a lust for war, the maintenance of a slave system or a hatred of foreigners -- one cannot rely upon the system itself to curb the passion. The officials who occupy the high places are popularly elected. Their power, their authority, and their influence depend precisely upon the popular support they can muster -- and the ability to win an election is a significant measure of that support. So even “the good guys” have to be politicians. They have to be willing to compromise their positions, to make the necessary trade-offs, to do the wheeling and dealing. (Who are the good guys? Well, we might be able to agree on Lincoln and FDR, we might be able to agree on Jefferson and others among the Founding Fathers -- but I think of the late Senator William J. Fullbright, from Arkansas. He did so much in his time to ease the strains of the Cold War -- but had to sit on his hands on civil rights issues, if he was to accomplish anything at all. Of course, the American system is not a straight majority-rule democracy. The Constitution puts constraints on what majorities can do; there is a recognized concept of Law; and there is, especially, the principle of an independent judiciary -- a system of courts that is not the tool of any transient majority, a system of courts where Reason has some chance of prevailing. But how secure is tnat “independent judiciary?” The people hate it: it thwarts their will. We have evidence of this in the resistance to the school desegregation decisions that we saw in the 1950s, we have evidence of this in the angry howls of “judicial activism!” that we heard when state courts (Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey) ruled that the equal-treatment-under-the-law principles embedded in their respective constitutions trump both tradition and the popular will with respect to gay rights and same-sex unions. So there is a real question about the courts’ ability to enforce their rulings when wide-spread hostility exists. In the federal sysem, the Supreme Court has neither the power of the purse (which belongs to Congress) nor the power of the sword (which belongs to the Executive Branch). How then can the rule of law prevail?) The only long-run solution that I can think of is for persons of good-will everywhere, in all walks of life, to recognize everyone’s obligation to reach out to their neighbors, to resist hurtful passions, and to insist always on sound principles of Justice and Fair Play. To put on a mask of neutrality or indifference is to walk away from the duties of citizenship. Thanks for reading this far, Al. Dave Luce
Alice Walker on ObamaMarch 27, 2008 I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar. When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as ‘Miss’ when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would. My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style. We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn’t pay it to a nigger. That before she’d pay a nigger that much money she’d milk the dairy cows herself. When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that ‘Jane’ and ‘Dick’ had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter. The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors. When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their ‘democratic’ right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free. I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not. I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me. When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves. True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth’s people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth. I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don’t understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, ‘enemy’ or ‘friend,’ and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote? It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as ‘a woman’ while Barack Obama is always referred to as ‘a black man.’ One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance. I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others’ lives that has so marred our country’s contacts with the rest of the world. And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces’ case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families – and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes – we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it. When I offered the word ‘Womanism’ many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do. Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities. We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us.
Namaste; And with all my love, Alice Walker
Northern California
Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Danny Glover Back Obamahttp://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/26/7893/ Wednesday, March 26, 2008 by Progressive Democrats of America
All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grass-roots participation drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama’s very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below. As progressives we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that have failed so far to deliver peace, health care, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming. During past progressive peaks in our political history-the late Thirties, the early Sixties-social movements have provided the relentless pressure and innovative ideas that allowed centrist leaders to embrace visionary solutions. We find ourselves in just such a situation today. We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama’s unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined. Progressives can make a difference in close primary races like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon, Puerto Rico, and in the November general election. We can contribute our dollars. We have the proven online capacity to reach millions of swing voters in the primary and general election. We can and will defend Obama against negative attacks from any quarter. We will seek Green support against the claim of some that there are no real differences between Obama and McCain. We will criticize any efforts by Democratic super-delegates to suppress the winner of the popular and delegate votes, or to legitimize the flawed elections in Michigan and Florida. We will make our agenda known at the Democratic national convention and fight for a platform emphasizing progressive priorities as the path to victory. Obama’s March 17 speech on racism was as great a speech as ever given by a presidential candidate, revealing a philosophical depth, personal authenticity, and political intelligence that should convince any but the hardest of ideologues that he carries unmatched leadership potentials for overcoming the divide-and-conquer tactics which have sundered Americans since the first slaves arrived here in chains. Only words? What words they were. However, the fact that Barack Obama openly defines himself as a centrist invites the formation of this progressive force within his coalition. Anything less could allow his eventual drift towards the right as the general election approaches. It was the industrial strikes and radical organizers in the 1930s who pushed Roosevelt to support the New Deal. It was the civil rights and student movements that brought about voting rights legislation under Lyndon Johnson and propelled Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy’s anti-war campaigns. It was the original Earth Day that led Richard Nixon to sign environmental laws. And it will be the Obama movement that makes it necessary and possible to end the war in Iraq, renew our economy with a populist emphasis, and confront the challenge of global warming. We should not only keep the pressure on, but we also should connect the issues that Barack Obama has made central to his campaign into an overarching progressive vision. - The Iraq War must end as rapidly as possible, not in five years. All our troops must be withdrawn. Diplomacy and trade must replace further military occupation or military escalation into Iran and Pakistan. We should not stop urging Barack Obama to avoid leaving American advisers behind in Iraq in a counterinsurgency quagmire like Afghanistan today or Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. Nor should he simply transfer American combat troops from the quagmire in Iraq to the quagmire in Afghanistan. - Iraq cannot be separated from our economic crisis. Iraq is costing trillions of dollars that should be invested in jobs, universal health care, education, housing and public works here at home. Our own Gulf Coast requires the attention and funds now spent on Gulf oil. - Iraq cannot be separated from our energy crisis. We are spending an unheard-of $100/barrel for oil. We are officially committed to wars over oil supplies far into the future. We instead need a war against global warming and for energy independence from Middle Eastern police states and multinational corporations. Progressives should support Obama’s 16-month combat troop withdrawal plan in comparison to Clinton’s open-ended one, and demand that both candidates avoid a slide into four more years of low-visibility counterinsurgency. The Democratic candidates should listen more to the blunt advice of the voters instead of the timid talk of their national security advisers. Two-thirds of American voters, and a much higher percentage of Democrats, oppose this war and favor withdrawal in less than two years, nearly half of them in less than one year. The same percentage believe the war has had a negative effect on life in the United States, while only 15 percent believe the war has been positive. Without this solid peace sentiment, neither Obama nor Clinton would be taking the stands they do today. Further, the battered and abused people of Iraq favor an American withdrawal by a 70 percent margin. The American government’s arrogant defiance of these strong popular majorities in both America and Iraq should be ended this November by a powerful peace mandate. The profound transition from the policies of the past will not be easy, and fortunately the Obama campaign is lifted by the fresh wind of change. We seek not only to change the faces in high places, however, but to save our country from slow death by greed, status quo politics, and loss of vision. The status quo cannot stand much longer, neither that of politics-as-usual nor that of our security, energy and economic policies. We are stealing from the next generation’s future, and living on borrowed time. The Bush Administration has replaced the Cold War with the War on Terrorism led by the same military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against. The reality and public fear of terrorism today is no less real than fear of communism and nuclear annihilation a generation ago. But we simply cannot continue multiple military interventions in many Muslim countries without increasing the vast number of violent jihadists against us, bleeding our military and our economy, becoming more dependent on Middle East oil, creating unsavory alliances with police states, shrinking our own civil liberties and putting ourselves at permanent risk of another 9/11 attack. We need a brave turn towards peace and conflict resolution in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Getting out of Iraq, sponsoring a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, ending alliances with police states in the Arab world, unilaterally initiating real energy independence and moving the world away from the global warming crises are the steps that must be taken. Nor can we impose NAFTA-style trade agreements on so many nations that seek only to control their own national resources and economic destinies. We cannot globalize corporate and financial power over democratic values and institutions. Since the Clinton Administration pushed through NAFTA against the Democratic majority in Congress, one Latin American nation after another has elected progressive governments that reject US trade deals and hegemony. We are isolated in Latin America by our Cold War and drug war crusades, by the $500 million counter-insurgency in Columbia, support for the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, and the ineffectual blockade of Cuba. We need to return to the Good Neighbor policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, which rejected Yankee military intervention and accepted Mexico’s right to nationalize its oil in the face of industry opposition. The pursuit of NAFTA-style trade policies inflames our immigration crisis as well, by uprooting countless campesinos who inevitably seek low-wage jobs north of the border in order to survive. We need balanced and democratically-approved trade agreements that focus on the needs of workers, consumers and the environment. The Banana Republic is a retail chain, not an American colony protected by the Monroe Doctrine. We are pleased that Hillary Clinton has been responsive to the tide of voter opinion this year, and we applaud the possibility of at last electing an American woman president. But progressives should be disturbed at her duplicitous positions on Iraq and NAFTA. She still denies that her 2002 vote for legislation which was called the war authorization bill was a vote for war authorization. She now promises to “end the war” but will not set a timeline for combat troop withdrawal, and remains committed to leaving tens of thousands of counter-terrorism troops and trainers in Iraq amidst a sectarian conflict. While Obama needs to clarify his own position on counterinsurgency, Clinton’s “end the war” rhetoric conceals an open commitment to keep American troops in Iraq until all our ill-defined enemies are defeated-a treadmill which guarantees only the spawning of more enemies. On NAFTA, she claims to have opposed the trade deal behind closed doors when she was First Lady. But the public record, and documents recently disclosed in response to litigation, proves that she was a cheerleader for NAFTA against the strong opposition of rank-and-file Democrats. The Clintons ushered in the Wall Street Democrats whose deregulation ethos has widened inequality while leaving millions of Americans without their rightful protections against market shocks. Clinton’s most bizarre claim is that Obama is unqualified to be commander-in-chief. Clinton herself never served in the military, and has no experience in the armed services apart from the Senate armed services committee. Her husband had no military experience before becoming president. In fact he was a draft opponent during Vietnam, a stance we respected. She was the first lady, and he the governor, of one of our smallest states. They brought no more experience, and arguably less, to the White House than Obama would in 2009. We take very seriously the argument that Americans should elect a first woman president, and we abhor the surfacing of sexism in this supposedly post-feminist era. But none of us would vote for Condoleeza Rice as either the first woman or first African-American president. We regret that the choice divides so many progressive friends and allies, but believe that a Clinton presidency would be a Clinton presidency all over again, not a triumph of feminism but a restoration of the aging, power-driven Wall Street Democratic Hawks at a moment when so much more fresh imagination is possible and needed. A Clinton victory could only be achieved by the dashing of hope among millions of young people on whom a better future depends. The style of the Clintons’ attacks on Obama, which are likely to escalate as her chances of winning decline, already risks losing too many Democratic and independent voters in November. We believe that the Hillary Clinton of 1968 would be an Obama volunteer today, just as she once marched in the snows of New Hampshire for Eugene McCarthy against the Democratic establishment. We did not foresee the exciting social movement that is the Obama campaign. Many of us supported other candidates, or waited skeptically as weeks and months passed. But the closeness of the race makes it imperative that everyone on the sidelines, everyone in doubt, everyone vacillating, everyone fearing betrayals and the blasting of hope, everyone quarreling over political correctness, must join this fight to the finish. Not since Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign has there been a passion to imagine the world anew like the passion and unprecedented numbers of people mobilized in this campaign. Tom Hayden is author of Ending the War in Iraq, a five-time Democratic convention delegate, former state senator, and board member of the Progressive Democrats of America. Bill Fletcher, Jr., who originated the call for founding “Progressives for Obama,” is the executive editor of Black Commentator, and founder of the Center for Labor Renewal; Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of Dancing in the Streets[2007] and other popular works and, with Hayden, a member of The Nation’s editorial board. Danny Glover is the respected actor, activist, and chairman of the board of TransAfrica. For more information see: http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com/ Extensive Article on Obama’s MomStanley Ann Dunham Soetoro: ‘A Very, Very Big Thinker’ The Long Run
In the capsule version of the Barack Obama story, his mother is simply the white woman from Kansas. The phrase comes coupled alliteratively to its counterpart, the black father from Kenya. On the campaign trail, he has called her his “single mom.” But neither description begins to capture the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama. Kansas was merely a way station in her childhood, wheeling westward in the slipstream of her furniture-salesman father. In Hawaii, she married an African student at age 18. Then she married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta, became an anthropologist, wrote an 800-page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java, worked for the Ford Foundation, championed women’s work and helped bring microcredit to the world’s poor. She had high expectations for her children. In Indonesia, she would wake her son at 4 a.m. for correspondence courses in English before school; she brought home recordings of Mahalia Jackson, speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And when Mr. Obama asked to stay in Hawaii for high school rather than return to Asia, she accepted living apart — a decision her daughter says was one of the hardest in Ms. Soetoro’s life. “She felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core,” said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Mr. Obama’s half-sister. “That was very much her philosophy of life — to not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places.” Ms. Soetoro, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995, was the parent who raised Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator running for the Democratic presidential nomination. He barely saw his father after the age of 2. Though it is impossible to pinpoint the imprint of a parent on the life of a grown child, people who knew Ms. Soetoro well say they see her influence unmistakably in Mr. Obama. They were close, her friends and his half-sister say, though they spent much of their lives with oceans or continents between them. He would not be where he is today, he has said, had it not been for her. Yet he has also made some different choices — marrying into a tightly knit African-American family rooted in the South Side of Chicago, becoming a churchgoing Christian, publicly recounting his search for his identity as a black man. Some of what he has said about his mother seems tinged with a mix of love and regret. He has said his biggest mistake was not being at her bedside when she died. And when The Associated Press asked the candidates about “prized keepsakes” — others mentioned signed baseballs, a pocket watch, a “trophy wife” — Mr. Obama said his was a photograph of the cliffs of the South Shore of Oahu in Hawaii where his mother’s ashes were scattered. “I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book, less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life,” he wrote in the preface to his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” He added, “I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.” In a campaign in which Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made liberal use of his globe-trotting 96-year-old mother to answer suspicions that he might be an antique at 71, Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, invokes his mother’s memory sparingly. In one television advertisement, she appears fleetingly — porcelain-skinned, raven-haired and holding her toddler son. “My mother died of cancer at 53,” he says in the ad, which focuses on health care. “In those last painful months, she was more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.” ‘A Very, Very Big Thinker’ He has described her as a teenage mother, a single mother, a mother who worked, went to school and raised children at the same time. He has credited her with giving him a great education and confidence in his ability to do the right thing. But, in interviews, friends and colleagues of Ms. Soetoro shed light on a side of her that is less well known. “She was a very, very big thinker,” said Nancy Barry, a former president of Women’s World Banking, an international network of microfinance providers, where Ms. Soetoro worked in New York City in the early 1990s. “I think she was not at all personally ambitious, I think she cared about the core issues, and I think she was not afraid to speak truth to power.” Her parents were from Kansas — her mother from Augusta, her father from El Dorado, a place Mr. Obama first visited in a campaign stop in January. Stanley Ann (her father wanted a boy so he gave her his name) was born on an Army base during World War II. The family moved to California, Kansas, Texas and Washington in restless pursuit of opportunity before landing in Honolulu in 1960. In a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, she met the college’s first African student, Barack Obama. They married and had a son in August 1961, in an era when interracial marriage was rare in the United States. Her parents were upset, Senator Obama learned years later from his mother, but they adapted. “I am a little dubious of the things that people from foreign countries tell me,” the senator’s grandmother told an interviewer several years ago. The marriage was brief. In 1963, Mr. Obama left for Harvard, leaving his wife and child. She then married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian student. When he was summoned home in 1966 after the turmoil surrounding the rise of Suharto, Ms. Soetoro and Barack followed. Those choices were not entirely surprising, said several high school friends of Ms. Soetoro, whom they remembered as unusually intelligent, curious and open. She never dated “the crew-cut white boys,” said one friend, Susan Blake: “She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the different, rather than that ethnocentric thing of shunning the different. That was where her mind took her.” Her second marriage faded, too, in the 1970s. Ms. Soetoro wanted to work, one friend said, and Mr. Soetoro wanted more children. He became more American, she once said, as she became more Javanese. “There’s a Javanese belief that if you’re married to someone and it doesn’t work, it will make you sick,” said Alice G. Dewey, an anthropologist and friend. “It’s just stupid to stay married.” That both unions ended is beside the point, some friends suggested. Ms. Soetoro remained loyal to both husbands and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers. (In reading drafts of her son’s memoir, Mr. Obama has said, she did not comment upon his depiction of her but was “quick to explain or defend the less flattering aspects of my father’s character.”) “She always felt that marriage as an institution was not particularly essential or important,” said Nina Nayar, who later became a close friend of Ms. Soetoro. What mattered to her, Ms. Nayar said, was to have loved deeply. By 1974, Ms. Soetoro was back in Honolulu, a graduate student and raising Barack and Maya, nine years younger. Barack was on scholarship at a prestigious prep school, Punahou. When Ms. Soetoro decided to return to Indonesia three years later for her field work, Barack chose not to go. “I doubted what Indonesia now had to offer and wearied of being new all over again,” he wrote in his memoir. “More than that, I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.” During those years, he was “engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.” Ms. Soetoro-Ng recalled her mother’s quandary. “She wanted him to be with her,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. But she added: “Although it was painful to be separated from him for his last four years of high school, she recognized that it was perhaps the best thing for him. And she had to go to Indonesia at that time.” That time apart was hard for both mother and son. “She longed for him,” said Georgia McCauley, who became a friend of Ms. Soetoro in Jakarta. Barack spent summers and Christmas vacations with his mother; they communicated by letters, his illustrated with cartoons. Her first topic of conversation was always her son, her female friends said. As for him, he was grappling with questions of racial identity, alienation and belonging. “There were certainly times in his life in those four years when he could have used her presence on a more daily basis,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. “But I think he did all right for Fluent in Indonesian, Ms. Soetoro moved with Maya first to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese handicrafts. A weaver in college, she was fascinated with what Ms. Soetoro-Ng calls “life’s gorgeous minutiae.” That interest inspired her study of village industries, which became the basis of her 1992 doctoral dissertation. “She loved living in Java,” said Dr. Dewey, who recalled accompanying Ms. Soetoro to a metalworking village. “People said: ‘Hi! How are you?’ She said: ‘How’s your wife? Did your daughter have the baby?’ They were friends. Then she’d whip out her notebook and she’d say: ‘How many of you have electricity? Are you having trouble getting iron?’ ” She became a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development on setting up a village credit program, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta specializing in women’s work. Later, she was a consultant in Pakistan, then joined Indonesia’s oldest bank to work on what is described as the world’s largest sustainable microfinance program, creating services like credit and savings for the poor. Visitors flowed constantly through her Ford Foundation office in downtown Jakarta and through her house in a neighborhood to the south, where papaya and banana trees grew in the front yard and Javanese dishes like opor ayam were served for dinner. Her guests were leaders in the Indonesian human rights movement, people from women’s organizations, representatives of community groups doing grass-roots development. “I didn’t know a lot of them and would often ask after, ‘Who was that?’ ” said David S. McCauley, now an environmental economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, who had the office next door. “You’d find out it was the head of some big organization in with thousands of members from central Java or someplace, somebody that she had met some time ago, and they would make a point of coming to see her when they came to Jakarta.” An Exacting Idealist As a mother, Ms. Soetoro was both idealistic and exacting. Friends describe her as variously informal and intense, humorous and hardheaded. She preached to her young son the importance of honesty, straight talk, independent judgment. When he balked at her early-morning home schooling, she retorted, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.” When Barack was in high school, she confronted him about his seeming lack of ambition, Mr. Obama wrote. He could get into any college in the country, she told him, with just a little effort. (“Remember what that’s like? Effort?”) He says he looked at her, so earnest and sure of his destiny: “I suddenly felt like puncturing that certainty of hers, letting her know that her experiment with me had failed.” Ms. Soetoro-Ng, who herself became an anthropologist, remembers conversations with her mother about philosophy or politics, books, esoteric Indonesian woodworking motifs. One Christmas in Indonesia, Ms. Soetoro found a scrawny tree and decorated it with red and green chili peppers and popcorn balls. “She gave us a very broad understanding of the world,” her daughter said. “She hated bigotry. She was very determined to be remembered for a life of service and thought that service was really the true measure of a life.” Many of her friends see her legacy in Mr. Obama — in his self-assurance and drive, his boundary bridging, even his apparent comfort with strong women. Some say she changed them, too. “I feel she taught me how to live,” said Ms. Nayar, who was in her 20s when she met Ms. Soetoro at Women’s World Banking. “She was not particularly concerned about what society would say about working women, single women, women marrying outside their culture, women who were fearless and who dreamed big.” The Final Months After her diagnosis, Ms. Soetoro spent the last months of her life in Hawaii, near her mother. (Her father had died.) Mr. Obama has recalled talking with her in her hospital bed about her fears of ending up broke. She was not ready to die, he has said. Even so, she helped him and Maya “push on with our lives, despite our dread, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart.” She died in November 1995, as Mr. Obama was starting his first campaign for public office. After a memorial service at the University of Hawaii, one friend said, a small group of friends drove to the South Shore in Oahu. With the wind whipping the waves onto the rocks, Mr. Obama and Ms. Soetoro-Ng placed their mother’s ashes in the Pacific, sending them off in the direction of Indonesia. Michelle Obama: Child’s obesity challenge, “high-fructose corn syrup…, “everything in a bottle or a package is like poison”From a “New Yorker” article on Michelle Obama
When Barack was elected to the United States Senate, the Obamas decided that Michelle and the girls would remain in Chicago rather than leave behind what she refers to as her “support base.” A local mother told the Tribune, of their chore-swapping, “This weekend was Hannah Montana, next weekend Michelle has soccer-skills practice.” One morning, during a roundtable at Ma Fischer’s, a diner in Milwaukee, Elizabeth Crawford, a recently divorced caterer with two children, brought up the subject of the eating habits of American families. “I really, really hope that Barack will jump on that,” she said. Then, having given thoughtful but boilerplate responses most of the morning, Obama suddenly departed from her script. It was the most animated I saw her on the campaign trail. “You know,” she said, “in my household, over the last year we have just shifted to organic for this very reason. I mean, I saw just a moment in my nine-year-old’s life—we have a good pediatrician, who is very focussed on childhood obesity, and there was a period where he was, like, ‘Mmm, she’s tipping the scale.’ So we started looking through our cabinets. . . . You know, you’ve got fast food on Saturday, a couple days a week you don’t get home. The leftovers, good, not the third day! . . . So that whole notion of cooking on Sunday is out. . . . And the notion of trying to think about a lunch every day! . . . So you grab the Lunchables, right? And the fruit-juice-box thing, and we think—we think—that’s juice. And you start reading the labels and you realize there’s high-fructose corn syrup in everything we’re eating. Every jelly, every juice. Everything that’s in a bottle or a package is like poison in a way that most people don’t even know. . . . Now we’re keeping, like, a bowl of fresh fruit in the house. But you have to go to the fruit stand a couple of times a week to keep that fruit fresh enough that a six-year-old—she’s not gonna eat the pruney grape, you know. At that point it’s, like, ‘Eww!’ She’s not gonna eat the brown banana or the shrivelledy-up things. It’s got to be fresh for them to want it. Who’s got time to go to the fruit stand? Who can afford it, first of all?” If you would like to help the presidential candidates discover the possibilities of the locally produced, organic food movement, send an e-mail to locavores@milwaukeerenaissance.com. Presidential Candidates Propounding Myth of College As “The Way”I think the nation would be better served were we to face up to a basic fact: College education for some, for many, is not the way to the good life. In fact, the myth of college education as the way to the good life
Many parents chain themselves to dehumanizing work situations
Many parents torture those of their children who are not college inclined
How many of us know of friends who majored in a hot subject
How many of us know friends who got generalist degrees
Why not recognize that certain young people’s personality or life-situation
Apprenticeships with artists, artisans, knowledge workers, small business owners
We do ourselves a disservice assuming there is only one road to Rome. An apprentice Milwaukee urban farmer
Live Locally Concepts for Obama Team/Movement Considerationhttp://www.livelocalmilwakee.org is the heart of Milwaukee’s hope, and I hope Obamma’s campaigns in the cities of the USA . Why Live Local? EAT LOCAL: 7 Reasons
GROW LOCAL “To plant a garden is to believe in the future.” BUY LOCAL
Local businesses are..stable source of jobs …. LOCAL ENERGY
LOCAL TRANSPORT
LOCAL CULTURE
Link to Information About Clinton’s and Obama’s Legislative Activitieshttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/20/201332/807/36/458633 Question re Industrial Food System vs Organic Local Agriculture for U. of Penn Debate“Oil prices are soaring, transportation costs are get |