Category: Protests and Crackdowns

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business-general, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Photo by Palmer W. Cook
Photo of debris after Hurricane Katrina
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Photo by Palmer W. Cook

It’s not often you hear a self-professed liberal Jewish feminist open her talk with ten minutes praising the Pope. But that’s how Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, and several other groundbreaking books, began her talk at Mount Holyoke College last night. While acknowledging a litany of areas where she and Francis have profound disagreements—among them same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to control her own body—she thanked him publicly for his attention to the planet in peril and its dispossessed people, saying he was a great example of what environmental leadership looks like right now.

And for Klein, those two areas—helping the planet and replacing poverty with abundance—are forever braided together. “Climate change is an accelerant to all the other issues going wrong…It’s not about saying climate change is so big that it trumps everything else. All are equally urgent, and we don’t win by pitting these issues against each other.” We win, she says, by joining forces to demand holistic approaches that simultaneously solve climate heating, create jobs and economic opportunity, and remediate ism-based oppression—by “connecting climate change with a broken economic model”—a concept she calls “intersectionality.”

(This is a message particularly dear to my own heart, and thoroughly integrated into my forthcoming 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World as well as my own talk, “‘Impossible’ is a Dare.”)

The impacts of climate change, she notes, often fall most heavily among the very poor countries, and the very poor residents of rich countries. Oil refineries, coal plants, and high asthma rates tend to be found in low-income communities, often with high concentrations of people of color. Rising floodwaters will inundate poor, tiny island nations first. “It’s not just about things getting hotter, but about things getting meaner. More militarized, more racist,” as we see in the response of countries like Hungary to the Syrian refugee crisis. Which she sees as climate-related, noting that the Syrian civl war followed the worst drought in Syria’s history. Climate change, she says, is also a women’s and a feminist issue; the impacts hit women disproportionately as well.

So her challenge to climate activists is to turn “disaster apartheid” (e.g., the detestable official response to Hurricane Katrina) into “energy democracy.” And that includes making sure that the communities hit hardest are first in line for improvements that meet their needs.

Hurricane Katrina, which inspired Klein to write The Shock Doctrine and begin her climate study that led to This Changes Everything, was a perfect storm combining “heavy weather and a weak and neglected public sphere.” She points out that by the time Katrina made landfall, it had been downgraded from a Category 5 hurricane to a mere tropical storm. The levees should have withstood the onslaught, if they hadn’t been allowed to fall into disrepair.

While the world looked on with horror as “FEMA couldn’t find New Orleans,” and “prisoners were abandoned, locked in their cells as the waters were rising,” evacuees were given one-way tickets out, and the elites seized an opportunity to remake the city as a wealthier place, with 100,000 fewer poor blacks, even tearing down public housing projects undamaged by the storm, to replace them with high-end condominiums.

Quoting Black Lives Matter leader Alicia Garza, Klein says it’s time to “‘make new mistakes’…we can’t demand perfection but we can demand evolution.”

Examples of the old mistakes we shouldn’t keep making:

  • “Projecting messianic fantasies onto politicians” and becoming disappointed when they fail to save us
  • Believing we can solve all our problems with market forces (she cites the recent Volkswagen fuel emissions tampering scandal as an example of why that doesn’t work)—or with technological fixes, which include not only wonderful new green energy systems but also environmentally catastrophic technologies like fracking (“the oil companies have figured out how to screw us sideways”), tar-sands oil, and massive pipelines such as the Keystone XL
  • “Building a movement entirely of upper-middle-class white people and wondering why people of color don’t join”
  • “Tearing other people to shreds” in bouts of anger disguised as political purity
  • Thinking that any one of us can do it all ourselves

Noting that fossil fuel companies will work extremely hard to protect their enormous profits and will try to win the public by pointing out the lifestyles of luxury fossil fuels have allowed us, Klein says we won’t win by trying to educate fossil-fuel billionaires like the Koch brothers. Furthermore, “we cannot look at this without looking at who burned what, when. Fossil fuels have allowed us to live the fantasy of a life apart from nature. But the response from the earth, though slow in coming, says there’s no such thing as a one-way relationship, and you were never the boss! We could see this as a cosmic demotion—or as a gift.”

But we do have many victories to celebrate, including Shell’s decision this week in the face of strong opposition from environmentalists to withdraw from arctic drilling…China’s major reduction in coal development and initiation of carbon cap-and-trade—due to public pressure even in that repressive society—when only a few years ago a new coal plant was opening every week…the 400,000 new jobs Germany has created in shifting 30 percent of its energy from fossil and nuclear to solar and wind (to name a few). “As I talk to people, the biggest problem is that they think they can’t win. But we are winning, as part of a global movement.

And just as the shock of the Great Depression economic collapse created space for New Deal social reforms, so the climate catastrophe, coupled with the current collapse of fossil fuel prices, with the price of a barrel of oil plummeting from $100 to $50 in three months,  could catalyze transformation: “integrated holistic solutions and a road map. There’s a progressive tradition of using these shocks to build….a moment where we can do things that weren’t possible before. We can shut down bad projects and bad policy. We can win a moratorium on all arctic drilling. It’s easier to bring in a bold progressive carbon tax…the political goal has to be a polluter-pays principle…the mostr sustainable route is weaving together the yes and the no.” She delighted in recent progressive electoral victories in Alberta (long controlled by tar-sands-loving right-wingers) and in the UK, where the Bernie Sanders-like Jeremy Corbyn has just become head of the Labour Party. Also in Alberta, she took hope from a conference that brought together union miners from the tar sands, environmentalists, and many other sectors and emerged with a progressive manifesto.

Before a brief Q&A, she closed her formal presentation with a clarion call to optimism AND action:

We need to move from a society based on extraction to one based on caring, including a guaranteed annual income. Caregiving jobs are climate change jobs. We must expand the caring economy and contract the careless economy. 2016 is a leap year; we add a human-created day in deference to the earth’s rotation. That’s an increased opportunity to build a much better world. We will be told it’s impractical. But $2.6 trillion has been divested from fossil fuel.

Quoting a woman leader in Nauru, a tiny Pacific Island being lost to climate change after a catastrophic history of exploitation by First World economies (Klein chronicles the sad tale in This Changes Everything), she continued,

“If politics are immovable, let’s change the politics.” Now is not the time for small steps. Now is the time to leap!

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Brilliant article in Yes Magazine by Mistinguette Smith: “6 Strategies to Make Powerful Social Change—Starting With “Stay Woke.””

One of the points I make when I give my “‘Impossible” is a Dare (NOT a Fact)” talks is that every one of us has the power to be an agent of change. For every Count Leo Tolstoy (born into wealth and privilege and used his position to work for social change), there are dozens if not hundreds of Martin Luther Kings, Gandhis, and Mother Teresas: ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Most meaningful social change gets accomplished by ordinary people, especially when they organize and work together. I personally started the movement that saved our local mountain. Bree’s courage and power are the norm, not the exception.

I’ve often heard very successful people get asked, “How did you do _____ before you were _______ (the successful person’s name, emphasized)? Even with my own rather limited fame, I’ve been asked “How did you save the mountain before you were Shel Horowitz?”

Here’s what they’re missing. What turned me from Shel Horowitz, self-employed marketing consultant working out of a farmhouse, to Shel Horowitz, locally famous saver of mountains, was going out and starting the movement to save the mountain. It was the doing that created the fame.

Yes, I did have the marketing skills to leverage that and eventually build a brand around profitability consulting for green and socially conscious businesses. Yes, I had the writing and research skills to create a body of work that attracted a major publisher and a celebrity co-author for my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. Yes, I created enough leverage from that book to be able to do my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, comes out in March, with endorsements by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin, the founders of BNI and GreenBiz.com, the author of The New Rules of Green Marketing (among others), and essays from the authors of Unstoppable/Unstoppable Women and Diet for a Small Planet. I grabbed the opportunities to make more of a difference in the wider world, and not just my own community. But just because I made those opportunities happen doesn’t mean they weren’t available to others.

Social change can be based in very small actions. The backstory about Mistinguette Smith’s article is that her editor wanted to ditch the phrase in the title, “Stay Woke.” Mistinguette brought that discussion to Facebook, and that may have been why she eventually won the argument. But the key element to making the change is mindset. This is how I heard about her article before it was published, and how I knew it was published and could read it.

To accomplish positive social change, I think we need two things: one is the sense that we can make a difference and the willingness to try—something any of us can achieve.

The other is the motivation to achieve a higher good than simply obtaining power or profit.I’d even go so far as to say the need to make the world better is a basic human drive, just like food or shelter or sex. If we’re not doing this in some small way, we don’t feel complete.

Let’s look at the difference between two ordinary men who led their countries out of apartheid: Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (formerly called Rhodesia). Both were hailed as liberators originally. Mugabe, a teacher and prison-educated lawyer, turned out to be a brutal thug, a dictator motivated by the desire for power and wealth.

But Mandela was clearly motivated by a desire to heal his suffering country. His actions were all about unity and reconciliation. He will be remembered as a hero to the end of time.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics: General, Green Business, localism/locavore, media-general, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m up to the part of Naomi Klein?‘s This Changes Everything where she talks about the interconnectedness of geolocalized people’s movements opposing “extreme/reckless resource extraction” (e.g., tar-sands oil, fracked gas and oil, mountaintop removal for coal). She dubs the movement “Blockadia.” She also casts very appropriate darts, just before this section, at the crazy idea that we should avoid climate catastrophe by throwing so much pollution into the sky that the sun can’t get through. Talk about a cure worse than the disease! Hard to believe some scientists are actually serious about this.

She points out that these technologies are far more intrusive and polluting and resource-intensive than the old-style mines and wells—and that the opposition often parses out as saving our water from destruction, modeling around the Precautionary Principle of not unleashing technologies we can’t control, and using the positive framing of protecting our water (very similar to the way I framed Save the Mountain 15 years ago—the successful movement to keep a nasty housing development off the Mount Holyoke Range in my town of Hadley, Massachusetts, US). I have said for many years that we have plenty of substitutes for oil, but if the water is gone (or unusable), so are we.

Like everything I’ve ever read by Klein, the book is impeccably researched—including interviewing primary sources directly and even suffering through climate-denier conferences and similar events in person; pursuit of the truth can be painful, sometimes.

And she isn’t afraid to go after the movement’s sacred cows. She scolds some very prominent environmental groups including The Nature Conservancy for betraying their core mission in the service of their large extraction-industry funders—even putting an oil well into one of its nature preserves, where the bird it was set up to protect can no longer be found. And she finds Sir Richard Branson’s proclamations of concern for the planet to be at odds with his actions. (I’m hoping she’s wrong about him. Even if she turns out to be right—and she might well be—he has certainly used his considerable charisma to educate the public on climate change.)

Environmentalists need to take these accusations very seriously. We need to know who we fund, and what they do with the money. And we definitely need to build the movement that insists upon meaningful action to stave off catastrophic climate change—which would have been much easier 20 or 30 years ago, but, I believe, is still possible now.

However, I break with Klein over solutions. She has essentially no faith in the business community or in technology, and she seems to think that any time an environmental group partners with a polluter, that group is sullied. Maybe I’m less of a purist than she is. But I’ve just finished another wonderful book, The Necessary Revolution, by Peter Senge et al. Reading the two together was very interesting, because Senge’s book is full of great examples of NGOs and corporations working together to tackle problems in a very meaningful way, while Klein’s is the counterpoint of these partnerships leading to a failure to address the deeper issues.

I also read almost daily reports in the sustainability press (GreenBiz, Sustainable Brands, Triple Pundit, 3BL Media, Rocky Mountain Institute’s Solutions Journal, and Guardian Sustainable Business, to name a few) of the amazing small-scale, eco-friendly technology innovations that give me hope. And I’m painfully aware that we knew all the way back in 1983-84 how to build a beautiful, modern, net-zero-energy home even in extreme environments, and that our failure to make this the norm is inexcusable.

Technology doesn’t have to be about extreme extraction, GMOs designed to absorb more pesticides, nuclear power, or blocking the sun. Science and engineering can actually be the climate movement’s friends. Unlike the crazy unproven schemes requiring billions or trillions of dollars and dozens of years to ramp up, these innovations often combine deep conservation, greater efficiency in harnessing clean renewable energy, and even the fascinating science of biomimcry to slash energy use, carbon footprint, and waste—right now.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Arts & Entertainment, Diversity, Ethics: General, language, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

Pattern from a Japanese kimono
Pattern from a Japanese kimono
A group of Japanese-American protestors has embarrassed Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts into pulling the plug on the opportunity to stand in front of a Monet painting of his wife in a red kimono, wearing a similar red kimono.

As someone whose stepfather is Japanese, and who had to pose with my wife, my sister and her husband in the authentic yukatas (they’re like kimonos, but less formal and lighter weight) and obis (ceremonial belts) he gave us for some event–and as someone who has certainly seen my own Jewish heritage symbols appropriated and/or misused by mainstream culture–I can relate on some level her perspective.

But I also feel it’s crucial that we learn about the wider world around us, and that e.g. eating Thai food doesn’t mean you understand Thai culture. I think the experience of wearing the very elegant but very restrictive formal Japanese outfit with kimono and obi can provide a little window into what it was like to be upper-class female in 19th-century Japan. It saddens me that those teachable moments were lost in this.

I also do have concerns about how many other opportunities to touch another culture have been taken from us in the name of political correctness. A few years ago, a local high school even canceled a production of West Side Story because they were accused of racism–missing the entire point. Ditto the campaigns to purge high school classrooms of Mark Twain’s anti-racism classic Huckleberry Finn because it used the n-word, even though Twain’s purpose was to use that epithet (which, in his time, was probably the most common word to describe blacks) to build a bridge between the black and white cultures of 19th-century southern Illinois, right next to slave-owning Missouri.

To me, the correct response would have been for the museum to meet with the protestors and ask for their input in recasting the exhibit so it enlarged the educational aspect in a way that the Japanese-American protestors found appropriate–and for the protestors to have made that, rather than ceasing the exhibit, as their demand. Instead, it’s all this shouting at each other instead of talking to each other. Yes, you protest, but then you collaborate and build a greater whole.

Of course, an even more appropriate way to handle it would have been to involve local Japanese-American organizations in the planning and curation to begin with.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics: General, General Commentary, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Freedom to exercise one’s own religion is NOT the same as freedom to stuff that religion down others’ throats. This is what the right-wing Christians have not understood about the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. No one is forcing them to marry each other–and they do not have the right to keep others from marrying the ones they love, just because their religion doesn’t agree.

When my family was kosher, I went to private Jewish schools (yeshivas). It may have been that part of my parents’ reasons was to keep me away from the “corrupting” influence of non-kosher food.

This post is inspired by a report of a Canadian mayor telling Muslim parents the schools would not stop serving pork–a report that was a hoax (which took about seven seconds to determine). But just because the report was false (and probably motivated by someone seeking to stir up religious divisions) doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the underlying issue: when does one person’s freedom stop and another’s start?

I am a vegetarian and I would never say to a school system, “don’t serve meat because it is offensive to me.” On the contrary, it is offensive to me when someone tells me I can’t eat the food I want because that food offends them, and I wouldn’t presume to make those choices for others. Sure, I wish more people would turn vegetarian, and I can list a dozen reasons why vegetarianism is good for the planet and good for our bodies.

I will say (and have said), “please don’t bring meat into a potluck at my vegetarian house.” A parent offended that foods he/she doesn’t eat are served in the cafeteria has other choices. There are schools where no pork is served–in fact, I know for certain that pork is not served at any Orthodox yeshiva or Islamic or Seventh Day Adventist school. It would be offensive if the Muslim kids and Orthodox Jewish kids and vegetarian kids attending public school were *forced* to eat pork. But it should not be offensive to sit in a cafeteria where others are eating it.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Demographics/Psychographics, People Helping People, Protests and Crackdowns Tagged with , , , , ,
Arky Markham, 100, watches as (from left) Marty Nathan, Mayor David Narkewicz, and Lisa Baskin light birthday candles
Arky Markham, 100, watches as (from left) Marty Nathan, Mayor David Narkewicz, and Lisa Baskin light birthday candles

If your image of a 100-year-old woman is a quiet old lady vegetating in a nursing home, let me introduce you to Arky Aisenberg Markham.

She turned 100 yesterday, and celebrated with about 300 guests in a fundraiser for the Markham-Nathan Fund, one of several organizations she’s founded or co-founded (another is Social Workers for Peace and Justice). Attendees included Massachusetts Senate President Stan Rosenberg (who also happens to represent her district), Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, State Representatives Peter Kocot and Ellen Story, retired Congressman John Olver, and at least three of Northampton’s nine city councilors–and a virtual Who’s Who of activists involved for decades in peace, labor, human rights, environmental, economic justice, and democracy work, including representatives of the 15 organizations the Markham-Nathan Fund supported this year. The event probably raised several thousand dollars for social justice work.

Arky walked to the stage under her own power and shot back one-liner after one-liner during several of the speakers’ remarks. One of the speakers, I think Rep. Kocot, remarked that Arky always showed us the right path. Arky immediately zinged, “the left path.” Rosenberg made a comment about coming back to celebrate her 200th birthday, and she shouted, in Yiddish, “ein hoonderd tsvantsich” (one-hundred-twenty) evoking an old Jewish blessing about living to 120. And it was Arky herself who gave the fundraising pitch. As she left the stage, the first several people to greet her were all female. She said something like, “Now that I’m 100, all the women want to kiss me. Where are the men who want to kiss me?” So I went up and kissed her. All her comeback lines were unrehearsed and spontaneous, and had the crowd laughing regularly.

This remarkable woman was already 41 years old when I was born. Wanting to do her part to stop Hitler, she was a military air traffic controller during World War II, then used the GI bill to get an undergrad degree in Spanish and a Master’s in Social Work, which led to a career working with various underserved populations, from inner-city NYC school children to her fellow veterans. She was in her 50s when she met and married George Markham; their first date was a rally against the Vietnam War, and they were involved in numerous peace and justice causes together until George’s death in 2009, at age 100.

Why were so many dignitaries in attendance? Because they are all activists! Their electoral political work is a direct outgrowth of their commitment to a better world. The Northampton-Amherst area may be a bit unusual in the percentage of progressive activists it sends to elected office–but I, for one, find it very refreshing to live in a place where elected officials are actually about peace and justice.

[Note: Arky died on June 11, 2018, ten days before her 103rd birthday.]

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Guest post by Paul Loeb

Remember the World Trade Organization, which slipped into the shadows after massive Seattle protests in 1999? The same day last week that Congress initially blocked the possibility of fast track approval for the TPP trade agreement, the House voted to overturn rules requiring country-of-origin labeling for meat. Those supporting the vote said they were responding to a World Trade Organization ruling, judging US country-of-origin labeling unfair competition with meat coming from foreign countries like Canada and Mexico, and therefore a violation. They said they had no choice for fear of triggering sanctions or lawsuits from countries exporting meat across our borders.

I don’t know about you, but I like knowing whether my meat comes from Iowa or Uzbekistan, Montana or Mexico, Kentucky or Kenya. So do 93% of Americans, according to a Consumer’s Union survey. People like supporting US farmers, cutting down distance travelled, knowing there will be at least minimal inspection standards, even if the delights of e coli occasionally slip through. It seems commonsensical that we’d want at least the chance to become informed consumers, whether with the origins of our meat, GMO-derived crops, or the amount of sugar and calories in our baked goods.

Maybe the House members are wrong in insisting that the international tribunals that adjudicate trade disputes would deem this a violation. But if this particular House bill passes the Senate and gets signed by Obama, even the mere possibility of a lawsuit will have struck down a wholly reasonable law that protects our health and supports our local economies. And if TPP passes the Senate, other attempts to regulate commerce for the common good will be potentially gutted as well, from attempts at financial regulation to limits on the prices charged for drugs, to environmental rules and seemingly innocuous actions like requiring accurate labeling. Some of this could occur through legal action, and some through the mere fear that such action could occur.

Now maybe TPP won’t contain rules on meat. Maybe it will simply limit other ways we might try to exert our sovereignty over critical choices that affect us. But we do know that this agreement—involving countries constituting 40% of the global economy—through what’s called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process, will establish unaccountable tribunals with the power to let corporations collect damages for loss of profits. We don’t know the precise reach of the agreement because ordinary citizens haven’t seen it. Even Congressional opponents were prohibited from taking notes when they looked at it, and “cleared advisors” who’ve seen it have been legally prohibited from talking specifics. Yet we’re told it represents an inevitable future, that the benefits will trickle down to ordinary citizens, and that those who ask reasonable questions about its profound implications are merely obstructionist whiners.

So do we demand full transparency before moving ahead? Or do we trust that the corporations that negotiated these rules have our interests at heart, and would never, in the slightest, harm our democracy? Whether or not the country-of-origin labeling on meat survives or is ended by the House bill and WTO ruling, TPP plays for far larger stakes, the ground rules that affect our very potential to take common action. The meat bill is one more warning that there are some rules and agreements where we should be careful to eagerly swallow.

Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

I saw “42” when it came out and liked it a lot.

It is hard to stay focused on changing the world when you look around and see not only the same battles all over again, but in many cases the same increasingly elderly activists joining those battles. For me, the wave of youth activism that started with Seattle in 1999 and crested with the Occupy movement–and will return when we least expect it—is very exciting, because it means there IS a critical mass for social change one and two generations younger than us.

I also avoid burnout by regularly thinking about all the areas where we HAVE made progress. And while police violence is an area that needs a LOT of work (since the 1960s, I haven’t understood why they reach for bullets instead of stun guns first), I think about what it was like for blacks in South Africa, Rhodesia, and the American South in my own lifetime…the way the environmental movement has gone from fringe to mainstream…the shattering of the idea common when I was a kid that the only appropriate careers for women were teaching and nursing and domestic work…the relatively new understanding that domestic violence and hate speech and school bullying are crimes we don’t have to tolerate…the string of fallen-dictator dominoes around the world, from throwing off the shackles of colonialism in Africa to the Arab Spring. (We may not always find the replacement governments an improvement, but the truth is, when the people say ENOUGH, governments topple and there is a brief space for something better. Once in a while, as in Mandela’s South Africa, that better thing actually emerges victorious.)

In other words, I look around and I see that within the brief span of my own lifetime (I turn 58 on Wednesday), we’ve made very real change on many fronts, even if it feels like we’re running in place or even backsliding.

These are what gives me hope and keeps me working for peace, justice, and the planet.

The above is my response to a friend posting her response to the movie, “42,” about Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball. She wrote,

Black Lives Mattered in that struggle against racism in baseball–perhaps the beginning of the civil rights movement…Sixty years later, same struggle. Oh, God help us win this time ’round. Does the arc of justice bend?

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

I got sucked into a debate on Facebook following a high school classmate’s posting a meme of some of Obama’s  economic achievements: Dow Jones increasing from 7949 to 17,830 (that’s more than 124 percent, if I’m figuring correctly); unemployment down from 7.8 to 5.8 percent; GDP from NEGATIVE 5.4 to POSITIVE 3.5 percent; and consumer confidence from 37.7 to 94.5 percent from the time Obama took office.

But as these kinds of discussions often do, it quickly turned toward non-economic politics. And good progressive that I am, I put in this comment:

Robin, you wrote, “OH I know Bush had his share of crap also but at least he proudly and openly loved this country.” I am sorry, but if loving your country means bringing it illegally into wars under utterly false pretenses, wrecking the economy, suppressing dissent (continued, to his shame, by Obama), instituting torture, dissipating international goodwill, etc., this is a “love” that needs serious social-work intervention. When an abuser says “I love you and I’ll never hit you again,” we’re skeptical. Bush was an abuser.

The person I quoted than asked me if I didn’t remember 9/11, and wasn’t Bush justified in going to war. She also asked me if I was “also a Jewish Democrat that thinks Obama is good for Israel or do you care”

I responded:

1. Of COURSE I am aware of the horrors of 9/11. I spent two weeks afterward trying to find out if my ex-housemate from Brooklyn days was OK; she was living two blocks from the WTC (she was uptown at the time, fortunately, and now lives in Colorado). And I’m one degree of separation from a couple of people who died that day. BUT Bush made war on Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with it (it’s well documented that Bin Laden and Saddam hated each other)–and, it turned out, didn’t have WMDs either. The terrorists were mostly Saudi. Afghanistan, along with Pakistan, actually did shelter the terrorists–but the appropriate response to a criminal conspiracy and criminal acts is not to destroy an entire country but to go in with a police action, capture the perps, and put them on trial. You talk about “an arrogant and narcisitic man who has tunnel vision and refuses to listen to the American people.” That would describe several US presidents, including both Obama and Bush, as well as Nixon, among others. I was out there as part of the largest peace demonstrations in history, urging Bush NOT to make war on Iraq. It was totally predictable that this would only create instability, blow away our foreign allies, and provide lots of recruitment material for terrorists. I think the Iraq war may be the worst foreign policy debacle of all US history.

2. As for Israel: I was just there this summer, and spent a LOT of time talking to all sides (including my Israel-right-or-wrong West Bank settler family members). This is not a simple situation, but ultimately, the repression and racism from Israel against the Palestinians is a far more destabilizing influence. Netenyahu’s policies do not encourage peace. They inflame hatreds. Then the Israelis cry that the Arabs hate us. There have been horrible crimes on both sides–but revenge is not the answer. Somehow, we have to get past that and make peace, as happened in Ireland/Northern Ireland and South Africa. Wallowing in the hatred just boils the cauldron harder. I do think that the majority of Israelis AND Palestinians actually want peace–but the extremists on both sides look for any wedge they can. I take hope from groups like Combatants for Peace and Neve Shalom, and it made me very sad today to hear that a joint Jewish-Arab school was torched by anti-Arab extremists. You make peace with your enemies, not necessarily your friends. Obama showed some leadership early in his presidency and then largely ignored the whole issue. He should show some more.

So, at the risk of throwing kerosene on the flames, let me ask you: what do you think of these two presidents’ foreign policy legacies? I will not censor dissent, but I will block name-calling and uncivility—so play nice, but tell me what you think.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Trends/News, poverty, privacy, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Very interesting post on Business Week: “Can Small Businesses Start a Gay Rights Movement in Mississippi?”

I totally support nondiscrimination in any public accommodation or retail setting—and I’m delighted to see the “We don’t discriminate. If you’re buying, we’re selling” campaign in Mississippi. But at the risk of alienating some of my friends, l think service businesses–especially values-based ones—are a different case. Before you jump all over me—read the language I send to new prospects for my marketing and consulting services:

Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.

Notice that this language doesn’t discriminate against a person or class of people–but it certainly does discriminate against a set of beliefs.

Now, if I reserve that privilege for myself, how can I possibly justify withholding it from someone else who runs a service business and has different values than mine?

Also, there’s a provider quality issue. If I were forced to write a piece of marketing copy for a product whose values I despised, I would do a terrible job. Even if I consciously tried to do my best, it would come out shoddy and insincere, because I wouldn’t believe in what I was promoting. By the same token, I can’t imagine why a same-sex couple would WANT to hire a homophobic wedding photographer (one of the examples cited in the article); the pictures will be terrible.

If you’re renting a room, buying a sandwich, riding a bus, patronizing a theme park…yes, you should have the right to be served. But if a service provider is being asked to use specialized skills to support a cause that service provider finds morally repugnant, I’m not at all sure we should coerce that behavior.

Please comment below. I’d love to get some good dialog going on this.

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