Category: Social and Economic Justice

By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice

Great tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. in an Op-Ed by Taylor Branch in today’s New York Times. The article goes waaaaay beyond the standard establishment tributes, and even the progressive pieces that recognize the unity of his call to end racial injustice and his call to end the Vietnam war.

I particularly love these two paragraphs–not in any way to trivialize the struggle of blacks, but to clearly show how many other social movements (including the environmental movement, which Branch doesn’t mention) drew strength, inspiration, and tactics from King and the Civil Rights movement generally:

Dr. King said the movement would liberate not only segregated black people but also the white South. Surely this is true. You never heard of the Sun Belt when the South was segregated. The movement spread prosperity in a region previously unfit even for professional sports teams. My mayor in Atlanta during the civil rights era, Ivan Allen Jr., said that as soon as the civil rights bill was signed in 1964, we built a baseball stadium on land we didn’t own, with money we didn’t have, for a team we hadn’t found, and quickly lured the Milwaukee Braves. Miami organized a football team called the Dolphins.

The movement also de-stigmatized white Southern politics, creating two-party competition. It opened doors for the disabled, and began to lift fear from homosexuals before the modern notion of “gay” was in use. Not for 2,000 years of rabbinic Judaism had there been much thought of female rabbis, but the first ordination took place soon after the movement shed its fresh light on the meaning of equal souls. Now we think nothing of female rabbis and cantors and, yes, female Episcopal priests and bishops, with their colleagues of every background. Parents now take for granted opportunities their children inherit from the Montgomery bus boycott.

King was still alive when I started, before I even reached my teens, exploring nonviolent social change. Over and over again, I found evidence that nonviolent mass movements are far more likely than armed struggle to create lasting, powerful social progress, and that the revolutions achieved nonviolently are much harder to corrupt (not impossible, as we saw under Indira Gandhi)–and yes, organized mass nonviolence can even work against brutal dictatorships. Some of the most effective resistance to the Nazis was through nonviolence, including (but far from limited to) the famous heroic defiance of the King of Denmark after he surrendered his country, riding his horse through the streets of Copenhagen with a yellow star pinned to his clothing in solidarity with the Jews–and inspiring his Danes to save thousands of Jewish lives with a clandestine boatlift to neutral Sweden. And of course there was the massive nonviolent revolt led my M.K. Gandhi against the brutal British colonial regime in India.

In our own time, we’ve seen nonviolence achieve miracles, not only in the US Civil Rights struggle, but also, to name a few examples,

  • Solidarity driving the Communists from power in Poland
  • Safe energy activists at Seabrook (I was there!) and around the country making it politically impossible to build more nuclear power plants for the next three decades (we might have to fight that one again, I’m afraid)
  • The end of apartheid in South Africa, in a struggle that was largely nonviolent (contrast that with Zimbabwe, where the “freedom fighter” Robert Mugabe turned out to be every bit as much a dictatorial thug as Ian Smith had been)

    • I totally agree with Branch that many of the social movements of the last four years would have been much harder to envision and carry out had it not been for the Civil Rights movement. That movement inspired us not to take injustice lying down, and showed us tools to fight for justice that maintained our dignity, that needed no weapons or weapons training, and that created long-lasting change. Labor, environmentalists, feminists, and poor people’s movements are just some of the many who have learned from Dr. King and his movement.

    For more on effective nonviolent organizing, I strongly recommend the works of Gene Sharp. I read the three-volume The Politics of Nonviolent Action more than 25 years ago, and it still left an impresion on me. Not an easy read, but incredibly wrthwhile.

    And meanwhile, I’ll have to put Taylor Branch’s 3-part history of the Civil Rights movement, Parting the Waters/Pillar of Fire/At Canaan’s Edge, on my reading list.

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    By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Social and Economic Justice

    For many months, I’ve seen articles in alternative media sources about the construction of large detention camps, even about boxcars outfitted with shackles for transporting prisoners.

    And my response has always been that I want to see coverage in mainstream media, that it’s too easy to buy into the hysteria and paranoia that can afflict movements of both the left and right.

    Well, here it is: a large and detailed op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle outlining the detention camps, the no-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root, the involvement of at least one member of Congress–and the series of post-9/11 laws that give life to this grim scenario. Yes the article entions boxcars with shackles.

    On the other hand, the article notes that this project began in 1999–when Bill Clinton was president. And long before all that enabling legislation.

    Civil libertarians: we need to keep our eyes on this. Be afraid–but don’t be paralyzed by fear.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics, Social and Economic Justice

    I’ve been waiting for people to start tossing around the word “liberal” as if it’s some kind of curse, and applying it to one or both of the Democratic front-runners.

    Today for the first time, I saw hint of it, directed against Obama–by someone who seems to be a supporter, Joan Vennnochi, writing in the Boston Globe:

    Other questions, just for the sake of political argument: Do endorsements from the liberal Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and from the ultra-liberal political action organization, MoveOn.org, come with a downside in the general election? The National Journal just released a listing that ranked Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007. Have the old labels truly lost their ability to zing?

    And why, you ask, have I been so eagerly waiting for this? Very simple: it gives me the excuse to give Barack Obama my very best advice:

    Barack, stand strong, don’t back down, and don’t be ashamed to be liberal. You were voted the most liberal Senator; make the most of it, and wear it as a badge of honor.

    I want to hear you say these words, or something similar:

    You say I’m a liberal as if it’s some sort of dirty word. Liberals shortened the work day from 12 hours to 8. Liberals made it possible for all of us to still breathe the air and drink the water, by passing the Clean Air an Clean Water Acts. Liberals brought us universal public education, the civil rights movement the idea that discrimination is wrong no matter who its target. I’m proud to be a liberal, John. In the next four years, liberals will bring us universal health care, will get us out of a war we had no business entering in the first place, will reverse the Bush Administration assault on civil liberties, and will restore our standing as a leader among nations that it had before the very unliberal Bush administration took over. John McCain, aren’t you ashamed that you’re so adamantly not a liberal?

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics-International, Peace and War, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice

    Throughout history, far more lasting, positive social change has been accomplished through

    nonviolent (though often massive) organizing than through coups, violence, military dictatorships of the left or the right.

    Need examples? Just in my own lifetime, there are many. A few to tickle your memory:

  • The US Civil Rights movement
  • Abolition of apartheid in South Africa
  • The Solidarity movement and the dismantling of the entire Soviet empire
  • Getting the US out of Vietnam

    The skills involved in this kind of organizing are not necessarily intuitive, and if you only look at traditional history sources, they aren’t well documented. However, plenty of people’s history exists, and numerous courageous individuals have spent their lives studying these skills, and building them in others.

    I didn’t know Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Dorothy Day–but I have been fortunate to know personally some of the leaders of this movement. The late Dave Dellinger was a personal friend for a few years. And I knew George Lakey and Stephen Zunes when I lived in a nonviolent study and action community in Philadelphia. Stephen and I even collaborated as the principal authors of a paper on future directions for the peace movement.

    I bring this up not to name-drop but to be able to speak from personal experience that these are people of very high integrity.

    So I was a bit shocked to get an e-mail from Stephen calling attention to criticism he and Gene Sharp (author of the definitive analysis of nonviolent social change, The Politics of Nonviolent Action), and others. Apparently, they are being targeted by certain elements of the left who sees them as tools of imperialism–including Hugo chavez of Venezuela.

    Stephen has posted a long rebuttal to this absurd claim on the Foreign Policy in Focus website.

    Stephen points out that the consulting he and other nonviolent activists do focuses on helping democratic opposition to totalitarian groups favored by US government interests, and not on destabilizing governments the US doesn’t like. In fact,

    …The only visit to Venezuela that has taken place on behalf of any of these non-profit groups engaged in educational efforts on strategic nonviolence was in early 2006 when I – along with David Hartsough, the radical pacifist director of Peaceworkers – led a series of workshops at the World Social Forum in Caracas. There we lectured and led discussions on the power of nonviolent resistance as well as offered a series of screenings of a film ICNC helped develop on the pro-democracy movement in Chile against the former U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet. The only reference to Venezuela during those workshops was how massive nonviolent action could be used to resist a possible coup against Chavez, not foment one. In fact, Hartsough and I met with some Venezuelan officials regarding proposals that the government train the population in various methods of nonviolent civil defense to resist any possible future attempts to overthrow Chavez.

    • I very much like Stephen’s analogy of nonviolence training and the appropriate technology/green development movement:

    Just as sustainable agricultural technologies and methods are more effective in meeting human needs and preserving the planet than the conventional development strategies promoted by Western governments, nonviolent action has been shown to be more effective in advancing democratic change than threats of foreign military intervention, backing coup plotters, imposing punitive sanctions, supporting armed rebel groups, and other methods traditionally instigated by the United States and its allies. And just as the application of appropriate technologies can also be a means of countering the damage caused by unsustainable neo-liberal economic models pushed by Western governments and international financial institutions, the use of massive nonviolent action can counter some of the damage resulting from the arms trade, military intervention, and other harmful manifestations of Western militarism.

    Apparently, there will be some kind of action campaign in support of Gene Sharp and others. I Not in the article but in the letter, Zunes writes,

    I’ve recently posted an article which critically examines these claims that popular indigenous pro-democracy struggles and Western nonviolent activists who support them are somehow collaborators with U.S. imperialism… Among the things I address is the irony that so many on the authoritarian left ˆ after years of romanticizing armed struggle as the only way to defeat dictatorships, disparaging the potential of nonviolent action to overthrow repressive governments, and dismissing the notion of a nonviolent revolution — are now expressing their alarm at how successful popular nonviolent insurrections can be, even to the point of naively thinking that they are so easy to pull off that it could somehow be organized from foreign capitals. (One would think that Marxists would recognize that revolutions grow out of objective social conditions…)

    Anyway, I will shortly be sending all of you an open letter in support of Gene Sharp and other folks who do this kind of work I hope you will consider signing on to.

    When I get the link, I’ll post it here.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, media-general, Social and Economic Justice

    In a very long piece (7823 words) in the New York Times Magazine this week, Steven Pinker makes the case that Bill Gates might be more moral than Mother Teresa–because he’s using his fortune to deal with problems like malaria in developing countries.

    Well, I’m not sure I’m ready to agree. But it certainly is nice to see moral issues getting lead-story placement in the Times Magazine.

    It’s also fascinating to see how the author, a Harvard professor, manages to explore moral questions in some depth, and yet manages at the same time to keep his own viewpoints remarkably hidden. We don’t know if he’s liberal or conservative, and we don’t even know if he thinks Gates or Teresa would win the morality contest.

    Another of his examples is how the difference between Islamic Sudan and the secular West had near-disastrous consequences for a well-meaning schoolteacher.

    And because we don’t know his position, it’s easier to accept his premise that morality can create a common ground between Left and Right, or between people of widely disparate cultures.

    An example of the former:

    But in any conflict in which a meeting of the minds is not completely hopeless, a recognition that the other guy is acting from moral rather than venal reasons can be a first patch of common ground. One side can acknowledge the other’s concern for community or stability or fairness or dignity, even while arguing that some other value should trump it in that instance. With affirmative action, for example, the opponents can be seen as arguing from a sense of fairness, not racism, and the defenders can be seen as acting from a concern with community, not bureaucratic power. Liberals can ratify conservatives’ concern with families while noting that gay marriage is perfectly consistent with that concern.

    This insight, about 90% through the article, is simply brilliant. I’ve seen it in action many times, but never so clearly expressed, except perhaps by legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky. It’s a principle that every agent of social change should internalize.

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    By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Media Ethics, media-general, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

    TV pundit and talk show host Lou Dobbs is a master manipulator. He did an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now–an arena that he clearly considered hostile territory–and he used every sleazoid right-wing media manipulation technique I’ve ever seen: interrupting, name calling, avoiding the topic with a twisted answer changing the subject, denying he said something until it was proven on tape, claiming to hold a high standard only to be caught out on fact-checking issues, demanding to be allowed to finish the question but not granting his interlocuters the same courtesy…and plenty more. This interview demonstrates a lot of what’s wrong with “punditocracy.” Oh yes, and he cleverly started the interview by focusing on areas that his audience would actually agree with. But most of his hour focused on immigration, and especially on exposing his rather bizarre sources for his politics on that issue.

    Fortunately, Goodman and Gonzales were up to the challenge and kept him honest–territory that seems, from listening to the interview, to be terra incognita: unknown.

    I particularly liked Juan Gonzales’ response here:

    LOU DOBBS: What in the world is your point?

    JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’m getting to my point, but give me the time to do it. We have time on this show, unlike—we don’t do soundbites here, alright?

    Go to the link and don’t just read the transcript. Listen or watch, and examine this interview through the lens of media manipulation by a right-wing punditocracy that doesn’t want to give air to opposing views, makes up facts when the real ones are inconvenient and resorts to personal attacks when nothing else seems to be working.

    Lou Dobbs embodies much that is wrong with contemporary journalism–but Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, and the entire Democracy Now staff (which does an amazing job digging up news that doesn’t make the mainstream media, five whole hours a week), embody much of what is right.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Customer Service as Marketing, Social and Economic Justice

    Bunch of interesting stuff in the latest issue of the British publication Ethical Corporation, all available online.

    Among the goodies:

    A rather jaundiced view of Apple’s treatment of its customers and the Steve Jobs mystique–also referred to as the “reality distortion field”

    A look at diamond mining giant DeBeers and its partnership with Botswana. This is a company much-criticized by activists over the years. Who knew they even had a corporate citizenship department or a board member from the Botswanan government? I’m not ready to award them a Positive Power Spotlight any time soon but I’m glad to see they’re not completely evil.

    An examination of Starbucks’ relationships with its workers amid charges that the company that prides itself publicly on social responsibility is in some ways a less union-friendly climate. On one statistic–percentage o employees covered by the corporate health plan–it compares unfavorably with the notorious union buster Wal-Mart.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

    Ralph Nader is suing the Democratic Party, claiming a deliberate attempt to force him off the 04 ballot in multiple states and to bankrupt him in the process.

    According to one of Nader’s lawyers, Carl Mayer, interviewed in Democracy Now, the Dems pretty much admit it:

    Robert Brandon, who’s one of the defendants, and he’s a consultant to the Democratic Party. And he held a meeting at the Democratic Convention in 2004 with Moffett, Holtzman and a group of other high-ranking Democrats, and they said, our purpose is to keep Nader off the ballot. And they went, and they proceeded to do it, spending millions of dollars.

    And when will the US woke up to the idea that the 2-party system isn’t working here. Most other democracies abandoned it long ago, if they ever used it. Multiparty parliamentary democracies have a lot of advantages, IMHO.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Social and Economic Justice

    Yes, Wal-Mart is the company I love to hate. Yes, even I said marvelous things about W-M in the aftermath of Katrina, and I respect that it has taken a leadership role on organic food and green energy–though not necessarily the way it’s going about those worthwhile endeavors (that’s a subject for another time).

    Back in August, 2005, I summed up some of my objections:

    I consider Wal-Mart a predatory company. Its supplier policies (demanding 10 percent reductions in contract costs every year, as I understand it) are largely responsible for the wave of outsourcing that has cost thousands of Americans good jobs–and for the severely substandard working conditions that prevail in many of those foreign sweatshops. Its employees subsist on wages so low that many of them are also on government assistance–a quiet subsidy from the United States to the world’s largest retailer, despite it huge profits. When workers in the meat department of one store in Ontario, Canada formed a union, the company closed the entire store rather than recognize the bargaining unit. And the company’s steamroller tactics in bringing in new stores where they’re not wanted and then abandoning many of them after a few years do not make it a good neighbor, in my opinion.

    Of course, in the last few months, we’ve become painfuly aware that Wal-Mart and other companies’ reliance on foreign sweatshops may have health and safety consequences for Americans who end up with tainted toothpaste or whatever else China feels like slipping into its exports.

    Well, here’s a new Wal-Mart scandal. A group called Good Jobs First has just released a study showing that Wal-Mart systematically attempts to chisel down its property tax assessments. The efforts are based out of corporate headquarters, and have been charted to 36.3 percent of all locations. In other words, Wal-Mart has tried to get its taxes lowered by lowering its claimed property value in more than one in three of it locations. Total amount saved on taxes, even though the company loses more of these fights than it wins: $28.8 million.

    We sholldn’t be surprised. After all, this is the same company that has a very clear history of hiring part-timers and keeping them just under the benefit level, so the government essentially subsidizes the health insurance costs the company doesn’t have to pick up. I’d stop shopping there, except that I already don’t shop there.

    Remember this next time your kids’ elementary school (funded, in most communities, by property taxes) has to lay off teachers or cut programs.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Peace and War, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

    Forgive me if I can’t work up too much sympathy for Justice Clarence Thomas. I didn’t find him credible during his confirmation hearings with his “poor, pitiful me” bit, and I don’t find him credible now, as I read about his new book.

    And I always found it incredibly distasteful that he had the chutzpah to claim that being asked some questions about allegations of grossly unsuitable behavior–sexual harassment of an employee, in fact–was in the same category as a lynching. Just because you’re black doesn’t mean you get lynched if people ask you some tough questions. Questions that you still haven’t really ever answered in a meaningful way.

    Thurgood Marshall, a man who truly deserved the term “Honorable” in front of his name, with a distinguished career not only as a jurist but earlier, as a lawyer, must be throwing up. (Marshall, you may not know, was one of the attorneys who argued the landmark desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court. And Thomas inherited his seat on the Court.)

    Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post cites a large pile of evidence that Thomas does not have clean hands in the Anita Hill matter–and cites his own words from the book to prove that he’s still just as angry, arrogant, and completely clueless as ever.

    This is his own words about actually getting confirmed:

    “Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me.”

    Sorry, Clarence, but you’re way off base. The Senate had the right and the duty to ask questions, and should have asked a lot harder ones about your views of the Constitution. Maybe if they had, we wouldn’t have been stuck with an extremist like you.

    And if today’s Congress was more willing to ask similarly hard questions, we might not be fighting an illegal and unprovoked war in Iraq, we might still have some standing in a world community that increasingly sees the U.S. as a “rogue state,” and we might have found out who actually won the last two Presidential elections, both of which are shrouded in a veil of mystery and deceit.

    If Clarence Thomas wants to take his toys and go home, fine. But don’t look to me to agree that he’s been done wrong.

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