Should capitalism be saved?

Riverdale Press
July 9, 2009

Point of view: Should capitalism be saved?

By Florence Gold

“From Zurich and Washington to Frankfurt, London, and Tokyo, all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men, bankers, economists, policy analysts, and government leaders are trying to put capitalism back together again.” So wrote Dr. John Sonbonmatsu, a professor of philosophy, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. And, he continued, “It would be difficult to exaggerate either the profundity of the contemporary crisis or the importance of developing a viable alternative to the existing order.”

Few critics of the current financial debacle are as honest, as frank or as courageous in confronting the shifting foundations of a world which seems to be in the process of dissolution. What is really needed? What should we be doing? Is minor, superficial tinkering, simply pretending that a little more money thrown to the banks, a little more supervision by the Feds will put us together again? Or is it necessary to admit that the hard work of real, profound change is necessary?

The end of capitalism has been predicted many times in the past century, perhaps too many times, and admittedly solutions, when tried, have been costly, varied and unsuccessful. What are our choices? The contemporary crisis is certainly one of major significance. Let us be honest, we are experiencing a depression not a recession. I refuse to engage the sophistry of calling it just another recession, one that given time, we can easily overcome.

Last September, the U.S. treasury injected “half a trillion dollars into the monetary system in its attempt to lift us out of the deep, financial well into which we had sunk. Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the Federal reserve, informed members of Congress that our financial system had come close to collapse. Prompt action by the treasury and the Fed had prevented “disaster and full scale panic.”

Shortly thereafter, the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, told reporters that the world economy was “on the edge of an abyss.” At the same time, governments of other industrialized, capitalist nations were also engaged in a struggle to keep financial and banking systems afloat. Germany has just put up $679 billion to stabilize its own government while Great Britain has spent about 1/5 of its national GDP. The U.S. at the same time had assumed obligations for or spent $7.8 trillion to attempt to save itself, (about half of this country’s annual GDP).

President Obama warned of catastrophe if Congress failed to approve his $700 billion economic package. And Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, announced his plan to commit the U.S. to an additional $2.1 trillion to stabilize our own ailing system. Until spring 2009, leading industrialized states in Europe, North America, and Asia have either spent or committed themselves to amounts totaling over $10 trillion.

Contrast this amount with the entire Marshall Plan expenditure to rebuild Europe after World War II. According to the United Nations, $195 billion could have eradicated most poverty-related deaths in the third world, including deaths from malnutrition, malaria and AIDS. We are speaking about a current sum which is 50 times greater than would have been required to save tens of millions from terrible suffering and premature loss of life. And it is important to remember that the ten trillion dollars which we are investing are being thrown to the world’s richest banks, private financial institutions and investors, rather than securing the economies and the infrastructure of the third world.

In an effort to research and explore the global wave of financial destruction to our battered economies and the disruption of human life because of loss of jobs, homes, health, and standards of living as well as the evidence of crushing emotional despair, I came across a periodical whose title “Tikkun” means “to mend, repair, and transform the world.” Its courage and integrity are remarkable, its ability to expose the tragedy of a world which may be on the point of collapse, indisputable. It questions our values of greed and our efforts to achieve huge profits above all else and asks not only whether or not we can repair our world, but whether it merits salvation without major change.

It asks openly and simply, “should capitalism be saved?” Do we put our shoulders to the proverbial wheel and attempt to resuscitate a withering social order or do we, as individuals, as nations, as a world, gather whatever strength and passion we can muster, admit that we need a total turn-around and embark on a voyage of discovery?

It has been said that Wall Street is our most powerful and most selfish lobby. We are suffering a shattering, financial earthquake and yet, despite the daily news of increasing unemployment, poverty and despair, there are signs that Wall Street is returning to its old habits again. Goldman Sachs is handing out bonuses larger than the lifetime income of small towns in the middle of America. Greed is once more the order of the day.

The old order is again demonstrating its careless avariciousness and strength. It expects to roll over any signs of protest.

Falling wages and hence falling incomes are signs of a sick economy and the problems of excessive debt become more forceful, more frightening, more difficult to solve.

We must gather our strength to say that change, a word used too freely of late, is not merely a word to be used on campaign posters, but is vigorous and demonstrable. And that we the people can create transformations, can create new worlds. As I stated earlier in this essay a viable democracy must become a reality. Otherwise, our children and grandchildren will be battling not only environmental disaster, but political collapse.

Do something

Riverdale Press
Oct. 2, 2008

Point of view: Do something

By Florence Gold

Many years have passed since my graduation from college and my indoctrination into the “now you are an adult” world of responsibility. Much of the material (thought at the time to be critically important) that was pressed and impressed upon us in those days has been forgotten. However one important piece of advice has remained with me.

I was taking an economics course, taught by a brilliant woman whose interests combined her college teaching career and, fortunately, the world outside the classroom. She loved the chess game of politics and made every attempt to involve us in the excitement of the struggle for good government. She would entertain us with stories of greed, corruption and the innumerable evils so apparent at that time and increasingly evident in the actions of government officials today. We are familiar with the grasp for unilateral power, the problems of a deteriorating economy, the constant specter of war, rising unemployment, the increasing cost of education and transportation, etc.

“Do something,” she would urge us. “If our heated discussions in this classroom have made an impression, go out, join a political party, any party or group whose ideas are meaningful to you. Send out mailings, stamp envelopes (still important today, even in the era of e-mails). Go to meetings, join demonstrations. You are young, well educated and the hope of the future. Do something.”

That message became part of the values that sustained me and stimulated the energy for lifelong “activism.” While we have not yet created a perfect world, clearly our efforts to fight apathy and indifference are important.

I recalled those years and those critical influences as I read a tragic piece by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times on Aug. 31. Under the headline, “Tortured but not silenced,” it is the story of a young woman from Darfur, who has been tortured and gang-raped by agents of the Sudanese government in its effort to destroy her.

Halima grew up in a small village in rural Darfur, performed brilliantly in school and miraculously managed to become a physician. Many of us have read this story or others similar to it, but it needs to be told, to be hammered into our collective consciousness again and again. It represents the proverbial skeleton in the U.S. family closet, dramatically illustrating a foreign policy that cares little for conditions in countries in which the recipients of disaster and tragedy are the poor and unfortunate members of society, those without wealth or power.

Within a few days, Halima will see the memoir of her experiences published in the United States. She is applying for travel documents and a visa so that, hopefully, she will be here when her story appears.

Her bravery is in dramatic contrast to the world’s failure on Darfur. In fact, it is also possible that the publication of her book may increase the danger of physical harm to her. But she feels that she needs to relate this history to honor those who have suffered disfigurement, torture and death by the Sudanese authorities.

It is simple enough to listen to such a story, to nod one’s head and murmur, “Isn’t that terrible?” and then to go back to the usual pattern of our daily lives, blissfully forgetting the horror of such tragedies. Reading the story, I was reminded of my college professor’s admonition. “Do something, educate others! Join an organization. Get out there! We can’t let this horror continue.” But perhaps the intricacies of these experiences need to be detailed again and again to force recognition of this reality.

The torture and murder of members of black African tribes like the one to which Halima belonged began in 2003. She recalled seeing the badly burned body of a 6-year-old boy who had been thrown into a burning hut by the state-sponsored Janjaweed militia. Because she gave an interview hinting at the involvement of the Sudanese government, she was detained, threatened and sent to a remote clinic where there were no reporters or journalists who could vouch for the truth of her statements.

The warfare, however, continued and then the Janjaweed attacked a girls’ school near Halima’s clinic. She had no suture material or medication to help heal the broken bodies of these young children, who ranged in age from 7 to 13. They were so severely injured, literally torn apart and violently raped, that she speaks of the moaning, wailing and cries of pain, and states that she wept constantly.

She reminds us that young Darfur girls undergo an extreme form of genital cutting called infibulation, in which the vagina is stitched closed until marriage. This makes these brutal rapes of young girls extremely bloody and violent and increases risk of transmission of HIV.

“At no time in my years of study was I taught how to deal with 8-year-old victims of raping under such circumstances,” Halima said. Soon however, it was her turn. She was kidnapped by the secret police and told that she was being punished for speaking to strangers. For days she was beaten, gang-raped, cut with knives and burned with cigarettes.

When she was released, she fled back to her native village. It was soon attacked and most of the members of her family were killed. Eventually she made her way to Britain where she is seeking asylum but hopes to come back to the U.S to discuss her book.

When asked if she regrets speaking to UN officials about the rapes of the schoolchildren, she states that she had no choice even though her experiences were similar. She says, “What happened to me has happened to many others. At least I had the education and the opportunity to tell their stories.”

Florence Gold, a Riverdale resident, is a frequent contributor to Point of view.

Geography of Hate

Riverdale Press
Jan. 17, 2008

The Geography of Hate

By Florence Gold

Last month, Congress pulled a new bill aimed at broadening the definition of a hate crime off the table. With the number of racist organizations in this country on the rise, it’s important for voters to let their congressional representatives know just how badly needed the new law is.
According to The New York Times, which recently published data researched and developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, during the period from the 1880s to the 1960s at least 4,700 men and women were lynched in this country. Hearing a recording of the song “Strange Fruit,” performed by the magnificent blues jazz singer Billie Holiday was a heart-stopping experience, one with which no other description of those tragic events can compare.
Its words are frightening and unforgettable:

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Black bodies hanging from the poplar trees”

In recent years it has been so comforting to tell ourselves that these occurrences were part of a past from which we have extricated ourselves, that long ago we cleansed ourselves of our history of racism, that the horror and guilt of lynching have been eliminated, and that we have expiated our sins and are not innocent and enlightened. References to such a hideous past are not of interest only to historians. At least this myth is what we would like to believe. But how true is it?

Last season nooses were hung on an oak tree on the campus of Jena High School in Louisiana. Today, the tree is gone. It has been chopped down to soothe racial tensions in the small town of Jena, but the nightmare remains.

The school’s main academic building was also destroyed, burned down, leading to questions of a link to the racial confrontations that had previously occurred. Some semblance of peace has been restored, or at least there seems to be evidence of a superficial calm. What remains, however, is the realization that much more needs to be done by the white citizens of Louisiana to understand the anger, anguish and distrust of the black community and to eliminate the causes of such events.
Legal battles remain, involving six black students, now known as the “Jena Six.” They are accused of beating a white student during the period marked by the appearance of the nooses.

About a year ago, at a school assembly, a black student arose to ask the white vice principal if he could sit under a tree in the schoolyard, in an area generally known as the province of white students. (How appalling to realize that in the year 2006 this child still felt that he had to ask for permission for the simple act of sitting in the area.) He was told that he could sit wherever he chose.
However, a day after black students gathered in the area, nooses were found hanging from the tree. The principal recommended expulsion for the white students who were responsible. But his decision was overruled by a hearing committee, which issued suspensions instead. That decision, as well as the characterization by the superintendent of schools calling the incident “a prank,” outraged many blacks.
None of the white students were charged with criminal intimidation, nor punished in any way. Tempers flared, especially when District Attorney Reed Walters appeared at an assembly saying, “With a stroke of my pen I can make your lives disappear” – a troubling statement. Black students insist that Walters was referring to them. This certainly exacerbated the tensions and subsequently, a white student was beaten up by some black students, according to news stories.
Whereas previously white students went unpunished with literally a mere “slap on the wrist,” this time there was immediate action. A 16-year-old black student was tried as an adult and convicted of second-degree battery and conspiracy in the attack. Subsequently, charges were thrown out because he was a minor when the fracas occurred. But he, as well as three others, are still awaiting trial as juveniles. No decisions have as yet been announced.
Again tensions increased. Media coverage spread across the U.S. and around the globe. In September, thousands of marchers traveled to Jena to protest the prosecutions. The Southern Poverty Law Center sprang into action and brought a team of experienced lawyers into the case. The president of the center, Richard Cohen, has said “It is a tragic reminder of Jim Crow and the two-tiered justice system that existed in the south for many decades.” I would add that this system existed and still exists in the north as well.
A reporter for the Nation magazine writes, “according to the ‘Sentencing Project,’ the 10 states with the highest discrepancy between black and white incarceration rates include Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York and none from the south. Jim Crow travels well-unencumbered by historical baggage.” And Mr. Cohen adds, “in the U.S., the scales of justice are weighted against defendants who are poor and of color.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center is not only assisting with an excellent defense team for the “Jena Six,” it also exposed a white backlash, which followed the march in September. It is providing educational materials to schools in other communities, should they need support in confronting racially charged situations.
Additionally, the center has issued a set of strategies under the heading of “Six lessons from Jena” to help educators evaluate the climate in their schools, spot warning signs, identify bias incidents and use these strategies to bring communities and schools together.” In the last 10 years only about a dozen noose incidents came to the attention of civil rights groups. But since the Sept. 20 rally in Jena, there have been as many as 50 to 60 incidents. The noose is still used by racists to intimidate African- Americans, who are more than 70 percent of lynching victims.

What is also frightening and worrisome are the numbers of hate crimes in the U.S. – more than 190,000 incidents each year, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study. The number of hate groups has shot up 40 percent, from 602 groups in the year 2000 to 844 in 2006.

The law center asks a probing question: Did the huge rally in September in support of the Jena Six stimulate a backlash against recent gains of blacks in America?

Tragically, at this critical moment, President Bush threatens to veto a hate crimes bill, which, if passed, could help to check this evidence of the reappearance of these disturbing symbols. Our congressional leaders who have disappointed us many times recently have done it again. They have been unable to push through a bipartisan law against hate crimes.

This is the time to act forcefully, to urge our legislators to support this important bill. The SPLC has offered guidance to the Jena Six with legal experts and educational materials. But only Congress can stop the reappearance of the nooses and the hideous symbols, which they represent.

The Radical Alternative

The Radical Alternative

by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Saturday Feb 2nd, 2008 9:29 AM

I speak, of course, of Cynthia McKinney, the bold, outspoken former congresswoman from Georgia, who spoke out against the Iraq War when it wasn’t popular.

She is running on the Green Party, according to published reports, but the media has virtually ignored this fact.

audio: the_radical_alternative_-_long.mp3
MP3 at 2.1 MB

The Radical Alternative

[col. writ. 12808] (c) ‘08 Mumia Abu-Jamal

In this age of political discontent, it seems clear that many Americans who plan to vote are voting for “change”.

Just what kind of change is an open question. Will that change bring the first woman to the Oval Office? Or will it bring a Black man (or ,to some, a 1/2 Black man?)

Whatever, it is interesting that the nation’s punditocracy, the talking heads who act like verbal sheepdogs of the American fleece, have almost totally ignored one candidate who can, in her single self, embody, not just the illusion, but the reality of “change”, experience, a demonstrated stand against the Iraq War, and a life of living female.

I speak, of course, of Cynthia McKinney, the bold, outspoken former congresswoman from Georgia, who spoke out against the Iraq War when it wasn’t popular.

She is running on the Green Party, according to published reports, but the media has virtually ignored this fact.

Her record of speaking out against the U.S. war machine, the military-industrial complex, and other issues of concern is head and shoulders above any of the other candidates running for office, on either party.

But, without the paid imprimatur of the corporate powers that be, it can be little more than an insurgent campaign, one kept safely to the margins of American politics, off the stage, and off the screen.

This is our loss, for the major candidates (or those supported by the corporate status quo) are, by their very nature, designed to split the votes of two significant blocs in the Democratic Party, which can only leave the loser feeling embittered.

Why not a real Black woman as a candidate?

Wouldn’t that be a change?

And although all politics is symbolic, McKinney really is a woman of substance.

She has been politically courageous in many of her stands, which has made her persona non grata among both Republicans and Democrats.

That’s because she’s not a corporate candidate. She’s proven in her career as a member of Congress that she won’t be bought off. Of who else running today can the same be said?

People say they want ‘change’, but do they really?

Many people are terrified of change. They want the safety of the routine, the comfort of predictability.

That’s because many people fear losing their already tenuous grip on their lifestyle.

But with millions of people facing foreclosure, and with the rest of the economy on the brink of free-fall, how much safety is apparent?

That’s only an economic concern, what about foreign policy?

Foreign policy, for at least the last decade, has been handled (or should I say, mishandled?) by an array of incompetents who have succeeded only in making bad situations far worse.

Do people want change, or are they merely claiming that they do?

Cynthia McKinney would certainly represent that, in a way far more substantial and meaningful than anybody else out there.

Politicians should be far more than paid agents of the wealthy. They should be far more than millionaires working on behalf of other millionaires

Why are we not surprised that the U.S. Senate is a millionaires club?

How could such people have an appreciation of working people? What do they really know about the poor?

Wouldn’t Cynthia McKinney be a significant change?

–(c) ‘08 maj

Let God filter Croton watershed, too

Let God filter Croton watershed, too
(Original publication: Journal News, August 5, 2007)

According to Greg Clary’s Tuesday article, “NYC gets waiver in water filtration,” New York City Mayor Bloomberg is quoted as saying: “They love us up there. We want to protect the watershed of this city, and the way to do that is to keep the land natural and let God do the filtering.”

The mayor’s understanding of God’s work is commendable, but limited, since he is only referring to the Catskill/Delaware Watershed. Here, in the Croton Watershed, as the mayor should know, Mammon is in control, not God.

As fortunes are being made, the Croton’s natural landscape is rapidly being paved over by development, and its extraordinary filtration capabilities are being lost and replaced by impervious surfaces. The construction unions, strong supporters of the mayor in the last election, are happily building a chemical filtration plant in the Bronx, hoping to clean up the mess created by overdevelopment in the watershed and restore the water to drinking water standards.

The plant is based on an obsolete design that has sent its cost soaring from $800 million to $2.8 billion and rising. Cutting edge membrane filtration technology is being ignored, even though it would have been less costly and more effective at removing pollutants.

Why doesn’t New York City buy land in the Croton Watershed and protect our water here in Westchester and Putnam, and let God filter the Croton as well as the Cat/Del?

Fay Muir
Bronx
The writer is president of the Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition and a member of Bronx Greens

Visit www.newyorkwater.org

Welcome to the new Green Light blog

It’s time to get serious about promoting and advancing the Green Party. It becomes more apparent with each passing day that the duopoly are more alike than different and the differences are fading fast. Greens need to get our message of democracy, justice, ecology and nonviolence out to the public – a public that is crying out for the very changes we advocate. Greens must learn to exploit the new technologies and resources that are available today so that our voices can rise above the background din. We’ll use this forum to shine a “Green Light” on the problems and policies that affect all of us and offer our positions and solutions.