Let it be said forthrightly: the first obstacle to be overcome in proposing and implementing an Indiana-relevant peace with social justice program is Indiana’s “traditional” left itself; here in Indianapolis, with spillover across the state, that means overcoming the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC), a hoary body of aged pacifists that’s been in place now since the early 1980s, despite a track record of virtually nothing achieved. In fact, many of the same people who were in charge of things in the IPJC in the 1980s and 1990s are still around, having aged not like wine or cheese, but like garbage set out and allowed to sit and rot. “Living” proof, as it were, of what precious little religious pacifism has to offer anyone, other than a smug sense of sanctimonious self-righteousness among the pacifist “elect.” (And they do consider themselves elect.)
The same would apply to the Indiana Peace and Justice Network (IPJN), the “labor” group Community-Faith-Labor Coalition (“Coalition for what?” you may properly ask; good question—but try and get it answered!), Central Indiana Jobs with Justice (largely do-nothing local branch of a good but far from perfect national group, very much mired in “guns and butter” Hubert Humphrey-style liberalism; if Jobs with Justice does anything in Indiana, it’s done by the Southern Indiana branch, located in the college town of Bloomington, home of the main campus of Indiana University), and assorted churchy groups; they comprise the “respectable” left, the ones that the Democratic party likes, or at least gives lip-service to, and are the ones that will never, ever conjure up hidebound middle-class fears of “Anarchy! Bolshevism! Reckless, out-of-control youth!”
It wasn’t always this way, although it’s been this way for the last nine years. And especially in the 1980s and 1990s there was real activity on the part of Indianapolis’ “traditional” left, and even a few partial gains; most of all, groups like IPJC and the Community-Faith-Labor Coalition attracted and galvanized people, particularly youth, who are now not only totally absent, but look at those groups and members with universal disdain. And while the Occupy movements have sprouted throughout large parts of Indiana, the old-timers of those remaining groups such as the IPJC play no part in them; in fact, deliberately stand aloof from them. The torch has definitely not been passed, and now sputters and faces extinguishing.
But in the early 1990s IPJC had a dynamic leader at the helm, Tim Quigley, who galvanized action and built a mass movement in opposition to the First Gulf War that drew hundreds to demonstrations and rallies. Antiwar rallies occurred into the early part of the 21st Century. There were public forums and speakers, and national left luminaries such as Howard Zinn and Phillip Agee spoke on local campuses. In 2001 a group of feisty anarchist youth organized Solidarity Books (later called Paper Matches in its new location), an independent, non-sectarian left bookstore that provided a wide range of literature, including the pacifist literature so beloved of the “respectable peaceable religious.” This youth collective also organized mass activities to agitate for decent public transportation in Indianapolis, and was active in protesting the National Governors’ Conference in Indianapolis in 2003.
But because they were young and bold, and weren’t afraid to talk the language of revolution, they soon became anathema to the IPJC; and in one of the most ignominious passages in IPJC’s history, the Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was deliberately destroyed by leading IPJCers, through the machinations of a leading “movement” type who rented a house to the collective that was dilapidated, and had an equally-dilapidated furnace that would’ve spewed lethal gases if turned on; then another “leading movement activist” made an anonymous phone call to the Indianapolis police alleging that these youth had a weapons cache in the basement of their house, an absolutely false accusation that brought not only a police raid but continued police harassment; and then, as the coup de grace, their “movement” landlord (actually slumlord) sued them in small claims court in a specious lawsuit which he won (for, unlike the “respectables” of the IPJC, The Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was truly hated by the Indianapolis political establishment), with the small claims court judge refusing to give the reason for his decision. The upshot was that most of the collective left town in frustration and disgust, while those remaining dropped out of politics.
The Solidarity Books/Paper Matches collective was one of the very few organized groups of the “far left” to gain a foothold outside of college towns in very conservative Indiana, where the conservatives are troglodytes, most “leftists” are liberals at best, and the Democrats are thoroughly Blue Dog or in fear of retaliation from the Blue Dogs. While small Marxist-Leninist groups have led marginal existences in the college towns of Bloomington and West Lafayette (home of the main campus of Purdue University), declaring oneself a Marxist (or revolutionary anarchist) is the surest way in most of Indiana (and certainly in Indianapolis) to become not only politically isolated, but also socially ostracized—and not just by conservatives, but by the “progressives” as well. Hell, even not attending church regularly and not publicly professing Christian pacifism will get one ostracized! Needless to say, Indiana’s left is almost entirely lily-white, almost entirely Christian, with African Americans and Jews present only as tokens to represent “diversity” (because the putative Indiana and Indianapolis “traditional” left talks only to the already-converted, which means that white Christian pacifists and timid liberals talk only to other white Christian pacifists and timid liberals).
So, given the above, isn’t trying to develop an Indiana-relevant peace with justice program rather like imitating Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill? Perhaps, but it still must be done. Done in the hope of reaching persons truly interested in social change and willing to advance beyond parochial group loyalties, whether in the “traditional” peace and social justice groups or in Occupy movements; and possibly even reaching those who aren’t presently aware that there is any kind of left in Indiana, much less an effective one, but who would be interested in helping constitute an effective left. So with that in mind, here goes. I’ve developed this program in sections, with specific planks, goals and analyses arranged under appropriate headings.
I. RECOGNIZE THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF PEACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES
The strange “division of labor” that prevails on the Indiana putative “traditional” left means that groups like IPJC and IPJN confine themselves to being foreign-policy windbags who don’t touch on domestic issues, while the labor and social justice groups never bring up wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and never mention antiwar, militarism, or foreign policy issues—essentially making them “guns and butter liberals” who confine themselves to talking only about butter and never about guns! Yet it is precisely the U.S.’s financially draining military costs and costs for wars such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq (of which this latter, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and a colleague calculated, will cost the U.S. four trillion dollars!) that take money away from providing employment for the unemployed through a new WPA such as worked so well in the 1930s, keep our badly-crumbling infrastructure in disrepair, and prevent shoring up our badly frayed social safety net. Thus, there should naturally be collaboration between antiwar and social justice groups in Indiana and elsewhere, not separation. The same would apply to issues of racial justice, immigrant rights, and police brutality issues. Yet, when the twain shall not meet, all groups, all constituencies, and all issues suffer, even though they’re all so interconnected. Indeed, several activists in antiwar causes doff their antiwar hats and go to other meetings where they put on their social justice hats, and vice versa—wearing each hat separately, as though they weren’t the same hats at all! To emphasize this interconnectedness and advance it in a program for effective action, I give the following proposals.
First on what might be considered “global” issues:
1. Advocating for peace and an end to wars in itself is not enough; the highly-militarized economy not only drains resources from social justice needs, it itself undermines addressing social justice needs such as full employment, decent infrastructure and schools, a meaningful social safety net, and other positive social needs, as well as destroying foreign cultures and peoples. It hurts all, domestically and abroad. Therefore, the antiwar movements must also address fulfilling domestic needs as well as ending militarism, while social justice needs must realize that their causes will not be adequately addressed as long as needed resources and monies are drained off to support militarism. Which is a way of saying that groups such as IPJC and IPJN must discuss and act on domestic social justice issues as well, while labor groups such as Community-Faith-Labor coalition and Jobs with Justice must realize that militarism undermines workers’ rights and full employment in useful civilian tasks, and both must join together to advance a common full employment, full social justice and antiwar program that satisfies the real needs of the peoples of Indiana, the U.S., and the world. Justice is indivisible.
2. The U.S. cannot, and should not, play Cop of the World; world peacekeeping needs should be addressed by a strengthened United Nations free to act independently of Great Power vetoes.
3. In this economically interconnected world, where financial crisis in one part of the world can cause financial crises in other parts of the world, global finance, investment and trade cannot be left strictly in private hands, subject to what multinational corporations find most profitable. The beginnings of a world economic order, where financial, investment and trade decisions and impacts are regulated for the benefit of all, must be put in place. We see the need for such now in the Eurozone, where the profitability of German banks comes at the cost of forcing austerity and misery on the peoples of Greece, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere.
4. The world North-South and East-West distribution of wealth must be drastically modified so that some countries are prosperous while others are mired in poverty and destitution.
5. Since all we peoples of the world must live on the same planet, and cannot live if the world is destroyed by ecological damage, world ecological sustainability must be a prime goal that must be achieved, and not subject to undermining by the whims of multinationals in search of profit or the parochial interests of certain countries at the expense of others.
These planks underscore for all of us that Utopia can no longer be considered utopian, but has become a necessity, a necessity underscored by the world recession since 2007 which threatens to become worse, threatens to become a new recession when the world has not recovered from the old one. Obviously, social justice must encompass racial justice as well, and gender and sexual preference justice also, as well as the traditional justice concerns of civil rights and liberties. Equality for women; end to all racial and ethnic discrimination; the right to practice one’s religion without hindrance, and concomitantly, the right to profess no religion at all; the right to engage in consensual sexual activity fully buttressed by access to birth control, abortion, and prophylactic protection from STDs are both social justice issues as well as issues of concern to peace groups, for bigotry and intolerance readily spill over into violence against despised minorities by bigots. Decent education for all that teaches not only how to make a living, but to live a fully human life is also such an issue, as is the rights of immigrants to live, work and contribute to the societies in which they become resident. The right to speak and write without fear either of overt censorship or the “necessity” to self-censor is also a fundamental right that cannot be undermined on the basis of “commercial,” “intellectual property” or other barriers—the right of creative and intellectual expression is fundamental to human life and dignity. We need even more forcefully to assert these rights in today’s world because they are under attack from a wide array of bigots and special interests—religious, political, commercial, ideological. Safety in mind and body is also a paramount right, as well as a most desirable social goal, yet undermined by a galaxy of forces, from poverty and repressive laws to corporate and individual irresponsibility. We live in a world that seems to be falling apart everywhere we look; it is time to address that.
II. USING THE ELECTORAL PROCESS PROACTIVELY
I am running for Lieutenant Governor of Indiana in the 2012 election as an independent write-in candidate with Donnie Howard Harris, an antiwar disabled Vietnam veteran, write-in for Governor. We believe in using the electoral process to advance a peace with social justice agenda to educate and raise consciousness on peace and social justice issues, and that is an arena that can, and should, be used more actively by concerned citizens. Democracy and citizen’s voice is very much as Dr. Ruth said famously about sex: “Use it or lose it.” Even running for state and local offices can be used in a proactive way to advance national and foreign policy issues, as means to raise local awareness of the wider world we live in, and the interconnectedness of various issues. Clearly, as we know all too well in Indiana, such matters as foreign trade and completion for jobs not only with other states but with other countries has had a big impact on Indiana—we see it in the figures for jobs lost in the Hoosier state. Further, independent candidates can play a pivotal role in educating people to the idea that we don’t have to automatically accept a choice between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, between a Tea Party Republican and a Blue Dog Democrat. It is time to enhance democracy and political participation by citizens, not eliminate or truncate it.
III. RECOGNIZING, COMBATING, HOOSIER MEDIOCRITY
Indiana’s Brain Drain is more than a catchy journalistic slogan; it’s an ugly and palpable Hoosier reality, where 46.6% of Indiana’s recent college graduates (according to the
Indianapolis Star) leave the state immediately upon graduation, because there are no jobs for them. And those who stay behind, or are left behind, often end up economically stuck, trapped in low-wage, low-skill jobs, frequently forced to work only as temps, with their abilities and knowledge wasted. Indiana, once a haven for the uneducated and undereducated because factory and construction jobs were plentiful, now faces a double whammy as factories close and those new jobs created are increasingly service jobs which are either low-pay unskilled work or else high-level professional jobs which Indiana lacks the workforce to fill. Thus, as Indiana loses its college graduates who attend school in Indiana because they possess the “wrong” degrees—it increasingly imports college graduates with the “right” degrees from elsewhere. Talk about a Rube Goldberg economy!
Again, according to the
Indianapolis Star, quoting a Brookings Institution report, while Indianapolis has 32% of the college graduates in the state, it certainly doesn’t have 32% of its jobs available requiring college degrees. In fact, a long-term personal observation of jobs and college graduates indicates that Indianapolis probably has one of the most college-educated workforces of bartenders and servers anywhere!
But also, Indiana’s workforce as a whole is one of the least-educated in the nation, well below the national average for high school graduates as well as below the Midwest average for high school graduates. Indiana’s primary and secondary schools are noted as well for their educational inadequacy, and due to both this educational and job weakness, per capita income in Indiana consistently fell every year from 2005 to 2010, the last year statistics are available. (See
http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2012/02/eight-to-work-is-not-only-issue-in.html.) "We're stuck,” Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington told the
Indianapolis Star in 2009, “We're stuck because we don't have the knowledge base we need in the labor force. A lot of that is because of our really mediocre primary and secondary educational system."
But it’s not just economically and educationally that Indiana demonstrates its fundamental limitations and social negatives. Indiana is among the “leaders” among the states in obesity, cigarette smoking, date rape, and minors involved in sex with adults. Dave Fey and I wrote a detailed account of this substantive Hoosier failure in the July 12, 2009
Bloomington Alternative, "Mediocrity--a Hoosier affliction,"
http://bloomingtonalternative.com/author/george-fish-and-dave-fey,
an article which garnered some notable—and needed—attention. But, while the statistics in the article are dated, sadly, the social pathologies they quantified are still present.
Certainly key among Hoosier afflictions of mediocrity is Indiana politics, especially as shown in the General Assembly of 2012. With both houses of the Assembly dominated by Tea Party Republicans, not only was the Democratic minority continually harassed and basic parliamentary procedure consistently ignored, some of the worst, most inappropriate, legislation in Indiana history was rammed through. This was especially true of the Republicans’ pet legislative project, so-called “right-to-work,” rammed through in the face of union workers’ mobilized opposition that drew thousands daily to the Statehouse in outraged protest. No matter—what ordinary Hoosiers thought was of no concern. For the Republicans, unions were the cause of anemic job growth and continuing unemployment, and “right-to-work” the magic wand that would fix all of Indiana’s economic ills, despite study after study showing that was not the case. Further, because of legislation passed in the 2011 legislative season, unemployed workers now face a 25% cut in unemployment benefits, while employers get a 33% cut in taxes they pay for unemployment compensation. Low wages, poor working conditions, and desperate unemployed willing to take anything—that will be the engine of economic growth in Indiana!
Never mind that this panacea has been tried and failed to bring the expected results elsewhere, most recently in Oklahoma, which became a “right-to-work” state in 2002 and is still waiting for all those jobs promised to materialize. “I’m a Republican, don’t confuse me with economic facts!” was the legislature’s rallying cry. Besides, there were more pressing matters to deal with—such as extending what my friend John Zaphiriou calls the “nanny state” by making it more difficult to light up a cigarette in Indiana, and requiring religious creation stories to be taught as a regular part of the school curriculum, though not necessarily in the science classes—fortunately, this latter did not pass, though the former did. Truly a dismal showing by what the late Harrison Ullman,
NUVO Editor Emeritus and Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame inductee had dubbed long before “America’s worst legislature.”
And somehow Indianapolis became truly a “big city” by hosting that commercial extravaganza, the Super Bowl, a lavish party for the very rich and the well-off steadily employed, yet another example of the city’s Third World growth model—bring money in from outside through tourism and shopping, and expect that trickle-down to generate low-wage service jobs catering to the whims of the visitors. Wages? Steady work? Who needs steady wages when, if you really hustle, you can get big tips!
Unfortunately, for many Hoosiers all this is peachy-keen. Indiana has never really been able to separate boosterism from providing actual substance, and has always regarded culture and education as something suspect. That’s the mindset that has led its two most able Indianapolis-born contemporary writers, Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Wakefield, to tellingly satirize the Circle City in two best-selling novels, Vonnegut’s 1973
Breakfast of Champions and Wakefield’s 1970
Going All the Way. It’s also the mindset that impelled Indianapolis blues drummer Furious George to remark, “People will think nothing of paying someone to fix their toilet, but they won’t pay a dime for creative or artistic work. They think you should just do it for free.”
But societal mediocrity and strong movements for peace with social justice no more mix than do oil and water. So for their own viability, peace and social justice movements in Indiana, including Occupy movements, will have to address Hoosier mediocrity as well, become insistent pedagogues that will, paraphrasing 1956 Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s famous campaign phrase, “Drag Hoosiers kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.” Toward that necessary end I propose:
6. Emphasize the need for quality education throughout all Indiana schools, especially the public schools.
7. Remind Hoosiers that the world does not begin and end at the Illinois and Ohio borders, that Indiana is interconnected to a much wider world than Hoosiers like to admit; and that Indiana is not the center of the universe, does not have everything one could desire, and is not complete in and of itself.
8. That in educating Hoosiers to the realities of Hoosier mediocrity and critiquing Hoosier self-centered parochialism we are not “insulting Hoosiers.”
9. That Indiana must become truly arts and culture conscious, not merely conscious of what is commercially successful.
10. That integral to Indiana being arts and culture conscious is recognizing and nurturing Indiana artists and cultural workers across the board, in popular arts as well as those traditionally “highbrow.”
11. That art and culture consciousness is for the working class also, and not just the well-off; and that this consciousness depends on material security for Indiana’s workers.
12. That in providing this material security unions have a pivotal role to play, so that “right-to-work” needs to be repealed as soon as possible, and that the right of collective bargaining is necessary for a vibrant Indiana economy; that good-paying jobs actually help an economy more than hinder it, and everybody loses in an economic race-to-the-bottom.
IV. TOWARD A TRANSFORMATIVE SOCIETY
For many, probably most, Hoosiers, even “progressive” ones, this program will smack of “socialism,” something exotic, foreign and undesirable, even if socialism as such is not widely understood. Because of the ingrained conservatism and individualism in Hoosier political and social life, Hoosiers see concerted social action and using government to provide and distribute necessary social services to all as somehow suspect, somehow a swallowing up of hard-working ordinary citizens and taxpayers by a bloated monster called Big Government. Yet it is Indiana conservatism itself, as manifested in the deeds of Republican and Blue Dog Democratic politicians, that has swallowed up ordinary Indiana citizens; swallowed up through union-busting and favoritism toward business coupled with “culture wars” propaganda that has undermined the economic and social security and stability of ordinary Hoosiers. Swallowed up through measures such as Indiana joining in the lawsuit to undermine the extension of Medicaid, thus denying adequate healthcare coverage to many; measures such as rigid voter ID requirements that inhibit greater democratic participation in Indiana political life; propaganda that says Hoosier economic woes are the result of “illegal aliens,” “parasites collecting unemployment compensation” and “welfare queens,” not the business-fawning policies of Tea Party Republicans and their Blue Dog allies. Unfortunately, much of this propaganda succeeds, so that for many ordinary working men and women it is more important to them that they share the same tastes in country music with Chamber of Commerce business elites than it is to recognize that they are part of the 99% championed by Occupy movements; and that it is the Chamber of Commerce elites who are the real parasites, the real job and economic security killers.
Indiana’s all-too-hidebound conservatism drives far too many Hoosiers, under attack by this very conservatism expressed politically, to embrace as protest not Occupy movements, but the ersatz of Libertarianism. So an important part of political education by the traditional peace and social justice movements, in tandem with the Occupy movements, will be to emphasize that individual freedom and collective social action are not antitheses, but complements—and that the road to individual freedom lies in broader participation in political life, with fewer roadblocks in the way of democratic expression and participation. The traditional peace and social justice movements will have to see that they are not separate from Occupy movements; and that Occupy movements, with their energy and appeal to youth and action, are integral to the success of these more traditional peace and social justice movements. That far too heavy a price has been paid, and is still being paid, for standing aloof in “respectability,” and that these movements are seen as “respectable” by all the wrong people—the people who actually represent the 1%, the people who really don’t want peace with social justice, but who want to win the class war—for the elite 1%.
Thus does the movement toward the transformation of society begin with the transformation of consciousness, and the realization that the transformative society’s future lies in the hands of the Occupy movements, Occupy movements transformed into a cogent political force. (Becoming such, “institutionalizing” Occupy, will be a necessary task for Occupy movements to undertake; without it, I fear that Occupy movements will just burn themselves out in incoherence and lack of focus.) This will require leaving behind a lot of “respectable” baggage. But it is precisely the need for peace with social justice that demands it, not the chimera of quietly working behind the scenes; it means boldly speaking truth to, and making demands on, power, not begging “pretty please” for favors from it. But are the “respectables” ready to join with the “rowdy” Occupiers to achieve real peace with real social justice? Now is the time to answer that question squarely put.
