This version of my articles prepared on Indiana Moral Mondays was originally submitted to the social-democratic newsmagazine/website In These Times, which did not use it. It expands on ideas originally presented in my Examiner.com and New Politics postings--GF
Certainly by press accounts, the Moral Mondays movement in
Indiana, given organizational form as Indiana Moral Mondays, is off to an
auspicious start. After months of
preparation, Indiana Moral Mondays was officially launched in Indianapolis, the
state capital, the weekend of Friday, September 19 and Saturday, September
20. Brought in especially to help give
impetus and direction to the fledgling movement was the Rev. William Barber,
head of the North Carolina NAACP and leading spokesperson for the Moral Mondays
movement which started there, and which has now spread to 13 states in the
South and Midwest (Indiana Moral Mondays is evidently the second Moral Mondays
movement, after North Carolina, to have developed as a concrete organization). Barber, with an Indiana connection himself
(his parents were residents of Indianapolis, and he was raised here), addressed
both the workshops and teach-in that occurred the evening of the 19th,
and was the fiery keynote speaker at the afternoon rally at the Indiana State
House on the 20th, which (depending on which press account one
accepted) attracted 200-400 people from throughout the state. As an attendee, I’d put the number closer to
400 than 200.
Significant press coverage was given by the story appearing
in the Indianapolis Star, the state’s flagship mainstream newspaper, by Vic Ryckaert’s September 20 “Indiana Moral
Mondays battles low pay, injustice, racism, and more,” http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2014/09/20/moral-mondays-battles-low-pay-injustice-racism/15979953; and a vital follow-up appeared in the
African American newsweekly Indianapolis
Recorder September 25, Ebony Chappell’s
“Fast-food workers join Moral Mondays movement,” http://www.indianapolisrecorder.com/news/article_c7c34c48-44ce-11e4-9c4c-0b68ff004dfb.html.
Coverage also appeared on the left newsserve Portside, which reposted an
article by Harry Targ, a professor of political science at Purdue University
and member of the Indiana Moral Mondays Steering Committee, that was published
September 24 on Popular Resistance, http://www.popularresistance.org/moral-mondays-comes-to-indiana/, and was a reprint of his September 23 BlogSpot blog,
“Diary of a Heartland Radical,” http://www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com/. Targ’s
article/blog, “Moral Mondays Comes to Indiana,” serves especially well as a a
fundamental primer on the impetus behind Moral Mondays and the basics of its
program, stressing as it does at its heart the “five-point agenda” adopted by
Indiana Moral Mondays as its chief goals:
- Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure
economic sustainability;
- Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;
- Stand up for the health of every Hoosier by promoting
health care access and environmental justice across all the state’s
communities;
- Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal
justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person,
regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;
- Protect and expand voting rights for people of color,
women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic
representation.
Targ’s piece thus approaches intellectually what Rev. Barber
presented with great emotional compulsion and eloquent rhetorical flourish in his keynote address, given in the impassioned oratorical style of
the African American church and heavily emphasizing morality and the moral
implications of the political issues involved.
Regardless of how one might feel about this approach as a secular
leftist, a direct listening to Barber’s speech compelled one to acknowledge it
as a rhetorical tour de force, one aesthetically vigorous and pleasing in that
same deeply emotional way that African American gospel music is.
I interviewed Targ following Rev.
Barber’s speech, and he provided significant additional information. As way of self-disclosure, I’ve have known
Targ for years as an activist, both at the Indiana and national levels. He stated that Indiana Moral Mondays, same as
with other Moral Mondays movements, endorsed a “state-oriented” political
approach that would rely heavily on “fusion politics” to draw diverse
constituencies into participation on the key “interconnected issues” of labor,
education, healthcare, women’s reproductive rights, and gay and lesbian
rights. He stated, “Rev. Barber has
articulated what he calls ‘fusion politics’” as stressing “the only way
progressives can make a dent is if we can work together and look at the
interconnectedness of all these issues.”
Targ continued that while Moral Mondays would be strongly oriented at
“pressing” the Indiana General Assembly, the state’s two-house legislature, and
the Governor’s office, both presently dominated by Tea Party-leaning
Republicans, on issues, undertaking education and voter registration, and
working also for alternative candidates for office, Indiana Moral Mondays “is
not primarily or exclusively and electoral movement.”
Targ further emphasized that Moral
Mondays was looking toward a long-term strategy and presence, and perhaps would
be more able to flex its muscle by the 2016 elections. Education and “working class” economic issues
such as inequality, poverty, low-paying jobs and persistently steady unemployment
would be emphasized, and that pushing for the right of workers to form unions
would be “just one part of a broader effort” to reach out to that 90+% of
Indiana’s workforce that was non-union.
As part of “fusion politics,” outreach to white workers that educated
them on the shared commonalities of what they faced with African American
workers would be an important component of Moral Mondays’ work. As Targ stated, “All workers are experiencing
increased exploitation and immiseration.”
Indeed, outreach to the “white working class,” long an electoral base
for the Republican Party in heavily Red-state Indiana, was emphasized by
several speakers at Saturday’s rally.
Much the same was articulated by
another professor whom I interviewed, Joseph Varga, Assistant Professor of
Labor Studies at the main campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, a self-professed “labor activist and LBGT
activist” also active in South Central Indiana Jobs with Justice. (Self-disclosure: I’ve known Varga also for some time.) He was enthused about Moral Monday’s potential
for “coalition building,” as he saw that “the only way we’re going to stop the
reactionary movement in this country is through numbers.” Son of a Hungarian
immigrant factory-worker father, Varga grew up with a blue-collar identity and
saw that his own fellow white worker cohorts would support social safety-net
and populist measures out of self-interest, even as they “stayed away from
labels of what we call liberalism and leftism in this country.” Varga feels the U.S. is in a “state of
emergency” for poor and working people, emphasizing “working people and poor
people have no representation whatsoever; they are getting destroyed.” He adds, “I don’t think workers vote against
their self-interest if we have a Democratic Party that’s not doing a damn thing
for them.”
Varga thinks “actions are going to
speak louder than words,” and that workers will be attracted to, and join, a
movement that is in “the places where goods and services are transported and
being moved and clog that system up so badly that it cannot operate until our
concerns are addressed.” Civil
disobedience was, of course, a hallmark of the North Carolina Moral Mondays,
and was also mentioned by Rev. Barber in his speech here in Indianapolis.
Admitting to feeling a “little bit
skittish” with Moral Mondays because of the moralistic emphasis and active
presence of churches and Christian religious believers, Joe Varga emphasized
that the activities in Bloomington were strictly secular and, as for overt
religious influence, the best course was to “just ignore it.”
Harry Targ highlighted in his article
above that Moral Mondays, in the 13
states in the South and Midwest where it has a presence, “have begun to build a new fusion movement that
draws together workers, women, young and old, black, brown, and white people,
documented and undocumented, environmentalists, people of faith and atheists,
and the LBGT community based upon ‘moral’ and ‘constitutional’ agendas.” (Despite
these assurances of inclusiveness from Targ and Varga, however, I saw no
discernable Jewish or Muslim presence, and certainly no overt atheist,
agnostic, or secular humanist one, at Saturday’s rally.)
At present, it certainly is true that
Moral Mondays has galvanized much of the radical imagination, and has become a
pole of attraction and excitement. But
whether Indiana Moral Mondays can become an effective political force, based as
it is so fervently on moralism little backed up with concrete program, is
another matter altogether. The Occupy
movement also had a galvanizing presence in Indiana, and it too was similarly
based on fervid moral indignation with little, or no, attempt to develop a
program of concrete action, either nationally or in Indiana. So Occupy left little or nothing discernable
in its wake except fond memories among activists. But perhaps, as Moral Mondays begins
articulating its vision and building coalitions, it will draw more people into
it and thus over time become more concrete and programmatic in its approach. And perhaps the success of Moral Mondays
movements will vary from place to place, which seems the most likely. But despite the publicity and activity in
North Carolina, Moral Mondays there seems to have had little deterrent effect
on the Republican Supermajority in control of the legislature. Yet despite this, Moral Mondays there has
certainly not closed up shop. Indeed,
far from it—to continue the marketing analogy, the franchise has only broadened
and set foot in new locales.
But in terms of Indiana, Targ’s and Varga’s optimism might be based
more on both of them living in bucolic college-town islands where left
political activity is far more the norm than elsewhere in Indiana. This is especially this author’s jaundiced
take on the potential of Indiana Moral Mondays here in Indianapolis where I
live, where the prevalent overweening religious pietism and religiosity could
turn Moral Mondays into yet another clique of the “peaceable religious
progressives” who will hostilely exclude anyone not of their religious
persuasion. Such happened here before in
Indianapolis before during my 34-year residence to date as an open Marxist
atheist activist who found himself ostracized and belittled at every turn. Indeed, such is presently happening with me
now in my relationship with Indiana Moral Mondays, with several key people
actually succeeding in banishing me from its Facebook page for my open
atheism. And it is my direct experience
with such petty moralistic vindictiveness that has forced me to give up any
attempt at local activism and concentrate instead on writing for the nationwide
socialist and alternative press, limiting myself only to attending certain
local demonstrations and activities and writing on them.
Because, unfortunately, I have seen
directly too much promising activism thwarted in Indianapolis: in the derailing of a promising, more
broadly-based and secular peace movement here in the mid- to late-1980s, when
key people instead turned it into an exclusively religious pacifist clique that
focused solely on “symbolic protest” and did no mass outreach; and in the
destruction of the Solidarity Books/Paper Matches youth collective here a
decade-and-a-half ago, where a group of feisty anarchist youth tried to set up
a truly viable non-sectarian left bookstore, and were driven out in frustration
and disgust by the “respectable religious progressives” who were incensed over
these youths’ revolutionary rhetoric.
Which now means the only way to purchase left literature in Indianapolis
is through the local Barnes & Noble outlets, or else order online through
anti-union but low-price Amazon or union-organized but higher-price Powell’s
Books. Or some other online outlet,
making this, the Circle City, a major MSA, completely bereft of any radical
bookstore whatsoever.
And ruefully, that doesn’t exhaust the
list of positive movements derailed here by the “respectably peaceable
religious progressives,” and trying to change them is frustratingly akin to the
proverbial pulling teeth. Along with
attempting to participate secularly in social justice movements in Indianapolis
when these “religious progressives” insist on subordinating all to “religious
belief” and limiting participation to members of the “faith community.” And indeed, this can even approach the
absurd, as in the recent insistence by a leading Quaker activist that “It
would’ve been all right with me” if Hitler had conquered rather than to have
fought World War II!
And by no means are Indiana Moral
Mondays and the “peaceable religious progressives” the only “faith communities”
in Indiana or nationally, though a recent communication between Indiana Moral
Mondays and me tried to asset otherwise.
For if the Religious Right isn’t also a “faith community,” then what
is? Certainly an unpleasant and
reprehensible one, but also one that fulfills the basic dictionary
definition. Same can be said of the many
fervent religious believers in the Republican and Tea Parties; and malodorous
as the religious views of such as Pat Robertson and Michele Bachmann are, to
give but two examples out of many, it cannot be said that their positions lack
Biblical or theological support. Even a
cursory reading of the Bible or of theologians such as Aquinas demonstrates indeed
that the religious views of a Robertson
or a Bachmann have a great deal of support from “traditional Christian”
sources. That’s especially important
here in Indiana, one of the most consistently Reddest of the Red States, where
the Tea Party and the Religious Right are strong—and needless to say, where the
“faith communities” adhering to them will be antithetical to the “faith
communities” within Moral Mondays, and will work, on the basis of their
religious convictions, to undermine and even destroy movements of the broad
left that share with the Religious Right the same religious fervor and moral
indignation, but which the Religious right considers heresy, apostasy and
worse.
Also, statewide movements in Indiana,
such as Moral Mondays is trying to be, have never been able to sustain
themselves successfully. The Indiana Green Party tried, but disbanded, and the
only movements here that have been able to sustain themselves over a long run
have been regional ones based preponderantly in certain major cities and urban
areas: Gary/Northwest Indiana, near
Chicago; Lafayette/W. Lafayette, where Purdue University is; Bloomington, where
Indiana University is; Mishawaka/South Bend, where Notre Dame is; and
Indianapolis, leaving large swaths of Indiana without any active leftist or
radical, let alone any progressive or liberal, presence whatsoever. Except for the northern, more industrialized
part of the state, the rest, preponderantly rural, is base for the Republican
and Tea Parties, and these two have dominated Indiana politics easily now for
many years; as for the Democratic Party, it’s more a vote-gathering machine
which sees “moderates” and “conservatives” having the best electoral chances. After all, Indiana was political home and
base for the most quintessential of Blue Dog Democrats, former Senator Evan
Bayh.
Further, Indiana is staunchly socially
and culturally conservative, even hidebound, and in this is more akin to the
Old Confederacy than to the Midwest which it is geographically part of. Indeed, Indiana, because of its cultural
conservatism and lack of significant urbanity, even in its cities, is the great
sleeper, the great stealth juggernaut, of Red-state politics that’s consistently
overlooked by the national media. (For
an excellent journalistic portrait of this hidden aspect of the state, see
Truthout, Bryan K. Bullock, June 27, 2014, “The Ultra-Right-Wing State Nobody
Mentions,” http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/24552-the-ultra-right-wing-state-nobody-mentions.)
But then, perhaps, Indiana Moral
Mondays will succeed where others have failed.
Perhaps, though it’s far too early to tell one way or the other. So, while it will certainly take more than
moralistic fervor to make Indiana Moral Mondays consistently, viably effective,
it does seem to be off to an auspicious start. And of course, we of the broad left can only
wish it well.
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