A bad forum advocating a really horrible idea

This article also originally appeared in Examiner.com.  While I stand behind what I wrote below, and believe that what I wrote is essentially accurate, I may have overstated the anti-college opposition of the KI EcoCenter participants; but that was because the presentation was so incoherent, so definitely below the usual high standards of KI forums, that I may have given more coherence to what was actually said than it deserved.  I may have read coherence into what was just confusion, and thus the participants' stated objection to me, that they "didn't completely say that," may be somewhat true due to this incoherence and confusion--GF

 

Last Tuesday, October 28,2014, a group that I’ve usually admired, the KI EcoCenter (KI) of Indianapolis, Indiana, http://www.kiecocenter.org, held a public forum, “College Isn’t the Answer,” in which the various panelists advocated directly for—let’s face it—ignorance, anti-intellectualism, and giving money to black people as “reparations” for slavery instead of intellectual improvement of the black communities of Indianapolis and the U.S., by coming out squarely against college education.  But that’s putting it generously, as my thumbnail description of the forum gives the “discussion” that ensued by the panelists and the approving audience participants a far greater coherence and understanding of the issues than actually ensued.  In reality, what transpired was incoherence, intellectual confusion of the worst sort, constant comparing of the proverbial apples to oranges, massive tendentious omissions, lack of a truly serious approach, and significant omission of data and evidence.  Instead what was proffered—in all seriousness!—was a pseudo-populist “left black nationalist”  exercise in derision and self-abnegation, a rather hypocritical posturing by black college graduates themselves on how they were supposedly duped by becoming college-educated; a masochistic display of anti-intellectualism by the panelists made all the more pathetic by the basic fact that, without their supposedly worthless college educations, they would’ve lacked even the basic erudition and coherency to present their own presentations against college!

 

Yes, their very articulateness (such as it was—really not at all at the high level KI panel participants have presented in the past) in arguing against college, and thus de facto for ignorance, would not have been possible even at this disappointing level had it not been for the panelists’ own college educations!  Their position, as presented by these three college-educated African Americans, became simply a whining complaint of “Don’t go to college! We’ve been there, it’s not worth it.  Savor your mere high school-educated ignorance instead, despite our token lip-service to the general notion of education.  Do as we say, not what we ourselves did!”    

 

This display of articulate self-abnegation by the three black panelists was of course echoed by the one token white panelist (himself hand-picked by KI and given a voice, I take it, in name of “diversity”), who himself was also another self-abnegating college graduate.  This panelist offered to entertain us by deliberately tearing up his college diploma that evening; but that was a “promise” left unfulfilled (undoubtedly for the better).

 

These four panelists—the three African Americans Paulette, Imhotep (usually referred to simply as M.) and Khalil, along with the token white panelist, John—are all people I’m acquainted with as an active supporter of KI in the past, and it is no pleasure for me to trash them.  But I feel obligated simply because I am a lower-rungs-of-the-socio-economic-ladder college graduate myself, a working-class white man who worked hard to achieve my degree; a college degree and educational immersion I myself find invaluable in enabling me to do my avocation of writing prose and poetry for publication, something that would not have been possible without it.  And so, while my degree has not paid off for me economically in terms of a good job, it has contributed immensely in granting me a sense of self-worth, in giving me a fulfilling life, and making me a positive contributor in the cause of social and economic justice for all, African American, Hispanic, other ethnicities, as well as my own white working class—all those excluded from the American Dream by the 1%, whose domination of our lives the Occupy movement made us so rightfully aware of.  Getting that degree (Bachelor’s in economics from Indiana University, supplemented by later paralegal training) gave me an education in the broadest and most proper sense, it opened for me the vast realm of knowledge, enabled me to commune with the greatest minds of humanity past and present—something that would not have come about had I remained a mere high school graduate, or even as someone with only some college.

 

This, and more, I tried to articulate in the technically open and extensive, but actually perfunctory and limited, audience discussion of the panelists’ remarks.  Needless to say, my remarks in favor of education were completely ignored by the panelists themselves, who were too absorbed in promoting their own anti-intellectual shtick to “bother” with me.  But I was “answered” with vociferous objection by audience members who had only high school educations themselves, or who were disgruntled college dropouts, themselves inadvertent advocates of the value of higher education through their own angry denunciations of that which they didn’t have themselves, but which they disdained because they lacked it. Confirmation of a positive good by denunciation of it as worthless by those who had never possessed it in the first place!  Or else, trashing at the hands of those who failed to realize the value of what they themselves did possess, resentful discarders of the gold at their feet in favor of the tawdry glittering tinsel of ignorance their pseudo-populism inclined them to embrace in its stead.

 

As I stated above, I’ve long been a supporter and enthusiast of the KI EcoCEnter, which I first encountered at a community jobs forum it held in October 2012, and on which I published a very extensive-praising post in my “Politically Incorrect Leftist” BlogSpot blog, http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=7. But lately, KI has allowed its ideology of “black cultural nationalism” as articulated by Maulana Karenga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maulana_Karenga), to weaken the quality and multiracial appeal of its earlier work and public forums; most recently it has focused less on its organizational philosophy of “social entrepeneurship” and “bootstrapping” as positive aids to the empowerment of the primarily working-class African American residents of Indianapolis’ Near North Side neighborhood where it exists, and more on being an angry, and at times highly incoherent, megaphone of black grievances against what it claims is an all-encompassing structure of “white privilege;” something this decidedly unprivileged member or the white working class finds very much at variance with actual reality, and who objects strongly to Paulette’s and M.’s insistence that I, struggling just to get by, also partake of.  This vague, generalized, all-encompassing “white privilege” so “politically correct” to assert, but which is so factually compromised, truncated and rebutted by so much of white working-class reality.  This “privilege” I allegedly have despite only my receiving Social Security standing between me and homelessness—something I’d hardly call a “privilege”! 

 

Sadly, I find KI moving from being “pro-black,” which it should be, to being more openly “anti-white,” except toward those whites who uncritically subordinate themselves to KI’s “cultural nationalism.”  To me this is a disservice to what was so positive in KI’s earlier activity, and which garnered my strongly admiring allegiance and support in the first place.  I feel uncomfortably on the receiving end of “reverse racism.”  Not that whites, and especially my own white working class, haven’t done a lot to harm African Americans; they certainly have.  But they themselves are also Bob Dylan’s “pawns in their game” who ride only “the caboose of the train;” they themselves are also the inarticulate and dispossessed victims of whole hierarchies of economic, social and institutional power held by the overwhelmingly (but not entirely) white ruling 1%, which oppresses and subordinates both white and non-white in very similar ways, and increasingly, to very similar, if not exactly identical, degrees.  While white people can be said to have a relative “advantage” in many (but not all) cases vis-à-vis African Americans, this is far from an absolute “privilege” that ensures whites always come out on top, are always psychologically satisfied, materially sated, and economically secure, no matter what their socio-economic status.

 

And yes, while whites too often can be openly racist, and even virulently so, this is far from being a “benefit” to them, is far from a “psychological bonus” they not only receive but profit from; rather it is a liability, a delusional sense of superiority, a pernicious illusion that blinds them not only to the commonalities of oppression they share with their brethren of color, but makes them dupes of Occupy’s 1% (really 0.01%).  The 1% (or rather, 0.01%) who comprise those corporate and financial elites and their satraps who manipulate far too many ordinary white people as puppets, who set them against people of color as (often eager) attack dogs,  but who are still tightly leashed by the 1%.  “White privilege” is thus an often-unacknowledged liability that undermines the white working class every bit as much as it oppresses African Americans.

But back to the “College Isn’t the Answer” forum.  The forum based its anti-college position on two very bad articles which appeared in the Washington Post (a dead giveaway in itself of how the anti-intellectual initiators of the forum themselves profited from their own college degrees—knowing about these articles, knowing about the Washington Post as a primarily college graduate-appealing elite source of information and opinion in the first place):  “sociologist and writer” (nothing more)  Tressie McMillan Cottom’s  “No, college isn’t the answer. Reparations are,” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/05/29/no-college-isnt-the-answer-reparations-are/?mc_cid=a19a9ef833&mc_eid=[UNIQID]&mc_cid=9f4ac1282f&mc_eid=[UNIQID]) and Valerie Strauss’s blog, “No, algebra isn’t necessary — and yes, STEM is overrated,” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/no-algebra-isnt-necessary--and-yes-stem-is-overrated/2012/08/26/edc47552-ed2d-11e1-b09d-07d971dee30a_blog.html) which reprints a New York Times Op-ed by one Roger C. Schank, described as “a cognitive scientist, artificial intelligence theorist, and education reformer.”  These two articles are at best but half-truths zealously overstated. 

 

Cottom tries to make a case that only reparations are the solution to the problem of glaring economic inequality (as though it were only a problem for the black community, which is blatantly false), and counterpoises reparations for the past enslavement of African Americans to African Americans today getting a college education, which she sees as just another way of perpetuating black inequality through substantial black college-graduate unemployment. Which is an undoubted fact of our economy still not overcoming the Recession of 2008 (Cottom is correct here), but which has also meant high rates of unemployment and underemployment for college graduates as a whole, not just for African Americans (and which is really a problem that goes back to the 1970s and has continued since, only exacerbated, but not created, by the ongoing recession). 

 

Schank states baldly, “The average person never does abstract reasoning,” “You can live a productive and happy life without knowing anything about macroeconomics or trigonometry…,”  and that our supposed societal obsession with math and STEM all goes back to a claim made in 1892 by the president of Harvard University of what should be taught in high school.  As with Cottom, Shank is half-right (but remember, half-right is also half-wrong!).  Yes, “The average person never does abstract reasoning,” but that’s really a problem more than a superfluity, a problem well-articulated by 1920s iconoclastic journalist H.L. Mencken, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” The same with “You can live a productive and happy life without knowing anything about macroeconomics[.]”  All we have to do is look at the level of public political discourse and electoral appeals in this 2014 election to give the lie to the beneficence of these statements of fact.   The simple fact of the low level of political discourse, open demagoguery, and statement both of half-truths and outright lies in the 2014 electoral appeals, plus the facile (but fallacious) appeal of free market-fundamentalist economics making supposed experts out of people such as Paul Ryan and even Ayn Rand, shockingly exposes how We, the People are directly harmed by voters who “never [do] abstract reasoning” and who vote “without knowing anything about macroeconomics.”  Voters who “never [do] abstract reasoning” and who vote “without knowing anything about macroeconomics” frequently determine through their ignorance just who our political leaders are—and through them, what social and economic policies are put into practice!  Proof positive that ignorance is far from bliss, though ignorance may be popular, deliberately promulgated and disseminated, and even celebrated (the Tea Party being a stellar example of the last).

 

As one who studied mathematics extensively, I myself can attest that its value lies not so much in the mathematical formulas taught but in its overwhelming value as a heuristic, i.e., as a means to understand and practice the daily art and science of problem-solving, something that confronts each of us every day.  Through mastery of math we come to mastery of logic, of logical inference and deduction, how to employ reason correctly, and what is valid and invalid, relevant and irrelevant, evidence on which to base our solutions, our daily decisions.  That is math’s overwhelming strength in “practical” affairs, and is precisely why algebra, plane geometry and trigonometry are taught in our high schools, or should be; and why, given our reliance on statistical information today, statistics and probability should also be.  If that’s “elitist” or not narrowly “practical,” so be it!  As a person of the left who considers the Jeffersonian ideal of “An aristocracy of talent in a democracy of opportunity” to be one of the hallmarks of a good, just and equitable society, I say the teaching of “abstract reasoning,” math, and yes, even “macroeconomics,” is necessary to move us forward in the “democracy of opportunity,” made more of a reality by the Civil Rights and labor struggles of ordinary people than it was before, to become more of what we need to be—a society where those in charge truly represent an “aristocracy of talent” as opposed to the “oligarchy of mediocrity” our political and societal leaders represent today.

 

And as a college graduate who found specific value in that college education, I openly state that all that comes about easier when the masses of ordinary people have access to broad means of education, both formal education and self-education as a lifetime project, through greatly improved primary, secondary, and yes, higher education.  Yes, there are many things wrong with higher education as it exists today—its frequent detached elitism, its cost, its increasingly strictly vocational orientation, its often chilling effect on imagination, creativity and independent scholarship which it should foster instead—but the correction of these major faults depends on deepening the educational experience, not simply throwing it out as an unneeded irrelevancy the way the panelists did at the KI forum.  Because, for all the faults of higher education today, it certainly beats ignorance!  Which is precisely where the panelists of “College Isn’t the Answer” would lead us—inadvertently to be sure, but also inexorably.

 

Furthermore, if we wish to see an example of a society where college is disdained, and where ignorance is enshrined, we need only look at our own Indiana, which ranks 42^nd in the nation in the percentage of its people with at least a Bachelor’s degree, and which ranks last in the Midwest as such.  The Hoosier State is a bastion today of poor job opportunities, abysmal social services, and extreme right-wing politics, and these are all interconnected with our fellow Hoosiers’ lack of education; our notorious Brain Drain, where college graduates leave the state in droves because of lack of suitable jobs for them; and our poor primary and secondary schools, which directly impact on employment opportunities, the lack of which, along with the state’s hemorrhaging of previously unskilled but high-pay manufacturing jobs, has consistently caused Indiana’s per capita income to drop.  Drop so significantly that, today, Indiana ranks 39th in the nation in per capita income when in the 1950s it ranked in the 20s.  As Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington told the Indianapolis Star as far back as 2009 and which has remained unchanged since, “We’re stuck. 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.”

 

(For documentation of the above, see George Fish and Dave Fey, “Mediocrity—A Hoosier affliction,” Bloomington Alternative, http://bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2009/07/12/10039, and the accompanying “Hoosier Mediocrity Fact Sheet,” http://bloomingtonalternative.com/f/Hoosier%20Mediocrity.pdf; Though some of the statistics cited there are old, sadly, the trends referenced by them are not.  For the overweening right-wing character of Indiana politics, see, Bryan K. Bullock, Truth-out, June 27, 2014, “The Ultra-Right-Wing State Nobody Mentions,” http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/24552-the-ultra-right-wing-state-nobody-mentions.)

 

Sadly, the KI EcoCenter’s forum, “College Isn’t the Answer,” represents just a “left-wing” pseudo-populist variant of that virulent anti-intellectualism so continually prevalent in U.S. society that’s so eloquently scored by noted science popularizer and science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov (himself a Ph.D. in biochemistry): “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”  It is unfortunate that an organization, KI, which I have thought of so highly, decided to perpetuate that.

 

 

  

   

 

 

The Warm Sunny Day of the KI EcoCEnter vs. the Dark Frigid Night of the IPJC

 

The contrast between these two Indianapolis groups couldn’t be starker: on the one hand the KI EcoCenter, a vibrant community meeting place and advocacy/dialogue center in Indianapolis’ Near North Side neighborhood that is multi-racial, regularly schedules interesting events that are open to the public (and attract that public), and actively promotes programs that benefit the Near North Side community and actually empower youth, who make up much of its activist backbone; and on the other hand, the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC), a hoary, moribund, top-down group of mostly septuagenarian and even octogenarian religious pacifists concentrated in a Board of Directors which makes all decisions without allowing anything but the most token participation or input from its “grassroots” members, hosts public events so rarely that they only occur once in a decade (the IPJC sponsored a forum on mental health in February 2001; its next event, aside from regular meetings, was co-sponsored with the local Veterans for Peace and a few others was in August 2012), holds dry-as-dust monthly meetings that are almost farcical, and whose only public face is the eight-page quarterly “newspaper,” the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, which is a disgrace to journalism.  I know—I’ve attended meetings of, participated in, both organizations, and even wrote for the Journal, which never could ever muster what it took to actually be a real newspaper.

Another contrast: the KI EcoCenter actually tries to do what its program says it is about, and succeeds; the IPJC only tries half-heartedly at best to implement its program, and almost never succeeds—and when it does technically succeed, such as in publishing the Journal approximately on time every quarter (when once it published monthly except for the summer issue, which was bimonthly), the ensuing product is so bad it is not to be taken seriously.

In fact, publishing the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal is now the IPJC’s only raison d’être; it long ago gave up serious outreach to the broader Indianapolis community on peace and justice issues, chiefly because it only talked to those who were already committed religious pacifists—no secularists, atheist or agnostics allowed, please; and certainly no one who only opposed certain wars of the U.S. that lacked justification, such as Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan either, please.  If you thought World War II might have been necessary to stop Hitler, or that the Civil War was perhaps the only way to end the plague of slavery, get out now!

And also, be sure to uncritically embrace Martin Luther King and Gandhi; but stop sharply right there, don’t go on to see merit in Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, or Fidel Castro, and don’t even consider that Marxism might have more relevance to today’s problems than pacifist theology!

Ah, but such is the official stance of the IPJC—never stated as bluntly as this, of course, because the IPJC like vagueness in words and action, and would rather engage in a soporific symbolic action that shows just how pure it is, and would never even consider doing something that might upset a good churchman or churchwoman.  With the IPJC in action well represented directly in all its “activity” every Friday afternoon in Indianapolis across from the new federal building—by three or maybe four lonesome pacifists standing on the corner holding Peace signs, and never going beyond that.  And it’s been that way now for well over two decades, as what was once fresh grew moribund and moss-covered due to lack of imagination and fear of “contamination” by those non-religious and non-pacifist, no matter how committed they might be to actually achieving peace with social justice.  But if they wished to do so through action that that was direct and forceful, and not confined merely to symbolic “witnessing,” the dominant religious pacifist claque of mutual admirers made sure they were not welcomed or accepted.

It wasn’t always this way in the IPJC, as there was diversity and ferment in Indianapolis in the 1980s, a willingness to experiment, stretch boundaries and destroy Indianapolis’ image as the place where nothing happened outside of the big Indy 500 race.  But that changed when Jane Haldeman, so devoted a Quaker pacifist she was blind to anything and everything else, gained paramount influence in the organization and quickly turned the IPJC into a rest home for her fellow Quakers and Quaker co-thinkers, with no dissent or difference allowed lest it disturb the Quaker notion of “consensus.”  That “consensus,” enforced by the iron hand of ostracism toward all who thought differently, became the norm among Indianapolis “progressives,” as it naturally fit their already-existing timidity.  And so, from the early 1990s on, interrupted only by a flurry of activity at the new millennium that soon petered out, hidebound religious-oriented “consensus” laid its stifling hand on everything else that might have otherwise emerged.  When a group of feisty young anarchists founded an independent left bookstore, Solidarity Books, the “respectable progressives” moved to stanch it by hook or crook.  A longstanding rumor has it that the anonymous phone call that brought a police raid on the Solidarity Books collective house in search of a nonexistent cache of weapons had been placed by a certain leading member of the IPJC.  This person gets indignant over the accusation, but has never denied it, even privately.  As it was, the Solidarity Books was forced to totally disband by 2005, with its members dispersing in chagrin and disgust, and a youth movement of radical activists never again emerging in Indianapolis until the Occupy movements swept the nation.  From which the old “progressives” were all conspicuous by their absence across the board—socialists, pacifists, labor people, all noticeably absent except for a few token people who never stayed around too long.  Such is the legacy of the IPJC.

By contrast, the KI EcoCenter has only been around since 2005, in contradistinction to the IPJC’s being around since 1986.  In 2009 it founded the 317 Media Café and public space in a former grocery store that abandoned the neighborhood, and continued to build from this ever on.  The Media Café now houses an alternative school that serves more than just “special needs” children, has a regular program menu of community forums, films and even a monthly open mic talent night; in all of which youth play a prominent and self-directing role, not being mere “fronts” for the adults controlling things from behind.  I’ve been to four of the KI EcoCenter’s events to date, and can attest to the enthusiasm and vitality that permeates the Center, and to the high quality of its programs.  Though little-known, the KI EcoCenter represents that positive direction which this veteran activist of peace and social justice movements would like to see permeate Indianapolis.  I discovered it through serendipity, a chance invitation by a friend on Facebook to a forum on community job creation, and once present, was immediately and enthusiastically hooked.  This was the vibrancy I had once briefly seen in Indianapolis in the 1980s, and again, also briefly, in the Solidarity Books collective of the early new millennium.  But the KI EcoCenter has had a staying power now for seven years, and seems to be not only well established, but also having lost none of its vigor over time.  It is just an exciting place to visit, and the earnestness of the Near North Side neighborhood participants, overwhelmingly young and great-majority black, rubs off on me every time I attend a function there.  It is as addicting as heroin, as sweet as chocolate, and far healthier than either: for who would ever have thought that, this far removed from the synergistic 1960s, such movement and energy was still going on!

Each time I’ve visited the EcoCenter I’ve noticed the active participation of two older adults—Paulette, the Director, and M., both appearing to be in their late fifties.  But the vast majority of the other participants are young people from late childhood into their twenties, overwhelmingly black residents of the neighborhood, and they do the key work and run the show.  Paulette and M. guide and encourage, offer lead at times but never dominate, but draw out from the young participants instead.  So when the KI EcoCenter says it is about youth empowerment, it’s not jivin’!  It is a powerful living example of the best in Black Nationalism, a real adherence to and practicing of its motto, “Self-empowerment through self-mastery,” and is the kind of community-focused self-help that Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, or the young Black Power activists of SNCC in the 1960s would see as living embodiments of their social philosophy.  Not that persons of other races don’t participate, or are not encouraged to—quite the opposite.  The KI EcoCenter, situated in a mixed-race neighborhood that is predominantly black, is foremost about the empowerment of the whole community, not just of some within it.  The first time I attended a KI EcoCenter event, a community jobs forum, the four panelists were comprised of two white persons and two black persons, all residents and activists in the Near North Side neighborhood.  And following the showing the presentation of the PBS documentary, “So Goes Janesville,” on the economic devastation and search for development alternatives following the closing of the GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, was one of the most impressive panels I’ve ever seen—one comprised entirely of black youth aged 16, 13, and even as young as 10, all of whom spoke intelligently on the film and ably fielded probing questions from the adults in the audience.  Even the ten-year-old girl displayed knowledge and self-confidence!  The KI Eco Center is truly an exciting find for me, and I am hoping it can serve as a model that will spread to other Indianapolis neighborhoods.  I hope I am indeed seeing the future of positive social justice empowerment there, just as I hope that in the IPJC I see the dying gasps of an all-too-moribund past that lived far, far beyond its usefulness and appropriateness.  (The KI EcoCenter also has a website, www.kiecocenter.org.)

A couple of weeks ago the Fall 2012 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal came out, the first under its new editor, old IPJC hand Carl Rising-Moore; and though I am used by now to seeing dismal issues of this paper, this is the worst issue yet.  Under rising-Moore’s aegis, the Journal shifted from being a forum which provided space for developing local writers to being a compendium of articles already on the Internet, striking a blow both against relevancy and for redundancy.  With a layout designed by another IPJC old hand, Jim Wolfe, it’s also the worst-appearing issue of the Journal yet, with an eye-averting appearance that’s as attractive and enticing as the prospect of sitting in the hot August sun watching paint dry!  Cronyism dominated the editorial selections by Rising-Moore, who posted two pieces by Jim Wolfe, in addition to having Wolfe do the layout—for which he also received credit.  Both the Wolfe pieces were silly: there was a sentimental poem about his wife, and a horrible article about gender and diversity that begins with a description of Jim Wolfe actually teaching his university class on Gender Day dressed up drag in traditional woman’s garb and mincing like a cartoon caricature of that “traditional” woman.  If I had been in Wolfe’s class as a student when he pulled such a shenanigan, I would’ve walked out in disgust and headed immediately to his department chairman’s office insistently demanding he be fired!  For some reason Jim Wolfe is proud of such a gross display of conduct unbecoming a true university professor (Wolfe regularly teaches at a local university).

Another bad article by a local author in the Journal is Ed Towne’s on guns in Indianapolis, which aside from relating a shooting incident in Indianapolis that demonstrates more stupidity than gun violence—a man actually attempted an armed robbery at gunpoint of Don’s Guns!—had no other local content whatsoever, just generalities on guns and gun control of a generic nature.  Except for one glaring error—Towne’s article has George Zimmerman fatally shooting Trayvon Martin in Indianapolis, not in Sanford, Florida, where this nationally-notorious shooting actually occurred!  Why Rising-Moore or someone else who was putting together the issue didn’t notice this blatant typo is beyond me; or perhaps it’s not—the Journal has always displayed such troubling unprofessionalism that it’s regularly referred to (and all these are comments I’ve actually received concerning the Journal) as “lame,” a “boring rag” and “looks like middle school.”

Despite my active career as a freelance writer who regularly publishes at the national level, Carl Rising-Moore has seen fit to bar me permanently from contributing to the Journal because an article I submitted was an alleged “personal attack” on one of his cronies, local Veterans for Peace President Ken Barger.  But of course, given his sanctimonious pacifism, Rising-Moore can’t just turn down a submission, he has to personalize my very submitting of the article in the first place—a sure-fire demonstration of personal pique triumphing over any notion of professionalism. So bad it’s even worse than amateurishness—it’s downright childish!  But again, that’s the IPJC and the way it actually is.  As for my “personal attack,” what I actually wrote was a scathing critique not of Barger himself, but of his truly naïve and childish notion of the “peaceful society” that was published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Journal—where somehow Barger’s idea of the “peaceful society” is akin to that of AT&T or a credit card company; i.e., one of compulsory arbitration to “benefit all parties concerned…where protest is not even needed[.]”  Indeed!  Well, I’ll let the reader of “Politically Incorrect Leftist” judge for himself whether I’ve personally attacked Barger or merely his ideas.  The piece in question, “The ‘Peaceful Society’ and Social Reality” is posted as another blog entry directly below this one.