Humpy-Trumpy

Humpy-Trumpy

sat on The Wall.

(But no, he couldn’t

get the Mexicans to

pay for it!)

Humpy-Trumpy’s

gonna take a

great fall…

Another take on Indiana Moral Mondays

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 19^th, and was the fiery keynote speaker at the afternoon rally at the Indiana State House on the 20^th, 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.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indiana Moral Mondays launches—but can it be effective?

This account of the founding of Indiana Moral Mondays was originally published on Examiner.com.  Another published account of the founding by me, "Indiana Moral Mondays," appears on the socialist website New Politics,  http://newpol.org/content/indiana-moral-mondays --GF

 

 By media accounts, Indiana Moral Mondays got off to an auspicious start the weekend of its founding in Indianapolis, Friday, September 19 and Saturday, September 20 .  (See, e.g., in Indianapolis newspapers, Indianapolis Star, Vic Ryckaert, September 20, 2014, “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; Indianapolis Recorder, Ebony Chappell, September 25, 2014, “Fast-food workers join Moral Mondays movement,” http://www.indianapolisrecorder.com/news/article_c7c34c48-44ce-11e4-9c4c-0b68ff004dfb.html.)  Reports gave the attendance at Saturday’s rally at the State House at 200 to 400 to hear the Rev. William Barber, head of North Carolina NAACP and guiding spokesman for that state’s Moral Mondays movement which sparked the spread of Moral Mondays organizations to 13 states in the South and Midwest, including Indiana, give the keynote address.  Barber’s impassioned address in the oratorical style of the African American church, heavily emphasizing morality and the moral implications of the political issues involved, was a rhetorical tour de force, aesthetically pleasing in that same deeply emotional way that African American gospel music is.

 

Harry Targ, a professor of political science at Purdue and member of Indiana Moral Mondays Steering Committee, limned the founding of Indiana Moral Mondays well in an article posted September 24, 2014 on the left news listserve Portside.  This basic information article, “Moral Mondays come to Indiana,” originally published by Targ September 23 as his entry on his BlogSpot blog, “Diary of a Heartland Radical,” http://www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com/, and reposted the next day on Popular Resistance, http://www.popularresistance.org/moral-mondays-comes-to-indiana/, is 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.

 

In an interview with the author following Rev. Barber’s speech, Targ provided additional information.  (Self-disclosure:  I have known Targ for years.)  Targ said that Indiana Moral Mondays 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 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 of the original in North Carolina, it 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.  Something that forced me to give up any attempt at local activism and concentrate instead on writing for the national socialist and alternative press, limiting myself only to attending certain local demonstrations and activities and writing on them.

 

For unfortunately, I saw too much promising activism thwarted:  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.

 

Also, statewide movements in Indiana 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 home to 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.

 

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.  And while it will take more than moralistic fervor to make Indiana Moral Mondays consistently, viably effective, it certainly seems to be off to an auspicious start.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

A Peace with Justice Program for Indiana—and the World

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.

“Dregs” Aftermath1: Letter from One of “the Masses”

I’ve been away from my blog for quite a while now, due to the time-draining constraints of both work and problematic health. But I plan to make up for it with more regular postings.—GF

My good friend John W, who knows me very well because he asks me questions and doesn’t just assume things about me, unlike the other Indianapolis “progressives” and “socialists,” has avidly followed my travails with the local “socialists” that I limned in my previous blog entry, “Dregs” (which is just below this one). He has also followed the course of this matter ever since then, and has read all the e-mail exchanges that have ensued. Because of this knowledge, he found himself considerably un-edified and quite distrustful of the Indianapolis “socialists” and all their pretensions. This motivated him to draft the letter below to these locals, primarily members of SPUSA and DSA who gather collectively under the umbrella of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, but whom he addressed as the “Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship group.” I then typed up this letter from his handwritten copy and e-mailed to these local denizens of significant social change (John is not either a typing or an Internet man). I give the text of this letter below not simply as an affirmation of my original position, but also as an important view for us political activists of the left of just how our movement looks to an intelligent outsider.

Indeed, John could be “one of us” were we of the left able to effectively converse with our fellow humans—converse, that is, with real give-and-take, not simply hector, cajole, lecture, or try to convert. The hallmark of John’s style is that he asks questions; he is of an inquisitive, rather than a declamatory, bent, and it shows well in the letter below. He has inquired well into what happened, and drawn his conclusions, which he expresses pithily and pungently. If the result is an image of the “socialists” as a clique of pretentious do-nothings, it’s not due to any fault, may I say, in the eye of the painter, John; rather, it’s the result of what’s already present in the material he’s examined. And he has seen more than just my side: he has seen the nasty e-mails Marvey the W wrote to me, and he’s seen those of Frank Llewellyn, National Director of DSA, who has judged me from afar on the basis only of what he’s heard from Marvey. (These will be fully related and dissected in a forthcoming blog.) Living proof that parochialism can indeed exist in supposedly cosmopolitan New York City just as much as it can in the hinterland of Indiana.

But enough for now. I’ll have more to say later, but right now I’m going to yield to my friend John and his letter:

To: Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship Group
From: John W
Date: February 15, 2011

As a matter of introduction, I’m a retired Public Accountant who has lived in Indianapolis for the majority of my sixty-five years. A 1972 graduate of the University f Indianapolis, I worked with my dad in downtown Indianapolis for 37½ years.

In truth, I’m non-political and more concerned with humanitarian issues than Congressional bills or making good contacts.

George Fish is a good friend of mine. Recently, he shared with me his experiences with your organization; I immediately went into a state of shock. I said, “What? You’re kidding!”

I’ll briefly share some thoughts with you about your organization.

At the outset, I’m amazed that, considering my 65 years of Indiana residency, I’ve never even heard of your organization! You’re who, and you do what?

If your group were a major force in the political arena, perhaps making major contributions to American society, I’d like your club a lot more.

As I understand, your group meets one Sunday afternoon per month. Wow! This has to be somewhat of a comedy. How on earth can your members take this much time out of their busy schedules? And, by the way, what exactly has your club done lately?

Were your members aware of such events as the war in Afghanistan, the Egyptian revolution, the U.S. Recession/Depression, the plight of those in poverty or lack of adequate health care in this country? Has your club tackled the unemployment issue of concerned itself with the image of the U.S. overseas?

To continue the comedy from this non-political Public Accountant, what about your membership? I hear that on a good Sunday you’ll have all of ten members attending your meetings. Ten? Has your advertising committee disbanded? Are folks all over Indy beating a path to your door?

Speaking of doors, George told me that recently you slammed the door on his attendance at your meetings. Are you kidding me?” Of course, you realize that your membership just dropped, on a good Sunday, from ten to nine. Not to mention the loss of revenue to your club!

I could go on and on. Yet, I’m thinking this letter is sufficient to show you want an outsider sees as a most absurd group.

Thus the “socialists, as seen through the eyes of one of “the masses.” If it’s reproached that John is not “massy” enough, being a university graduate who worked as a white-collar professional, such characteristics fit the “socialists” also, and just not locally, but nationally. It can easily be said that those who call themselves socialists and are “active” enough to participate in socialist organizations—at least to the extent of attending meetings once a month—are more white-collar or professional than blue-collar (I’d say the most common occupation among professed socialists, at least in my experience, is college professor), and almost without exception, college students, former college students, or college graduates. And we are very small in numbers, as John pointedly observes, not only in Indianapolis, but nationally. I’d estimate that there are only about two million persons in the U.S. today who could be counted as left or socialist activists, at least in the sense of occasionally attending a rally or demonstration, or attend meetings of left political groups. Two million out of a current U.S. population of over 300 million—or less than 1% of the population! So, even on the national level that would constitute the left as, in John’s word, merely a “club.” And a club divided into many factions that bicker among themselves, and frequently go heresy-hunting, as did the local “socialists” toward me.

“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” Brecht wrote disingenuously in the late 1930s, in his poem “To Posterity.” I say “disingenuously” because, if we of the left who “[c]ould not ourselves be kind” think that we’re still able to “lay the foundations of kindness,” then we are deluding ourselves. It takes much more than simply articulating good programmatic proposals to “lay the foundations of kindness;” for these good programmatic proposals of the left (and we of the left have far better ones than either the center or the right) are but the bricks, the congealed theoretical elements of those “foundations of kindness.” But for “foundations” to be laid out of bricks, it takes, in addition, bricklayers who know their craft, as well as mortar. “Kindness” from ourselves is the necessary mortar we of the left must provide, in addition to being a necessary requirement for our being bricklayers capable of “lay[ing] the foundations of kindness.” Without such, we of the left simply spout pretty words!

Without “kindness,” which is but human decency, we of the left simply become another one of those societal exponents of “Do as I say, not as I do” ethics, of which we already have a plethora. But we of the left too often cannot “ourselves be kind.” And for a putative agent of positive social change that is already bedraggled in society, whose cries and proposals for “socialism” are already imbued with a pervasive society-wide negativity that’s actively conveyed by the societal leaders and media to the masses we wish to reach, that lack of “kindness,” i.e., that inability in ourselves to be examples of that very element which we insouciantly proclaim ourselves to be the foundation-layers, can becomes deadly. In fact, it already has. “The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.” Or, put another way, “We have found the enemy, and it is us.” If we of the left wonder why we are so much ignored by “the masses,” it would be wiser for us first of all to look to ourselves and how we act, how we are perceived by “the masses”—who are but the John W’s of the world.

But as I’ve shown earlier in “Dregs,” we don’t come across that well, and we ourselves are quite capable of the cruelties and injustices we fault the greater capitalist society for producing. Historically and in the present, the left has not only been a repository of virtue, human decency and striving for equity and justice, but also a repository of injustice and frame-up, of sectarianism, dogmatism, vigorous heresy-hunting within our ranks, of active expulsion and execration, of self-righteousness, betrayal of others and of our ideals, double standards, and political correctness. What happened to me as outlined in “Dregs” is but one case, and a relatively minor one at that, but a good case of what’s all too pervasive on the left, and has been recounted time and again by talented writers who’ve been in the maw of the left. We might look at the poignant story of Richard Wright, for example, as he relates it in The God that Failed (New York: Bantam Books, 1964, pp. 103-146). We can see it and feel it in the excellent recounting of life on the left that Vivian Gornick relates in The Romance of American Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Being part of a beleaguered political sect such as the left is in the U.S., painfully aware of its isolation and marginalization, but with a vision of inclusiveness in equality and justice that supposedly makes us universally attractive to society’s have-nots, especially to those with both “consciousness and conscience,” it’s understandable that the left would embrace those defensive traits that hold sects together—cliquishness; distrust of the different; super-sensitivity to criticism, especially from within; quick retaliation toward the offender, especially the offender within the ranks. Understandable, but not forgivable. That’s why persons like my friend John W are so valuable for the left; precisely because they are not “members of the choir,” they can give us insights on how we really are, how we really look to those outside the choral gallery. And whether we of the left like it or not, the John W’s of the world are precisely those whom the left is going to have to convince, to gain support from, and to involve. But when we behave as the “socialists” did as recounted in “Dregs,” we should be very grateful indeed that there are John W’s in the world to write us letters of reproach, who make fun of our pomposities, and who hold up mirrors in which to view ourselves—warts and all.

Update--my co-worker Dave commented on the Indiana "socialists" to me as follows after reading my blogs. I quote him with his permission. He said, "My co-worker Dave read my blog entries & commented to me via e-mail on the local "socialists." I print his remarks with his permission. He said: "After browsing through the documents you attached and also your blog, I would concur with the assessment that you were set up by those three members of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship. It seems to me that they are more interested in maintaining a stranglehold on the control of that little group, even if it means the group will remain perpetually marginalized and insignificant. Yes, it may be small and insignificant, but it's their pond, and they're still the big fish in that tiny pond -- and I'll bet that's just the way they like it. And it will probably always be that way as long as they're still around, calling the shots."

This is the first of several commentaries by me that will draw up the lessons to be learned from both the successes and the failures of the left, in order that a better left can come into being, and become educated in the better ways. That’s really what this blog is all about—pedagogy. And like all good pedagogies, it draws upon both the carrot and the stick.—GF