THE “JOBS FOR ALL” LETTER AGAINST THE CURRENT NASTILY REFUSED TO PRINT

Recently, I tried to post the following Letter to the Editors of Against the Current on Occupy movements and the unemployment crisis:

To the Editors of ATC:

While I appreciate the coverage of left movements I get from Against the Current (ATC), including the extensive posts on the Occupy movements in the latest issue, #156, January/February 2012, as a very much "self-interested" unemployed worker I have to object to the consistent exclusion of articles in ATC that has been going on for the last couple of years (only one exception), the unemployment crisis, which is at the heart of the people's massive misery caused by the Great Recession. I can't help but personally feel that this exclusion flows from the fact that the left generally has no personal understanding or awareness of the severity of the crisis, and cannot seem to grasp its devastating impact on the unemployed themselves, who often feel psychologically as though trapped in the lowest rungs of Dante’s hell.

Noted socialist writer Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." That doesn't just apply to the business and managerial classes alone--I submit, it can also apply to those who are economically comfortable either as workers or as retirees--and thus have no inkling of what it's like to be one of the working poor, what it's like to be chronically unemployed and "living" on a mere $600/month in unemployment compensation, to live constantly desperate. Such as I do, even as a college graduate (but with the "wrong" degree for the job market!), along with my college graduate friends who also have the "wrong" degrees, who are also older (as I am), who have to try and subsist on only temp agency work that pays $10/hour or less (as I had to do for 10 years, before being cut loose even from this kind of employment!) And yes, Upton Sinclair's remark applies to many a putative socialist as well, and to numerous "activists" in Occupy movements and left groups who don't have to worry about the economic wolf at the door, at least for the time being.

It is literally shameful the way the U.S. left has ignored the unemployment crisis, either slighting it through silence altogether, or not proposing bold Keynesian measures such as a new WPA, which created 8.5 million jobs in the 1930s and provided paychecks to 9.7 workers then, according the UCubed, the "union of the unemployed" set up by the Machinists' union (but which is not conceived as an "unemployed council" such as were established in the 1930s, but merely as a voting bloc to pressure Obama and the Democratic Party to "do right."). The reformist socialists such as DSA and CCDS only advocate for Obama's tepid jobs program, which will create merely 1.2 million jobs in an economy with a far bigger workforce than existed in the 1930s. The "revolutionary" socialists are even worse, aiming their fire at the "inadequacy" and merely "reformist" measures that would result from implementing Keynesian measures such as were instituted during the New Deal. So afraid of "saving capitalism," our "revolutionaries" would rather sacrifice the unemployed upon the altar of ideological purity, thus presenting themselves through their inaction as tacitly “aligned” (though for much different reasons) with the obstructionist Republicans and Tea Partiers--who also don't want any Keynesian measures applied to help the unemployed by providing decent-paying, productive, valuable jobs that fulfill real economic needs such as repairing infrastructure, and can actually become Green jobs.

Fortunately, there is one honorable socialist exception, the semi-Trotskyist/Third Camp socialist journal and website New Politics, http://newpol.org, of which ATC Editor David Finkel is a Sponsor, and of which leading Solidarity member Dan La Botz is an Editor. I published on New Politics online on February 3, 2011 my "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" calling for a new WPA, http://newpol.org/node/425; in this I was ably seconded by Brian King's supportive article and history of the WPA, "Jobs for All," http://newpol.org/node/445. Radical historian Jesse Lemisch also contributed mightily to this discussion with two articles on New Politics online, "Occupy the American Historical Association: Demand a WPA Federal Writers' Project," http://newpol.org/node/555, and "A WPA for History: Occupy the American Historical Association," http://newpol.org/node/582. I also briefly discussed Occupy youth and their roles as probably unemployed workers once they leave the student confines in "Carl Davidson, Bill Ayers, and Zig Ziglar Moments," http://newpol.org/node/568, where I pointedly noted in a footnote that, according to the New York Times, only 56% of the graduates of the Class of 2010 had found jobs by 2011! But these are virtually unique in what is otherwise a blackout of articles and analyses on the unemployment crisis in "revolutionary" socialist publications!

Jack Rasmus’ article in ATC 135 (July/August 2008), “A New Phase of Economic Crisis,” http://solidarity-us.org/site/node/1608, which was touted to me by one of the Editors of ATC as an exception to my claim of silence on the unemployment crisis, is no exception, really, to this blackout. Much of the article is but a compendium of economic statistics that leads only to the weak, deterministic conclusion that essentially the unemployment and ancillary crises caused by the Great Recession can’t even be seriously ameliorated under capitalism. A “revolutionary” call to passivity in concrete action now while calling for the overthrow of capitalism in the indefinite future. Certainly not a call for a “Jobs for All” new WPA as we called for in New Politics, which, while possibly “saving capitalism from itself” (albeit with major restructuring of this “saved” capitalism), would directly benefit millions, galvanize and energize them, and draw them into more militant political action precisely because they would now feel a sense of real hope and empowerment—plus having the material means to live a decent life, not merely scrounge to survive! Same as the (admittedly) reformist and inadequate New Deal did in the 1930s—which aside from achieving real changes in the way capitalism worked, also radicalized millions and pushed the “limits of the possible” much further to the left. Good things, yes? One would really think so, especially on the part of the “revolutionary” left as represented by ATC and Solidarity, but—these “revolutionaries” tragically disappoint by only wanting to say “no” to this.

But as my comrade and fellow New Politics contributor Brain King put it in an e-mail comment to me that was shared with this ATC Editor, “Why don't ‘Socialist’ groups and journals want to support ‘Jobs for All’? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called ‘socialism’ than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called ‘socialists’ don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.” [As originally written by King—GF]

Leaving socialists such as myself, Brian King and Jesse Lemisch who are aware of the horridness of the unemployment crisis and the sting of unemployment between the Scylla of reformist tailing after Obama's inadequate approach, or the Charybdis or the tacit “alignment” with the Republicans against Keynesian measures that would actually work by the "revolutionary" left (although, again, for entirely different reasons), as demonstrated by the deafening silence coming from the "revolutionaries”!

I write this letter out of my great respect and appreciation for ATC.

George Fish

This was a revised version of an earlier draft I’d sent to this socialist bimonthly—most notably revised from the original in that I’d excised some language that Against the Current Managing Editor and Editorial Board Member David Finkel had vehemently objected to. For in the original I’d talked of persons on the left not understanding what it was like to be unemployed because many of them were among the “smug employed” and the “smug retired.” Finkel also drew my attention to the article by Jack Rasmus, on which I commented in the revised letter. Those were the two notable changes made, and made specifically to answer Finkel’s objections; and so I sent off the revised letter to Against the Current for re-consideration. Despite Finkel’s nastily reproachful tone, I’d been professional enough to take his objections into consideration, and revise accordingly. I expected no problems with the revised letter, even though personal relations with him were strained, had been for some time, and in the fall of 2010 Finkel personally instigated proceedings that led to my expulsion from Solidarity, the socialist grouplet (only 200-some members nationally) that publishes Against the Current as a ‘broader” left magazine. In fact, many’s the time I’d previously published in Against the Current, frequently with Finkel’s previous encouragement and approval. (It should be mentioned here that David Finkel is also a listed Sponsor of the New Politics hard-copy journal.)

What I got instead from Against the Current was this below, directly from Finkel:

My final note to you, last week, very explicitly stated that “…you don’t need to send us any more ‘letters to the editor’ or proposals for articles, and in fact you can stop sending messages here on anything whatsoever. If there is any part of the above that is not clear, please re-read as many times as necessary.” There is no way to make the point clearer. We will not acknowledge or respond to any further communications from you.

There it is, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades! Just like Lucifer, I’ve now been cast into the pit of hell by Almighty God himself, in the form of a Managing Editor of a small, and to most people, highly obscure, magazine of the left with which I’d been associated with before; and had even been told by Finkel himself that I could submit proposed articles and letters to Against the Current even after I’d been expelled from Solidarity.

What’s particularly interesting, I think, in all this is not any objection to “offensive” language (which had been excised, anyway, in my revision) on the part of Against the Current, but the fact that, like much of the left today, it doesn’t really want to talk about “Jobs for All” new WPA-style programs. New Politics online has been the only notable (and to me, honorable) exception, having first published my awkwardly-titled "Open Programmatic Proposal to the Broad U.S. Left for Directly Dealing with the Present Unemployment Crisis" that called for such a new WPA, which was ably seconded on New Politics online by Brian King; further, also on New Politics online, radical historian Jesse Lemisch posted three articles in support of a WPA-like proposal for unemployed cultural and intellectual workers. (Two of Lemisch’s articles are linked above in the letter, as are King’s and my articles).

That “Jobs for All” programs and the left’s failure to adequately address the unemployment crisis because new-WPA proposals are seen as either inherently “reformist,” or conversely, other elements of the left don’t want to destroy “unity” by going beyond what Obama’s proposed, seems to me what’ at the ideological crux of Against the Current’s refusal, not language that had since been removed. That was seen to be the ideological issue involved by Brian King and three other friends and comrades of mine, who sent me the following remarks on my original draft, and whose words of support had been passed on to Finkel. They wrote, from a variety of political orientations, as seen below.

Greg King, member of CCDS, shop steward, SEIU Local 888, Boston city workers:

George, the Left hasn't been completely silent on the unemployment issue. They probably haven't devoted anywhere near as much time and energy to the crisis as it deserves. Discussing & pushing for solutions such as your WPA proposal would be a very good thing to do. Sometimes there is too much posturing and abstract theorizing, not enough attention to the real problems of real people.

Also, I didn't think your letter was that offensive. I thought it was well-argued and frank.

Harold Karabell, former left activist in Indianapolis, now living in St. Louis, Missouri:

In addition to infrastructure work, my own city could use a few thousand trees in various neighborhoods.

So perhaps it's time to revive the CCC as well!

Brian King, comrade from Seattle, long-time activist, contributor to New Politics:

I'm not surprised that ATC refused to publish your letter. For the record, I thought it was very good, and, for you, remarkably restrained. [I admit to sometimes getting carried away with harsh language—GF] My experience with all these guys (ATC, CCDS, DSA, Monthly Review, Nation) is that they are very uncomfortable with the idea of Jobs for All and the idea of building a movement for a new WPA. Actually, as far as I know, the only person of national prominence who supports us is Robert Reich, Clinton's old Secretary of Labor.

Why don't "Socialist" groups and journals want to support "Jobs for All"? That's a tough one, but it's gotta have something to do with how they see their own group interests and the maintenance of their institutions. They must figure that it's much cooler to promote some pie-in-the-sky version of an ethereal state of affairs called "socialism" than to get jobs for all, gain a lot of control over labor markets, but leave capitalism still functioning. I also think a lot of these so-called "socialists" don't much like the idea of being involved with a lot of politically incorrect schlubs, like me and you. If your gonna build a mass movement, you're gonna have to learn to get along with a lot of working people without left pedigrees.

and Phil Davis, former member of Solidarity, unemployed recent college graduate:

I think Dave should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he agrees with it. He could perhaps publish it and then write a rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with you. Instead, he chooses not to publish it at all. This is sad and unfortunate and yes it is censorship…you are correct.

Yes, I agree with you that "Jobs for All" is the slogan we should be fighting for. As someone who is unemployed, I believe that's a very, very important demand. I think Finkel should publish your letter regardless of whether or not he personally agrees with it. He could always write some type of rebuttal explaining why he disagrees with it, but I guess he won't even be doing that.

Refusal to even discuss “Jobs for All” programs compounded by censorship. Those are the political issues at the heart of Against the Current’s vehement refusal to print my Letter to the Editors, nor even allow the issue to be raised, even in a miniscule journal of the U.S. left where, given the mood of the U.S.’s also-miniscule left as a whole, both the letter itself and the issues it addresses would soon be forgotten. If anyone on the left ever wonders why, in this time of continuing deep economic recession, there exists this historical anomaly of the great bulk of the 99% not identifying with the left, nor wishing to get involved, even in amorphous Occupy movements, we need look no further than this incident for at least partial explanations.

Right-to-Work is not the only issue in Indiana

Despite its monopolizing politics in Indiana for the last few months, so-called Right-to Work is not the only issue in Indiana. Yes, believe it or not, there are other pressing issues for working people in the Hoosier state, and it’s only the organized sector of the workforce that has that much to lose from Right-to-Work—at least in the short run. Providing an economy to put the unemployed back to work is still an issue, for, despite some recent job growth, there still aren’t enough jobs available. And if my friends and I are any indication, among those unemployed left-outs are still going to be a large number of college graduates, “overqualified” denizens of the work force who, for a number of reasons, are still going to be excluded—allegedly underexperienced or lacking any proper experience, persons with the “wrong” degree, and older workers. I knew a lot of them when I was test-scoring, a job that, while requiring a college degree, provided only around four months’ work, and paid only $10 an hour. In fact, for many of us long-term test scorers (I was one for ten years, before being unceremoniously denied further employment), we had to take pay cuts just to keep the jobs! When, for example, I started the job in 2001, I was paid $10.50 an hour, with regular raises that, by the end of 2005, put me up to $11.50 an hour. (In those years we also had six-eight months of work per year.) Then the company that hired us through temp agencies for these jobs started demanding various pay cuts, with the temp agencies then providing these reduced-pay jobs to us on a take-it-or-leave it basis. But having nowhere else to go, we had to take it. Workers who had been making $15-16 an hour were now reduced to $10; all of us, veterans and novices alike, the same $10 an hour.

As for Indiana’s WorkOne state employment agency, we’re often classified there as “unskilled labor” despite our college educations. (Or is it because of our college educations in a state with abysmally low educational attainment, with most jobs at a low-skill level, which just makes us college graduates too “unmanageable” for such jobs as are available!) Needless to say, given the general unimaginativeness of Indiana’s state agencies, WorkOne simply considers many of us college graduates not as potential high-skilled workers, but simply lacking in the “relevant” skills supposedly needed now, and so comes to the conclusion that we’re just “unskilled labor.” As good examples of just what prevails here in this regard, see my article on Indiana’s Brain Drain for the online Examiner newspaper, www.examiner.com/x-19063-Indianapolis-Economic-Policy-Examiner, and my article on WorkOne in New Politics online, http://newpol.org/node/564. And Indiana wonders why the state faces a chronic Brain Drain!

And to top it off, unemployed workers in Indiana will face a cut in unemployment benefits starting July 1, 2012. During 2011’s fight against Right-to-Work, despite the Democrats’ absence that denied the Indiana General Assembly a quorum, the Republicans still managed to legally pass a bill authorizing such cuts without a quorum, and Republican Governor Mitch Daniels gleefully signed the bill into law in front of 250 protesting workers! Little good it does us unemployed to hear the refrain from those who’ve been constantly preoccupied with Right-to Work, “I lobbied against the cut in unemployment benefits.” Despite their lobbying, the bill passed, became law, and we, the unemployed, will pay the price, not the employed. And of course, despite all the lobbying, the importuning of state legislators, despite the massive show of bodies at the Statehouse both years, Right-to-Work still became law; the next step will now be to get enough legislators elected in 2012 to repeal the law in 2013. Hopefully, they will also repeal the cut in unemployment benefits, but maybe not. But for us unemployed with few prospects for employment—which, again, I emphasize, includes a lot of college graduates—that’s an issue far more important, with far more immediate effects, than Right-to-Work.

Indeed, considering that Indiana’s unionization rate is only 11.3% of the workforce (Bureau of Labor Statistics; that’s lower than the national rate of 11.8%), and only 8.2% in the private sector (Steven Greenhouse, “A Gathering Storm Over `Right to Work' in Indiana,” New York Times, January 2, 2012), many Indiana workers were victims of the “race to the bottom” that’s taking place across the country even before Right-to-Work. They’re already facing those wage cuts, cuts or elimination of benefits (when they exist in the first place, which is increasingly rare), uncertainty of employment, either too little work of massive forced overtime, that Right-to-Work opponents predict will come about. The dire effects boding ahead because of Right-to-Work are already there for many employed workers, and were there even before the passage of Right-to-Work. So, even if things could get theoretically worse in the future, they’re already bad enough now, and if they do get worse, couldn’t get much worse than they are now.

Then there’s Indiana’s disgrace of a social safety net, symbolized and enhanced in its horridness by the FSSA, the state’s Family and Social Service Administration umbrella “social service agency.” Consider that an unemployed worker with a family makes too much money even on unemployment benefits to qualify for needed financial assistance! Consider that TANF benefits in Indiana are only $290 a month! And consider the wretchedness of Medicaid coverage to begin with, compounded by the fact that I don’t know of a single health provider or pharmacist I’ve encountered who has a good word to say about FSSA. Or consider the horridness of Vocational Rehabilitation or the Department of Mental Health, which, in terms of my experience trying to find employment through both, are but conduits to the fast-food and other low-paying service industries. And both will regard a college degree as either a barrier to employment or an irrelevancy, because, if you need Vocational Rehabilitation or mental health services in the first place, you must be congenitally stupid! And of course, Indiana’s mental health system, never very good in the first place, has gotten even worse under the brunt of cutbacks in funding. Not to mention inept case workers who will deny one’s eligibility for welfare benefits for specious reasons and truly stupid mistakes, as happened to me twice in less than two years, first in October 2009 and again in June 2011. And even though I won my benefits back upon appeal, it took six months both times, and required additional intervention from my State Senator’s office, before the FSSA restored what was rightfully mine in the first place. Then there’s the denial I faced in 2004, finally winning back my benefits a year later, which wasn’t even, formally, for specious reasons—the rationale for denial being unfathomable even to the FSSA representatives, as my lawyer and I had presented an airtight case demonstrating that all relevant documents had been properly submitted to my then-case worker, who evidently ignored them, with this even approved of by her supervisor.

The upshot of all this being that it we are really concerned about the working class we must be concerned about the working class as a whole, and the whole comprises not only those who are organized and employed, but those unorganized and employed, underemployed, and unemployed, as well as those on welfare—all workers, or potential workers; for the unemployed and those on welfare are not a motley group of lumpens fit only to discard—they themselves are able people without the ability to demonstrate their worth and productive value. Given that, the overriding focus on Right-to-Work is to tacitly elevate above the rest of the working class those who are employed members of labor unions, for this is the sector most directly affected by Right-to-Work—indeed, in the short run, the sector within Indiana’s workforce that’s solely affected. Thus, the overriding focus on Right-to-Work is far too narrow. Which means it is a niche issue (nothing wrong with that!) belonging to one sector of the working class, which must then be combined with the niche issues of the other sectors of the working class to make a cluster of issues that encompass the needs of the working class as a whole.

Nor was passing Right-to-Work the only stupidity committed by the Indiana General Assembly. On the day after the Indiana Senate passed Right-to-Work, January 31, 2012, it passed the “education” bill requiring so-called “creation science” to be taught in all Indiana schools, although not necessarily in the science classes. Given past court decisions, that bill is likely to be ruled unconstitutional; although given the decisions made by the Roberts Supreme Court, it’s all too possible that the Supremes will ignore precedent and embrace “creationism” as also a valid subject to be taught in Indiana schools—and thus, in schools across the country. The only saving grace to the “creationism” bill mandating the teaching of the creation fables of the various religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism specifically mentioned—thanks to the pluck of Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson (D-Bloomington), the creation story of Scientology must also be taught! And it passed, there being no way to keep teaching Scientology out of a bill specifically mandating the teaching of the various religious creation stories. As Tony Ortega put it in the February 1, 2012 Village Voice, “Indiana Senate Votes to Teach Scientology in Schools,” “That's right -- kids in Indiana may be learning about Xenu the galactic overlord, spaceships shaped like DC-8s, hydrogen bombs in volcanoes, and the disembodied souls of space aliens that attach themselves to us until one uses the exorcism techniques of Dianetics!” [Emphasis in original] Well, if you can’t do anything else, leave ‘em laughing when you go!

Of course, Indiana schools are bad enough already, a major contributor to the general low-skill level of the Indiana workforce overall, and a prime contributor to Indiana’s per capita income falling six years in a row, 2005-2010; and with the third slowest personal income growth in the nation from 2000 to 2010, just over 3%, and well below the national average of 3.95% (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis). According to STATS Indiana, prepared by the Indiana business Research Center at the Kelly School of Business, Indiana University, the Hoosier state ranked 42nd in per capita income in 2010, down from 33rd in 2000. Philip Powell, Associate Professor of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington stated to the Indianapolis Star in 2009: "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." A big reason so much of the Indiana economy is dependent on manufacturing is that Indiana's workforce is largely unskilled and uneducated. Only one-third of its workers have high school diplomas or GEDs, and only 28 percent have college degrees, compared to 39 percent nationally. (George Fish and Dave Fey, “Mediocrity—a Hoosier affliction,” Bloomington (IN) Alternative, July 11, 2009, http://bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2009/07/12/10039)

So, while Right-to-Work is important, it’s not the only important issue for working people in Indiana. Yes, it’s a bad law; yes, it should be repealed; and repealing it should be a priority, but not the sole priority—there are still many issues besides Right-to-Work needing to be addressed for the benefit of all Indiana working people, employed and unemployed, union and non-union alike.

Good News, Finally! from the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center

At long last, some good news from the much-troubled, nearly-moribund Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center (IPJC): finally, IPJC’s President since April, the consistently and roundly inept David Scott, resigned, and in his stead as interim President steps IPJC’s Vice-president, the able Jennifer Cobb. I’ve known Ms. Cobb for nearly two decades, and it is at last comforting to see a relatively young person (under 40) stepping into a leadership position at IPJC, an organization presently dominated by retirees collecting Social Security, with nary a real youth (someone under 30) in sight. After nearly 30 years of existence, the IPJC, notably under Scott, but earlier as well, under the complacent helm of immediate past Presidents Jim Wolfe and Jane Haldeman, seemed determined to go out “not with a bang, but with a whimper.” Though Cobb will have a very difficult time ahead trying to breathe life back into the IPJC, she does have the ability and, hopefully, the assertiveness to do so, and I offer my full cooperation and support to her in this endeavor.

Because, at bottom, the only good thing I can say at this point about the accession of Jennifer Cobb to the head of IPJC and David Scott’s much-justified resignation is “It’s about time!”

This was made particularly evident by Scott’s last activity as IPJC President, putting out the pathetic Winter 2011 issue of The Movement, IPJC’s putative monthly newspaper that hadn’t published since September, ostensibly for lack of funds, even though the time for publication of the October issue and beyond would’ve coincided with the IPJC’s annual fund drive; but needless to say, no financial information on the success or failure of that drive was granted to IPJC members, or as far as I know, even to its Board of Directors. David Scott simply told the Board that funds were not available, publication of The Movement needed to be suspended indefinitely at the very least, and that was that. Finis. End of discussion. Given the Board’s long-standing tradition of being an acquiescent rubber-stamp for which asking pointed questions of the President would’ve been a serious breach of comfortable cronyism, the Board’s craven collapse on the issue of publishing The Movement—which effectively eliminated IPJC’S voice to the broader Indianapolis community completely—was not at all surprising, even if deplorable. And that’s putting it mildly indeed!

But a very limited edition of The Movement was put out very late in December (I received my copy via mail on the 22nd), a patchwork of articles that had been sitting around gathering dust for the last couple of months, and whose publication now clearly showed their datedness. Bob Baldwin’s article on the Occupy Indianapolis movement referred to the state of that movement as it existed not later than late October or perhaps very early November. Debbie Peddie’s article on the execution of Troy Davis on September 21 was clearly written at that time, and not in the least updated to make it more relevant. Other articles in this issue of The Movement were even less edifying, the quality of writing was so pedestrian it made the average AP or Indianapolis Star news story look like a literary paragon, and the political tenor of the issue (if it can be dignified by calling it that) was confused, disoriented and unfocused. Further, the dearth of content was even more emphasized by that long-standing ploy editors of IPJC newspapers traditionally use when short on content to adequately fill a newspaper—set the whole thing in larger-than-normal type, which makes the paucity of content stand out even more.

Scott, as both Publishing Editor and IPJC President, published in this issue a “Letter from the President” that directly referenced its being written in November 2011, and obviously not updated. It was noticeably silent on his upcoming resignation, although perhaps that was not in the offing when he penned his cliché-ridden “Letter,” filled with vacuous ruminations on celebration and time-of-year change. But one of the things that was in the “Letter” was that Earth House, a supposed “activist organization” housed in a downtown church, and which had rented the IPJC its office there for nearly four years, was now calling on the IPJC to leave. While Scott was noticeably opaque about the reasons why IPJC now had to leave, offering only possible “philosophical differences” and another organization being interested in renting the space as reasons, he’d touted Earth House as a model of activist commitment not long before, and bandied about the notion that 200 activists from Earth House could find a friendly berth in IPJC—if IPJC simply followed along with Scott’s usually grandiose, unfunded visions of what IPJC needed to become. And now this same model of activist commitment was very firmly insisting that the IPJC had to leave!

So IPJC enters 2012 looking for another place to move into, to set up yet another vastly underutilized office that never seems to be able to attract enough volunteers to adequately staff it, and where, to reliable reports, IPJC can barely afford a telephone for such an office, much less provide personnel to answer it. But Scott was always long on vague visions, very much short on implementation; which is why IPJC essentially did nothing during Scott’s tenure as President except listen to his grandiosely vague language. Which seemed to be just the way David Scott wanted it.

But enough grousing about David Scott, who will certainly not be sorely missed, if missed at all. IPJC has many other problems, many of which existed yet remained unaddressed even before Scott took office. David Scott merely compounded many festering problems that had long remained buried and hidden within the IPJC’s good ol’ boys network of tired churchgoing pacifists and their satraps, the vast majority of whom are well over 60, and anyone who is obviously under 35 a real rarity.

This, then, is the IPJC now dumped into Jennifer Cobb’s lap. As I mentioned above, I’ve known her for nearly two decades, and regard her as an able person. But she won’t be able to turn IPJC around on her own, and will find most of the Board members, as well as those precious few in the Indianapolis community who identify in any way with the IPJC, unwilling to commit or to act, preferring instead to just sit back and let Jennifer do it. But she will need to push, prod, cajole and otherwise agitate those persons despite this if she wishes to accomplish anything, if she wishes to be effective as the interim President and establish some sort of firm ground on which IPJC can stand when it elects a President at its annual April meeting. Although her e-mail address contains as first part “BlessedtheMeek,” she dare not be meek, but must be assertive and proactive, if IPJC is in fact to even have another year of existence other than as an empty shell. (Indianapolis has a way of generating do-nothing organizations that somehow manage to meet, even if accomplishing nothing; and, simply by meeting regularly, thus perpetuate themselves long beyond their useful lives.) As I also indicated above, I extend my offer of active cooperation to her, and as a first step, offer the following as strong suggestions on what must be done (obviously, not all at once):

• First, prod IPJC’s octogenarian Treasurer, Garnett Day, to provide a full, complete report on the state of IPJC’s current finances and fund-raising.

• Second, revitalize IPJC’s monthly newspaper, The Movement, as an ongoing publication committed to journalistic excellence as its mainstay in presenting itself to the broader community, complemented and supplemented by its organizational webpage and blogging site, both of which exist in sadly moribund states. Despite one of David Scott’s friends filling the post of web moderator, neither the webpage nor the blogging site have been kept up-to-date, let alone becoming sources of timely information and discussion that can actually generate interest in the IPJC. While the IPJC’s webpage has been partially updated, its blogging site has remained unchanged and unmoderated since October 31, 2011, and both are amateurish in content and layout. The interested reader can see for him/herself; the webpage address is www.indypeaceandjustice.org, and the blog site address is http://indypeaceandjustice.wordpress.com. On this latter I posted a “comment” that’s still “awaiting moderation” since December 1, 2011!

• Third, to revitalize The Movement will require making it both writer-friendly and under the editorship of high-quality editors and staff who will work with writers and guide them in constructive ways, not simply putting in articles because they arrived via e-mail close to the time of editorial preparation, and thus filled space, or because they fit in with the IPJC President’s predilections, regardless of merit. The Movement, and its predecessor, the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, did have such a person involved who excelled on both counts, and I’m glad to say I had the honor of working under him: Managing Editor Jack Kaufman-McKivigan, who hopefully will become more involved in 2012 after stepping away from The Movement in late 2011.

• Fourth, the editor of The Movement must not be the IPJC President, or beholden to him/her for the position, but be staffed independently, and, while ultimately answerable to the President and the Board of Directors, needs to be regarded as an independent professional who makes editorial decisions on sound journalistic practice, and who must be given sufficient leeway to do so; all too often the editorial functions of IPJC publications have been undermined because of petty political gripes, or because someone who was an officer of the IPJC, or sat on the Board, or both, had an ax to grind. The same goes for the moderator of the webpage and the blog site.

• Fifth, editor and writers must work together in a constructive partnership; this is best assured by a proactive promotion of journalistic excellence on both sides. Both editors and writers for IPJC publications and webs must be committed to professionalism and professional standards, even though they will probably not serve as paid professionals. Further, while the editorial decisions of editors and moderators should be regarded as essentially final, there needs also be an effective ombudsman who can hear appeals and render fair decisions that will be regarded as such, even by the losing parties. IPJC publications and webs have been plagued by censorship in the past; in the interests of providing a true free speech forum, this must not be allowed to happen again.

• Sixth, the IPJC President must be accountable to the Board of Directors, the Board of Directors must be accountable to the President and officers, and ultimately, Board members and officers must be accountable to the membership. Recall and referendum on the part of the membership should be provided for; also, more extensive use of online and mail voting, so that decisions are made that reflect the membership as a whole, not simply those who show up at meetings.

• Seventh, the IPJC must declare itself a membership organization of individuals open to all who support its principles and commitments and who pay the annual dues, with one vote per member. It must stop the charade, long a dead letter, of somehow also having organizations as members, when none such have participated for as long as I’ve been involved in the IPJC, which goes back to just a few years after its founding in 1982.

• Eighth, the present Mission Statement and statement of editorial policy for The Movement must be scrapped; these pitiful inadequacies are the creatures of David Scott, and were passively accepted because no one had the spine to challenge Scott (except perhaps me, but I’ve always been regarded as “contentious,” even when my “contentiousness” has been proven both right and necessary!), but simply went along with him in “lazy-faire” fashion, as befits a good ol’ boys network of incestuous cronies that has been at the helm of IPJC far too long, and which has led to its present crisis.

• Ninth, while certainly IPJC should be inclusive and embracing to those in the Indianapolis area who are truly for peace with social justice, (both meaningfully defined) it simply cannot be all things to all persons, so “inclusive and open-minded” (as the statement of editorial policy for The Movement puts it) so that it includes both socialists and activists in the Indiana Tea Party, and where it opens its doors so wide that anybody who proclaims being for “peace and justice” can enter and be a part of IPJC, even Tea Party reactionaries, Blue Dog Democrats, and John Boehner/Eric Cantor Republicans! Such an all-embracing inclusiveness is absurd and unworkable for an organization that actually wishes to do something to achieve peace with justice.

• Tenth, while IPJC should continue to uphold its commitment to nonviolence, it should not conflate this, as it has done so many times in the past, with pacifism, or worse, become beholden to those approaches that have defined (and limited) the traditional “peace churches.” Quakerism especially has been far too uncritically embraced by the IPJC, with a chilling effect on peace with social justice activists who questioned the applicability of consensus in all situations; or who rejected the notion that some sort of “natural harmony” in human affairs existed, or could be brought into existence, despite the palpable conflicts of race, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic class that have proven to be endemic, and stem more from oppression and inequality than from “disharmony.” Furthermore, IPJC has been far too beholden to theistic perspectives on peace and social justice, also with a chilling effect on those who support peace with social justice but who are atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, Marxists, consider themselves not religious, or who question certain religious beliefs and dogmas. What this all means is that IPJC needs to strive to become what its goals and principles actually tend toward, a secular organization of an inclusive center-left that is not just pro-peace and antiwar, but actually strives for, tries to put into societal practice, a vision of social justice that encompasses economic equality, respect for cultural and political differences, is democratic and participatory in decision-making, and is proactively supportive of the aims, aspirations and struggles of the 99% against the 1%, to express this last in Occupy movement terms.

As a useful guide to what this might entail, especially in regards to the ninth and tenth points, I refer the reader to my article, “Slandering Nonviolence,” which was originally published in the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal of October 2008, and was later revised and published on the New Politics website on September 15, 2011, accessed at http://newpol.org/node/510. I think it, and the ensuing discussion of the article posted below it, will be found not only interesting, but also highly valuable, relevant and appropriate in understanding why I make a crucial yet necessary distinction between nonviolence and pacifism, and why one can be nonviolent without necessarily being a pacifist.

This is a very good place to stop, and to wish Jennifer Cobb all the luck and pluck she will need in her job as IPJC interim President. She certainly has the ability to do excellent work, and I am glad to extend my hand to her in cooperation. I hope the rest of those who consider themselves a part of IPJC, or sympathetic to it, will do likewise.

TODAY I STARTED LOVING YOU AGAIN?

An informal, experiential reflection on capitalism and capitalists, socialism and socialists.

I’ve never read former-leftist-turned-leading-neoconservative Irving Kristol’s essay, “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” but some recent, very wrenching, bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism have made me wonder seriously about left efficacy. And when I think about it, much as I really am committed to the socialist ideal as offering a positive alternative to the quagmire of global economic and social crises, and as much as I really am at heart opposed to capitalism in its present form, I have to admit that in many ways capitalism has been better to me, better for me, than many a leftist group, and many a leftist “comrade.” Considering the results of my interactions both with capitalism and with socialism I have to say “One-and-a-half cheers for capitalism.”

These recent bouts with left sectarianism and dogmatism aren’t much worth going into; just suffice it to say they involved Marxist groups acting out that “revolutionary” ersatz that renders contemporary activist-group “Marxism” as something scripted by another type of Marxist, Groucho, in collaboration with Franz Kafka! But they have made me reflect not only on socialism and capitalism as abstract entities, but also on my life with real capitalism and real capitalists, and with real socialists of my acquaintance, and see that my real life experiences with capitalism haven’t always been negative, and my real life experience with socialists and other leftists haven’t always been positive.

After all, even though capitalism and the present recession it’s caused have resulted in my being seriously underemployed, it’s also that very capitalism that’s offered and given me employment—which I have to contrast to the great majority of my leftist “comrades” who, when I’ve been really down and out, wouldn’t even give me the time of day. My apolitical friends have been far more generous to me than my left political ones, and that’s simply a fact. It’s my apolitical friend John who pledged that “George, I’ll never let you starve or go homeless,” and he’s followed through on it with his limited funds, funds far more limited than those of many a left “comrade.” All too well do I remember the leading leftist here in Indianapolis saying to me back in 2009, when I was at a nadir of employment and desperate for funds to live on, “I wish I had your time for reading.” Somehow not noticing that the “time for reading” was more taken up with concerns about how I was to meet the rent and put food on the table, not to mention taking from that “time for reading” essential time to somehow find a nonexistent job. Hell, this leading leftist couldn’t even bring himself to buy me a cup of coffee as I outlined my economic difficulties to him!

But back to capitalist perks. While I make it a point to shop for groceries at a particular large chain that is unionized, I do so equally because I find its prices reasonable, even in this time of grocery price surges. Moreover—and this is important—also because I can get a 10¢ a gallon discount off the gasoline I buy at that same chain’s gas outlets. But I also shop at a certain convenience store/filling station chain, even though it’s owned by a vehemently anti-union oil company which treats its employees badly; something I know firsthand because I once worked for it myself. (In fact, even wrote and posted an article on my mistreatment: http://politicalaffairs.net/a-worker-s-vignette-suspended-for-being-sick/.) Not that I have a whole lot of choice in where I fill up my car’s gas tank, but generally this convenience store outlet has lower prices than others; also I get points for purchases both of gas and other items that add up for perks, and one of them, the one I regularly use, enables me to get 10¢ a gallon off my gas purchases there as well. Who doesn’t want 10¢ a gallon off their gas at today’s prices? Further, the office supply chain store I regularly buy my computer printer ink cartridges from gives me both discount coupons plus a points program that also leads to monthly discounts on purchases. So, despite my regular capitalist exploitation as a consumer, something I readily admit, I get some of that money back—on a tight budget, as almost all of us are now on, who doesn’t relish that?

Like most workers I have credit cards, and yes, those payments can indeed be onerous. But despite that, I’ve regularly made them, which has resulted in my being rewarded with increased credit lines on several of them. Not only that; because of my improved credit rating due to those payments, for the past two years I’ve also been rewarded with new lower monthly premiums for my state-required auto insurance. Not a whole lot, but it adds up.

Contrast that to the local leftists often denying me any financial assistance, even when it’s really urgent, because at the time I’m considered “politically incorrect.” But these same leftists will provide such assistance when I’m viewed as “politically correct.” Like so many other personal relationships on the left, it becomes a water faucet: sometimes turned on, sometimes not; sometimes with what comes out being scalding hot, other times icy cold, and sometimes comfortably warm, depending on the “comrade’s” judgment of my “political correctness” at that particular time. Then there are those “comrades” who provide me with long-term financial assistance due to my lack of steady employment (the vicissitudes of the job market here in Indiana have made me a permanent temp for the past ten years), but with a high rate of psychological interest charged. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. One particular example comes to mind of a rather sanctimonious Quaker woman, now deceased, who gave me a monthly stipend of over $200 a month, but expected in return I not criticize her, even though she’d actively blacklisted me and backbit me to all her local “progressive” friends here in Indianapolis for the previous 26 years, but had a moderate change of heart the last three years of her life. For which she wanted total forgiveness, even for her only half-hearted attempts to make amends—which she was willing to make as long as she didn’t have to go so far as to admit to the fellow “progressives” she’d severely misjudged me, something which would’ve damaged her aura of goodness and infallibility. As my friend John mentioned above said to me, “She thought she owned you.” Her monthly stipend had supposedly paid for me and my silence as though I were a slave, and here I now irritated her by deserved criticism; in her eyes I was acting like an “uppity
n—r”!

So there really is something positive, something to give one-and-a-half cheers for, in what Adam Smith expressed in the Wealth of Nations: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” A similar thought was expressed succinctly in a left magazine: “As a pragmatist, I frankly don’t care about Edison’s politics, or Bill Gates’ economic theories. I want to know if the electricity works and if my computer program will run.” (Michael Hogan, “Green Revolution or Scorched Earth? Mexican and Cuban Responses,” Political Affairs, February 2006)

Milton Fisk, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Indiana University-Bloomington, titles a section in his book Toward a Healthy Society: the Morality and Politics of American Health Care Reform (University Press of Kansas, 2000), “The Decline of Compassion and Solidarity.”
While I think few of us on the left (and I regard myself as on the left) would dispute that’s the prevailing reality in our society as a whole, it’s a reality that’s also prevailing on the left today, and has been for a long time. Again, the old water faucet. And also, the notion that friendship, compassion for others simply because they are human in and of itself, is suspect, is a form of “right opportunism,” “liberalism” (as in Mao Zedong’s essay, “Combat Liberalism”), or “bourgeois sentimentality.” Because when “correct” politics are everything, there’s no room for anything else—certainly not something that might be perceived as “wavering” or “weakness.” After all, as Bukharin infamously wrote, there’s the “the necessity of breaking an egg to obtain an omlette.” And as so many of us on the left ruefully know, some of the least considerate, least compassionate people on the left will speak fulsomely of their love and devotion to persons of color, and in the Third World; the “good Quaker” mentioned above was one to these, which drew the cynical observation on my part, “The oppressed who are geographically and culturally distant from oneself are truly oppressed; the oppressed who are geographically and culturally ‘in one’s backyard’ are merely pests.” But as I’ve also expressed, “Cynicism is often the beginning of wisdom.”

This ugly reality was especially brought home to me back in 2005, when my very employability was at stake. At the time I was a long-term outpatient at a local mental health center, one of those “liberal, helping, social-safety-net agencies” that so many “socialists” and “progressives” have uncritical high regard for as “problem solvers” for the troubled and dispossessed—not realizing just how illiberal and unhelpful the actual “help” is (because they’ve rarely had to use them; or when they did seek psychological/psychiatric counseling, their wealth and insurance enabled them to utilize the private sector, rather than the classist “services” set aside for the indigent). Further, they tend to be blind to the fact that bigotry toward those who aren’t “quite right” expresses itself not just in hostility, but in condescension as well.

But at that time I was eligible for SSDI [Social Security Disability Income] as a “disabled” person (even though I was actually working, albeit only as an irregularly-employed temp, at a job I not only loved, but one that required my college degree); but in order to get it, I had to go through my dumb, computer-illiterate case manager who wasn’t getting it right, even after four months of supposedly trying. He would say he was trying but, “It’s not working. I don’t know why.” Needless to say, he would never tell me what he was doing or not doing that wasn’t working. After all, as a genuine “nutto/wacko/fruitcake” I had to be stupid as well. As this progressed, I became more and more anxious, as I really needed that SSDI income, and it was showing at work; not only causing me anxiety, but also absenteeism. Finally, after being prematurely “liberated” from my work project, I went to my case manager’s office to see just what was going on that wasn’t working. He went through his usual process, and I stood there dumbfounded. The case manager didn’t even know how to properly enter the mental health center’s name onto a website! (Instead of entering the full, official name, he entered only part of it, which naturally the completely literalist computer would reject, and had been doing for the last four months.) So I correctly entered the name and address as he stood there uncomprehending, as though he were an eight-year-old boy watching Daddy do what he couldn’t figure out, and voila! it all went through, and the whole process of applying for SSDI was now completed within the next 24 hours, and on the phone at that—so that, had I known what was going on, I could’ve corrected him over the phone, and not lost my job. (This case manager, named Bell, obviously didn’t have intelligence ringing clear as a bell; so I gave him the moniker, “Dull Thud.” Later, he would say with the usual condescending chutzpah so common among the “helping professionals,” “If I hadn’t messed up, would it have made any difference?”)

Needless to say, the local left wasn’t concerned about this problem. The “good Quaker” woman above had assured everybody that I was “blowup George,” hopelessly unstable, someone to be shunned; and that my anxiety and anger at what I was going through was just further confirmation. But this “instability” was somehow “overlooked” by my apolitical co-workers and supervisors, as they not only liked me, they also respected me as a highly intelligent, capable person! This especially came into play when the company that hired us temps through the temp agency on-site wanted me permanently removed from employment for my alleged disruption of the work environment. But my “capitalist pig” bosses knew that my behavior caused by all this was highly atypical, was not my usual excellent work performance—so the general manager of the temp agency, along with two of my immediate floor supervisors, voluntarily, on their own initiative, went to bat for me and saved my job!—a job I loved, where I had friends, and was respected. It should be added that the loss of this job would’ve not only rendered me unemployable, it would’ve absolutely destroyed my mental health altogether. But the mental health center literally didn’t care. (I’ve written and posted on the realities of psychiatric treatment, especially as available for those without money; see “Once a Nut, always a Nut?” at www.transformation-center.org/resources/recoverystories.shtml.)

“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” wrote Brecht in his 1938 poem “To Posterity”—a rather telling indictment of the left from a leftist, but one all too true all too many times. Even though he qualifies it in the lines preceding, “Even the hatred of squalor/Makes the brow grow stern./Even anger against injustice/Makes the voice grow harsh” and ends with the plea, “But you, when at last it comes to pass/That man can help his fellow man,/Do not judge us/Too harshly,” there’s something disingenuous, something that smacks of special pleading, in this. For if we of the left “Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” who else is going to be kind in our stead? And isn’t kindness, compassion and solidarity part of what’s going to make socialism better than capitalism, something that’s going to provide that necessary equality and self-determination that removes those capitalist shackles that bind us, those shackles of profit-oriented, bottom-line, subordination in the name of “economic-efficiency”? That makes for a better, more humane world as well as one where the wealth created that’s shared by all provides a greater material abundance for all as well? Isn’t it correct to state that such humane and humanistic goals require not only humane and humanistic means, those means need to be carried out by humane and humanistic persons as well if they are to be effective? Such persons as are not all that prevalent on the left as we’d like to believe? (I’ve written and posted something that expands positively on this, “Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness . . .,” http://newpol.org/node/493)

In conclusion, in stating what I’ve directly experienced from both socialists and capitalists as leading me to give one-and-a-half cheers for capitalism, am I perhaps echoing Merle Haggard, “Today I Started Loving You Again”? Not entirely. I still dislike and distrust capitalism, but I also like getting good things from what’s possible at the moment. And my socialist temperament leads me to truly believe that “An injury to one is an injury to all,” with “all” defined in an all-embracing, humanity-affirming way, not in a “politically correct” Orwellian way, where all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Capitalism is something we socialists have to improve on; but it’s not going to come from osmosis. It’s going to come from our being actively humane and liberatory ourselves.

HERMAN CAIN, JOE PATERNO, PENN STATE AND ME

This is from the routine I would've performed at Open Mic Comedy Night at Locals Only the evening of November 19, 2011. But I had to work overtime that night, and also, my computer was down and in the repair shop until Monday morning, so I couldn't notify anyone. but since i invited a number of people to hear my new Herman Cain, Joe Paterno, and Penn State jokes, and they were widely anticipated (ir at least I like to think so), I'm offering them here on "Politically Incorrect Leftist"--GF

I want to begin with a little reader participation (use the “Comments” box at the end to reply). How many of you are excited by, or even interested in, Herman Cain’s campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination? How many of you think Herman Cain makes a better pizza than he does a Presidential candidate!

Herman Cain’s campaign is right on top of the sexual harassment issue. From now on, Herman Cain will give a free pizza to every woman he harasses who keeps her mouth shut!

Herman Cain now joins Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, the former president of Penn State, as objects of anger by public opinion for what they’ve done, which involves a very important moral issue—namely, bigwigs getting caught! Penn State has also become an object lesson in what happens when you cover up pedophilia—you lose to Nebraska, 17-14!

Yes, I know, that’s a little like saying “You know, Hitler really was a bad guy after all, because he lost the war.” And some of you might be muttering now to yourselves, “There’s a comedian in every house, even among those who perform at Open Mic Comedy Night.” And I can hear the objections now, “George, you’re not as stupid as you look, you’re stupider.” But I do want to say if what I’ve put on paper above confuses or offends any of you, tough shit! And on giving offense, I simply recall those profound words of my mother, who took great offense at those who gave offense, unless, of course, she was the one doing the offending. I can hear her now—“Well! If you can’t say anything good about Adolf Hitler, don’t say anything at all!”

But I don’t want to end on a negative note. In fact, I’m going to end by praising someone you might think doesn’t deserve any praise at all, but he really does; he was really the most accomplished man in history. I’m talking about Attila the Hun. Just think—he sacked Rome, destroyed Graeco-Roman culture, and plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, from which it took a thousand years to recover. Now that’s accomplishment!

Religion is not the solution to the problem. Religion is the problem.

This paraphrase of Ronald Reagan’s famous words as President (“Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem.”) becomes so apt, so tellingly truthful, upon even the most cursory, but honest, examination of religion and its influence on public life. We need look little beyond the headlines of the day, the leading news stories involving religion, for confirmation. First, and obviously, is the continuing scandal of priest-pedophilia and its even worse, even more reprehensible, cover-up by the Catholic Church, especially in Ireland, where the Vatican’s deliberate intervention in preventing action against pedophilic priests drew the ire of the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who angrily denounced “the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.” There were further determined protests on the issue of the Catholic Church’s denial of women’s ordination to the priesthood, a conflict that’s been raging now for years, but has only been met with demands for silence by the Vatican. These issues were extensively reported in the New York Times of July 10, July 13, July 22, July 23 and July 25, 2011. (See “References” below)

The death of Osama bin Laden brought back to memory yet another set of crimes committed in the name of a certain type of Islam, those of Al-Qaeda, not only in terms of 9/11, but also in regard to al-Qaeda’s bloody attacks against Muslims who did not share its repressive theocratic authoritarianism. (See Karima Bennoune, “References”) The unholy alliance between the socially hidebound fanatics of the Religious Right with the “secular” economically hidebound fanatics of the Tea Party is still another example. (See Ted Kilgore, “References”)

Does the nefariousness of religion in the public realm ever end?

The religious liberals and mainstream pastors and laity will cry out, “But that’s not us!” But they will do so in vain, for they have not only been silent too long, but have even lent the cover of “religious tolerance” to such theological ugliness. So while their disingenuous acquitting of themselves is technically true—for they are not the ones committing the nefarious deeds—they fail the moral test of at least one mainstream religious current, i.e., Quakerism, in failing to “speak truth to power.” They fail the test of mandatorily speaking out against injustice and deliberate cruelty that’s expressed in both atheist and Christian perspectives: in the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre with his “Silence is complicity,” and in the Catholic Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois, about to be laicized for speaking out against the Vatican’s “sin of sexism” in ruling that the Catholic priesthood was a strictly male prerogative. Echoing Sartre, Bourgeois said, “Silence is the voice of consent.” (See George Fish stories on Bourgeois, In These Times, “References”) We need look no further than the silence of mainstream Protestantism in the face of Catholic priest-pedophilia and cover-up. For where were the voices of Christian compassion for the victims here, victims who were obviously receiving no such Christian compassion from the Catholic Church, only the barrage of the Church’s lawyers?

As for Islam, while we can properly note that not all Muslims embraced the methods, or even the aims, of Al-Qaeda, Muslims of note did not speak out against the placing of a bounty on the head of novelist Salman Rushdie, nor the riots by Muslims engendered by the irreverent Danish cartons, acts which are commonly regarded in the “Great Satan” West (to use a popular fundamentalist Muslim characterization) as permissible expressions of free speech. (See Ibn Warraq, “References”) We can talk as well of an assault on a Muslim people themselves in the name of a non-Muslim religious “mandate”, the continued denial of human rights to the Palestinians by the Israelis. Of course, all this above is denounced within the Christian religious tradition itself, in the words of the one Christianity calls the Messiah: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” But where are the voices of Christianity heeding this, acknowledging its telling admonition? Certainly not on the public record, nor, as I’ve found, even in private conversations!

As an accountant might say of the above moral bookkeeping by religion, “There are definitely two sets of books being kept here.” This is something I’ve experienced personally also, in my daily life lived among the believers as well as in being someone who reads the newspapers. This gives a new dimension to my atheism: moving it beyond a strictly intellectual objection to the teachings of the world’s various theologies, to a moral objection that pointedly notes that deliberate cruelty, abuse of power, hypocrisy and the promulgation of double standards are an integral part of religious practice—something I learned early in life growing up Catholic (but didn’t become aware of its causes until later), surrounded on all sides by the emotional and verbal abuse of Catholic parents and family, on the one hand, and, on the other, the abuse of power, censorious repression, and looking the other way when evil was done to me by the Catholic school system and the clerical and lay teachers and fellow classmates within it. So I can truly say I’ve directly experienced the malevolence of religious practice as an integral part of my life experience. A malevolence that by no means ended when I left Catholicism through entering the university, but a malevolence that’s also directly manifested itself in my life here in Indianapolis. A malevolence that’s been, and still continues to be, part and parcel of my treatment by the Indianapolis “peaceable religious progressives;” a malevolence that started with the lies and deliberate character assassination promulgated and broadcast extensively since 1980 by one late “good Quaker woman” who was believed uncritically, and who did permanent damage to both my reputation and to my standing among others. (See George Fish blog, “References”) Fortunately I’ve been able to free myself somewhat by discovering good people who are not motivated by the sanctimonious self-righteousness, that sense of being part of a sanctified elect, that’s so integral to the de facto self-definition of Indianapolis “religious progressives”—even though they will (unsuccessfully) try to deny it.

But this is not merely my own sui generis view. This dissection of Christian morality finds solid intellectual foundation in that seminal work by the 19th Century German atheist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity. In it, Feuerbach not only tellingly depicts the self-estrangement of Man from his better nature through adoption of theology (which he distinguishes from the “natural” but vague religious impulse toward love of self and one’s neighbor, but which is corrupted, and has this corruption codified, by theological systems), but shows amply that through such theological embrace, the most cruel and perverted, the most unloving, the most destructive, forms of human behavior are not only tolerated, they are actually celebrated as the will of God and walking in the ways of God himself! Needless to say, history abounds in real-life examples, of which we need only mention the over 900 wars in the West during the Christian era, the Inquisition, the persecution of Galileo, right up to our own day with the priest-pedophilia scandal, the televangelism and political activism of the Religious Right, the televangelizing message of “God wants you to do well in the stock market” as preached by Robert Schuller and his devotees, right into my own personal life of active child abuse by my own “loving” devout Catholic parents, the character-assassination grousing behind my back by the late “good Quaker” mentioned above, and the gleefully active assault on my character and personality by the Indianapolis “religious progressives.”

Even leading Indianapolis “religious progressive” Jim Wolfe concedes that eminent British philosopher and logician Alfred North Whitehead was right when he stated that religion has probably done more harm than good in human affairs. He’s even willing to concede that “there have been more than enough of crusades, holy wars, pogroms, massacres, despotisms, spats, bigotry, abuse” committed in the name of religion. (Jim Wolfe, “Making Peace Among Religions Within Myself”) Atheist writer Christopher Hitchens states appropriately that, while religion is not the cause of what’s bad in human behavior, he also goes on to state incisively, “But the bad things that are innate in our species are strengthened by religion and are sanctified by it…so religion is a very powerful re-enforcer of our backward, clannish, tribal element.” (Quoted in Be Scofield, “5 Things Atheists Have Wrong About Religion," Tikkun, reprinted by AlterNet, www.alternet.org/story/151396/) Put all the above together, and a powerful case is made for regarding religion not as a good in our individual and collective lives, but one of the great evils within these lives.
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My good friend Greg King had a long, but most appropriate comment on this blog entry:

Even Karl Marx said something like, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed; the heart of a heartless world." I'm sure I don't have the quote exactly right, but it's close to that. Many hundreds of millions of oppressed people around the world, for thousands of years, would have killed themselves, were it not for that "pie in the sky when you die" as Joe Hill sang -- that promise of a heavenly reward, if only they can keep trudging through this vale of tears. It has given them a reason to carry on.

Of course, terrible things have been, and continue to be, done in the name of religion, but if it gives people a little comfort, a little solace, it's played a useful role. Of course, for many people throughout history, it has placed them on the wrong end of a pounded nail, a crossbow or a scimitar,faggots and torches, a noose, some stones. There have been many innocent victims of religious blindness and bigotry. But there have been hundreds of millions, or, over the last thirty thousand or so years, even billions of people, for whom it has played a useful role. No, I don't mean the role it has played for the pharisees, the popes, the bishops, the caliphs or the mullahs. I mean, as I've stated, the role it has played for the downtrodden peasants and workers. Buddha, Lao Tse, Jesus, St. Theresa, St. Francis, Dorothy Day, Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Buber, Maimonides, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Romero, Fathers Dan and Phil Berrigan, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, have all played very good roles and each, in their own way, has provided some comfort for the oppressed.

Of course it's better that the oppressed rise up and throw off their chains. But you know as well as I do many people have not had a real opportunity for that. People with the ability to lead, like Spartacus, John Ball and Wat the Tyler, Jean D'Arc, Danton, St. Just, Robespierre, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Sam Adams, Mary Wollstonecraft, St.Simon, Robert Owens, Karl Marx, Proudhon, Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Ho Chi Minh, Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Mother Bloor, Mother Jones, Anne Burlak Timpson, Amilcar Cabral, Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Kenji Miayamoto, Tom Hayden, Rudi Deutschke, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis,Carl Davidson, Carl Boice, Wayne Hayashi, Carol Amioka, Stan Masui, Kalani Ohelo, you, me and countless others, mostly unmentioned, who played major roles or very minor roles (like some of those listed), have to come along and provide inspiration and leadership. Not all of that leadership was good, but it had its good aspects.

Now, you know just as well as I do that the alternative to political leadership -- religious comfort -- may be based on a lie or, in any case, an illusion, a delusion. But we don't know that. We won't know until after we die. Most likely, we'll just insensately feed the grass, or our ashes will be scattered to the wind, and that will be it for us. But we may wake up in some way station between birth and rebirth. We may find ourselves in paradise or purgatory, or a hell somehow worse than the one we came from. We don't know. We may think we know, but it's much easier to prove the existence of something than the non-existence of something. So we might as well try to lead good lives, be considerate of our fellow beings. All our fellow beings.

Me? I don't know what to believe. Maybe Camus was right, and life is a cruel joke. We humans have this wonderful ability not only to experience, but to contemplate the world. But it's all going to be obliterated in an instant. As Simon and Garfunkel sing, "All lies in jest, yet a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." But I have found that appealing to something outside myself helps me through rough times. "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comforts me," as the Beatles sing. I know it may just be an emotional crutch; that what I'm appealing to is just air, and nothing more. But it provides some comfort. I suspect that's pretty universal.

REFERENCES, ALL SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Bennoune, Karima, “Remembering all al-Qaida's victims,” Guardian (UK), May 3, 2011

Dalby, Douglas, and Rachel Donadio, “Irish Report Finds Abuse Persisting in Catholic Church,” New York Times, July 13, 2011

Donadio, Rachel, “Vatican Recalls Ambassador to Ireland Over Abuse Report,” New York Times, July 25, 2011

Dowd, Maureen, “The End of Awe,” New York Times, July 23, 2011

Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, translated by George Eliot, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1989 [Originally published in 1841]

Fish, George, “Roy Bourgeois Faces Excommunication,” In These Times, March 2009, www.inthesetimes.com

Fish, George, “No Indulgence for Father Bourgeois,” In These Times, October 2010, www.inthesetimes.com

Fish, George, “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, www.politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com, esp. entries “Guest Blog from my friend John Williams: The Woman You Thought You Knew” and “On Mother’s Day: for those mothers who were really ‘mothers’”

Frosch, Dan, “Accusations of Abuse by Priest Dating to Early 1940s,” New York Times, July 10, 2011

Goodstein, Laurie, “In 3 Countries, Challenging the Vatican on Female Priests,” New York Times, July 22, 2011

Kilgore, Ted, “’Teavangelicals’: How the Christian Right Came to Bless the Economic Agenda of the Tea party,” The New Republic, www.tnr.com/article/the-permanent-campaign/91661/tea-party-christian-right-michele-bachmann

Mackey, Robert, “Video of Irish Leader’s Speech Attacking the Vatican,” New York Times, July 25, 2011

Scofield, Be, “5 things Atheists Have Wrong About Religion,” Tikkun, reprinted by AlterNet, www.alternet.org/story/151396/

Warraq, Ibn, Why I Am Not a Muslim, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2003

Wolfe, Jim, “Making Peace Among Religions Within Myself” speech text manuscript, n.d.

Reflections on the Recent Indiana Workers' Upsurge

It’s over with now, but for two exciting, event-filled months, mid-February to mid-April, 2011, Indiana workers and the Democratic legislators of the General Assembly stood up to the Republicans who wanted to make Indiana a “right-to-work” state, gut teachers’ collective bargaining powers, and generally make life even more miserable for those who actually work for a living, instead of clipping coupons or entering politics from previously being a corporate CEO. For the first time in the 40 years I’ve lived in Indiana this time around, I felt proud to be a Hoosier. Not a small feat, because usually I find my life so frustrating in the State of Indiana I want to leave and retreat to the State of Intoxication! After all, life and culture in Indiana is shaped very much by the fact that the Hoosier state is at the confluence of three other states—the State of Smugness, the State of Complacency, and the State of Mediocrity, and is the place where not all of Indiana’s pigs are found on CAFOs. They abound aplenty, especially the two-legged variety; and they’re joined by flocks of Indiana two-legged sheep as well.

But this time in Indiana, I felt that I was actually in the presence of the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Wonders of the World—an Indiana AFL-CIO with guts, an Indiana Democratic Party with guts, and even more amazingly, both of them showing guts at the same time, and cooperating in their open, public display of guts! For once, both Hoosiers of political prominence, and the Hoosier rank-and-file, stood up to the arrogant Republican majority in the State House and Governor’s mansion, and brought their ambitions to a grinding, screeching halt. When the Democratic members of the House of Representatives and the Senate walked out on the Indiana General Assembly and relocated for an indefinite sojourn in Illinois, they deprived the legislative session of a quorum; which meant the Republican majority was at an impasse, legally barred from ramming their anti-worker legislation down the Democratic minority’s, and the Hoosier public’s, throats. Immovable Democrats holed up in extradition-free Illinois, and vociferous protestors every day in front of the State House, actively organized by the state AFL-CIO unions, defied the Republicans both by their absence and by their presence, and made it known, “You’re just not going to do this!”

So the Republicans had to shelve “right-to-work,” had to shelve gutting teachers’ bargaining rights, had to deal with the Democrats whose power in absentia enabled them to call at least some of the shots. Both inside and outside the State House thousands of workers from all over the state converged in a massive display of ordinary people’s determination and fight-back spirit. Both together caused the Republicans to be unable to do anything but sputter, at least for a while, their major legislative goals unattainable; and perhaps even this whiff of defeat will still linger in the air not just in 2011, but in 2012 as well, at the polls and in the halls of the General Assembly. As in Wisconsin and Ohio, the Republicans had overreached, and had garnered for themselves not easy legislative pushovers, but massive, angry protest that took them aback—for at least the time being. For Indiana stood proudly in solidarity with the same kinds of protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, and if that still didn’t make the streets of downtown Indianapolis resemble the streets of Tunis or Tahrir Square in Cairo, at least the potential to become so is now there, when it wasn’t there before. After all, people remember again what they once did, when they recall the victories they had before, when they milled into the streets and defied power, when the occasion for such rises again. As it surely will. Republicans are too much like Bourbons, never remembering and never forgetting. But if the Hoosier people had been forgetting Republican trepidations for too long too many times before, they’re liable to remember the next time around. And a next time will come around—while Republicans will always be Republicans, so will the people once mobilized and energized, having shown to themselves and to others the strength of their numbers and determination.

A good reason for me to have savored that intoxication that came, not from substance abuse in the State of Intoxication, but by the heady sobriety of realizing the enormity of what had happened. And still savor it, even now.

To be sure, it wasn’t all victories. Even as the worker protests surged, a bill undermining unemployment benefits and eligibility for them, which takes effect July 1, did get through under stealth. While union teachers still kept their bargaining rights, more charter schools were authorized. Planned Parenthood was defunded, and Medicaid recipients are not allowed to utilize Planned Parenthood clinics. All the above gleefully signed into law by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels, former Office of Management and Budget head under George W. Bush; former CEO of Indianapolis Power and Light, where he used his power to privatize it, to his personal enrichment, at the cost of destroying workers’ pensions; and also, former CEO of Eli Lilly and Co., the major drug manufacturer and Indiana political powerhouse, where he earned $27 million in salary the year before running for Governor in 2004.

Also, in the last days of the General Assembly, after the Democrats had come back and walked out again in protest, the Republican minority rammed through a bill making further legislative walkouts illegal. Hopefully, this law will be challenged in the courts, and future Democratic legislators will show the same guts and determination again, as they did in 2011. But I don’t count on it. All of us who’ve watched Indiana politics before know how the Democrats have always talked a good fight, but always caved in before. Which is what made the Democrats this time so amazing. But, unfortunately, Democratic caving-in has a well-established tradition, not only in Indiana, but elsewhere; and so notably at the national level, with the Obama White House showing the lead these past few years, and with Democratic Congresspersons and Senators, with few exceptions, closing ranks and following suit. And Indiana Democrats have never been known for being particularly “liberal,” but have timidly adapted time in and time out to Indiana’s notorious conservatism. After all, this is the state that produced leading Senate Blue Dog Evan Bayh, and which ran another notable Blue Dog, Brad Ellsworth, for Senate in 2010. And no Indiana Democrats who can be considered as part of the "liberal camp” has ever distinguished him/herself as a Dennis Kucinich or a Bernie Sanders.

But at least one of the Republican victories given above turned into defeat. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has declared Indiana’s plan to defund Planned Parenthood illegal, and could pressure the state to drop it altogether by withholding funds. As it stands right now, lawyers are scrambling to find some way to salvage it; I join many other Hoosiers in hoping they fail, and that HHS stands behind its position.

I wasn’t able to participate in these events as much as I wanted to, despite having the time available due to layoff. For the State House, locus of all the activity, is in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, heart of much-touted upscale urban development; so that “ever new, ever more exciting”—ever more upscale and prohibitively expensive—“downtown Indianapolis” (to paraphrase one of the city’s trendy slogans) made affording parking far too expensive, and public transportation in Indianapolis is so lousy it really wasn’t an option from where I lived. But I was able to attend one State House rally on a late February Saturday, when downtown metered parking is free, and was glad to mill with the enthusiastic crowd, and see many of my friends and acquaintances there too, all just as eager and excited as I was.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t see but one of my former socialist “comrades,” whose personal treachery and do-nothingness I’ve recounted in two other blog entries here on “Politically Incorrect Leftist,” “Dregs” and “’Dregs’ Aftermath1.” And this was a big rally, specially organized and advertised! But the one fellow socialist I did see was quite friendly and glad to see me, as were the other local “progressives” I encountered, with whom I’m frequently on the outs with. But we of the left here in Indianapolis are all very small fish in a very big Red State sea, and under such conditions, sectarianism, cliquishness and purely personal umbrage become a part of life—especially in a social milieu already given to xenophobia and cliquishness to begin with. So-called Hoosier Hospitality is a mask used to gull tourists and out-of-state visitors to get them to part with their money. So says my cynical but realistic self, having lived in Indy now for over 30 years, and in Indiana for 40.

I’m a non-union worker, not by choice, and a temp at that— a group of workers precluded from organizing by a George W. Bush-era NLRB decision. But I am very much a supporter of unions and union rights, even if I feel I must stand in dismay at this atrophied giant still in stupor most of the time. That’s another thing that amazed me by the protests—an AFL-CIO actually energized and fighting back for workers, even if (as was the case) only defensively, pushed to the wall with nowhere else to go by Republican arrogance. But as one of those 88.1% of the workforce not represented by a union (for only 11.9% of all U.S. workers are unionized, and fewer than 7% in the private sector), my support has to be tempered by frustration and chagrin. It still rankles me to recall the 2009 Central Indiana Job with Justice (JwJ) meeting where I was reprimanded by the head of AFSCME District 62, “You temps make more than my union workers.” Yeah. At $10/hour with no benefits, uncertain work, and having had to stomach pay cuts to keep my temp job—which requires a college degree! But I was there with my homemade sign, “I’m Non-Union & I Support You. But Will You Support Me?” To me, a good sentiment, and a very good question. And I’m sure I’m not the only non-union worker to feel this way.

The AFL-CIO protests attracted union celebrities to address the throngs. Actor Danny Glover, President of the Screen Actors Guild, addressed a rally, as did Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Their presence was an important, very much public, demonstration of solidarity, and connected Indiana’s struggles with those elsewhere, uniting workers in struggle in Indiana with workers in struggle elsewhere, especially in Wisconsin and Ohio; most important in a state known for its overwhelming hidebound parochialism. Further, Weingarten’s public support for Indiana teachers is an important political gesture in a state where “education reform” battles are high on the agenda, and where privatization, charter schools and undermining public education are espoused by many, with much support. Unfortunately, AFT’s hawkish positions on wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, coupled with its uncritical support for Israel, are a damper on attempts to unite labor forces with antiwar forces. And while JwJ is active several places in the state, its typical labor-movement evasion of antiwar protest, and social justice issues not involving labor directly, is another hindrance. As for the Indiana AFL-CIO generally, it is still beset in many circles with a “Scoop” Jackson “guns and butter” mentality (after Henry “Scoop” Jackson, former Democratic Senator from the State of Washington—nicknamed the “Senator from Boeing” for his hawkish military stance and friendliness toward military contractors); and before the upsurge, devoted much of its time to organizing chauvinistic “Buy American” campaigns.

African American presence was notable, although most of the upsurge participants were white, same as in Wisconsin and Ohio. But it was good to see fellow white Hoosiers rallying for justice rather than going to Tea Party demonstrations.

As is fairly well-known nationally, two lawyers employed by Indiana government agencies were fired for ugly remarks on the protestors in Wisconsin, where the upsurge protests were greatest. One of them, an Assistant Attorney General even, called for using “deadly force” against protestors there, while the other urged Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to fabricate an incident that could then be used to break up the protests. The Republicans in Indiana at one point cut off power lines at the State House, so that protestors could not use microphones. True examples indeed of class warfare by the rich and powerful against the working class, which is something Karl Marx never needed to invent. It’s always been there, even when hidden and insidious; but the workers’ upsurge in Indiana and elsewhere brought it out into the open, and what a bringing out! Makes one want to paraphrase Che Guevara: “Create, two, there, many Wisconsins, Ohios and Indianas! Create two, three, many Tunisias and Egypts! Workers of the world, unite!” Yes, indeed.