RelentlesslyOptimistic

SOTU: What he said!

Obama said many things that needed to be said, and did it without demonizing those he disagreed with!

via The Daily What

A Concise History Of Black-White Relations In The U.S.A.

From Ampersand at Alas, a blog 

Happy Easter from a different perspective

Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

A few questions for patriots

Yesterday would have been Robert F. Kennedy’s 80th birthday. It was also the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials. And today’s NYTimes carried a story of the three Republican Senators, led by John McCain, who are putting anti-torture amendments in budget bills.

The only thing fellow Republicans had to say about McCain was that he was handing "Democrats an opening to politicize the Iraq war."  Meanwhile, we torture people around the world with no due process and with the full approval of some. We're sponsoring death squads in Iraq that are conducting "disappearances" of political opponents. The President’s advisor exposed a covert CIA agent as retribution for her husband’s criticism of the war. And the Bush Administration has recently launched a campaign to paint opponents to the war as unpatriotic.

Robert Kennedy said that violence starts when we objectify our opponents:

When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies---to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
[...]
We learn to share only a common fear--only a common desire to retreat from each other--only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force...The question is whether we can find in our midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
[...]
We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be enobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land.

Are we creating a better society and a better world with the ferocity with which we paint our opponents as lesser beings? Will Americans sixty years from now look away in shame or embarrassment at our actions today? How do we get from this place of turning moral issues into ways to win, and our opponents into lesser beings who we are justified in torturing and killing? How do we instead begin to have honest discussions about the kind of country we want to create and be? How do we "find in our midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose?"

Bill Watterston: Prophet

One of the things that sold me on using an aggregator to get my main news was that I could subscribe to daily comics, even Calvin and Hobbes, with each strip run 11 years to the day after it first appeared. In this one, Calvin's description of what drives modern media is even more true and relevant than it was then.

Honoring Courage

Mukhtaran Bibi's story reflects the worst and best of humanity. The NY Times' Nicholas Kristof reports that: "As part of a village dispute in 2002, a tribal council decided to punish her family by sentencing her to be gang-raped."

The punishment resulted from a rumor, later proven false, that her 14 year-old brother had consorted with a woman from a rival tribe. Instead of yeilding to the shame that, under the expectations of Pakistani village culture, was supposed to drive her to suicide, she succeeded in having the rapists prosecuted. Six men from her village were sentenced to death.

The Pakistan government compensated her with $8,300, which she used to start a school for girls in her village, where she then enrolled to learn to read. When that money ran out and the government failed to provide the promised continuing support, she sold her family's cow to continue the school. Media reports of her story resulted in $133,000 in donations to the school, which is now attracting volunteer teachers to teach the 130 enrolled girls.

Last week a court in southern Pakistan freed five of the men and overturned the death sentence of the sixth. The men have already begun to threaten Mukhtaran Mai.

Kristof reports "They are her neighbors and will be living alongside her. Mukhtaran was in the courthouse and collapsed in tears, fearful of the risk this brings to her family.

"Yes, there is danger," she said by telephone afterward. "We are afraid for our lives, but we will face whatever fate brings for us."

Mukhtaran Bibi has been renamed Mukhtar Mai by the "local media here in Pakistan...meaning "respected big sister."

In a time when the term "hero" is applied widely and cheaply, knowing how to honor those who truly do create a better world through their courage can be difficult. This one is easy: even small donations will help  Mukhtar Mai to survive while she appeals the case. Even small contributions will help to keep alive the dreams that she has introduced in the minds of the "little sisters" enrolled in the school she created from injustice.

Via Tom Watson

Valentine's day - zefrank improvises his way to a ridiculous and poignant cry for meaning

I rarely visit zefrank's site anymore, because there is so much treasure there that I too easily get lost, only to come back to myself and find I've spent an hour immersed in his thoughtful, amusing vignettes.

on valentine's day is zefrank in front of a camera, telling fascinating tales about ancient traditions that got lost, why heart shaped chocolates don't sell in some places, and why the world might be better if Valentine's Day were a relationship apocalypse.

Via The Biomes Blog

Cool idea! Citizens post photos of dumping and graffitti, City cleans, posts results

Love Lewisham

You can now use your mobile phone to help keep Lewisham's streets clean! Download the free application today and then start taking pictures...

Imagine the following scenario. As you are walking down your street, you notice some graffiti that you'd like removed...Take a picture of the offending graffiti, enter some details and send it to us.

We will resolve the problem and take a picture of the clean wall after the graffiti has been removed [or the trash has been picked up]....At any time you can visit this web site...to see all the images that have been sent to us and the progress we have made.

Via Purse Lip Square Jaw

 

Thoughts On Violence And War Via Not Geniuses

I just finished The Proud Tower and am halfway through rereading The Guns of August in that context (I'd read it before but years ago) (as an aside, I realized last night that now I want to know more about the pre-Proud-Tower period, and especially the war of 1870, which apparently set the stage for much of what led to WWI).

Years ago I worked as a peace activist, and spent a lot of time thinking about pacifism. My conclusions then resonated with the conclusions of Joe, below, from Not Geniuses, who came up with the listed conclusions after reading the same two books above, plus some others. I'm not sure I remember my conclusions fully, but they were something to the effect of:
 

Sometimes courage better be its own reward, because that's all the reward it's going to get

This wonderful essay marks the passing of James Foreman with a great discussion about the difficulty of creating change, and questions whether simply recreating the Right's communication machinery is enough. Wonderful essay, wonderful thinking.

Body and Soul: "Walk together, children. Don't you get weary".

I also struggle against the simplified and non-threatening story of Rosa Parks she hears in school: One day Rosa Parks got tired of being demeaned -- or maybe her feet just hurt -- and she said no. She refused to budge. And that changed everything.

Girl power! Let's make a Disney movie starring Raven!

Oh, Lord, no. Not at all. In the first place, Rosa Parks wasn't even the first black person arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus. That act of defiance had to occur several times before anyone beyond the community where it happened heard about it. Sometimes courage better be its own reward, because that's all the reward it's going to get. Equally important, it's an insult to Rosa Parks, and a gross distortion of how much hard work and knowledge underlies change, to portray her as a simple seamstress suddenly moved by an instinct for self-actualization.

A single line in a tribute to James Forman in today's Washington Post haunts me:

You have to constantly think about what it is you are really fighting for, Jim taught us.

We still don't do enough of that.

Some of the smartest commentary I have read since the election has focused on the need to create an equivalent of the machine conservatives began to build after Goldwater's defeat in 1964. I more or less agree with that, but a couple of things about the idea nag me. The first is the assumption that you can tell the truth using the same techniques as a lie machine. I have my doubts. If we have a model, it's not the right-wing's method of perpetrating lies, it's the civil rights movement's methods of revealing the truth.

The second problem is more fundamental. I think there is too much concern with the machine, and not enough with what goes in the machine.

We need to think about, write about, talk about, what we're really fighting for. Not what scraps and compromises we can get. What we're fighting for.

I'd like to think that James Forman would have appreciated a good man's cri de coeur, and reminded us that the advantage of dealing with brutal people whose actions are completely indefensible is that we're constantly reminded of what we're fighting against.

That's not enough, but it's a start.

Only Connect

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect... -E.M. Forster, Howards End

Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

lessons of a late night dj by kid oakland at Daily Kos

I was working late one night at WKCR FM New York. (89.9 FM if you live in the area.)

Yep, I was a student dj. I don't know why I thought I could work those crazy hours:  5-8:30AM, 2-6AM...etc. etc...but I knew I loved jazz, and I knew that Phil Schaap, the guru of the station, was one of the coolest human beings I had ever met.  Phil simply loves, lives and breathes jazz...and has a profound appreciation for jazz musicians that comes out in everything he does. Phil is also a master at spinning words in long threads of intense build-up that bring home a sweet, oftentimes musical, point.  I owe him alot...and not just for teaching me, like so many students before and after me, about this great American art form.

At any rate, it was early one Saturday evening and the phone rang....

I had been playing Charles Mingus interviews intermixed with his music.  And a woman's voice comes on the line and says:

"Paul...this is Sue Mingus.  I just want to thank you for playing my husband's work."

At which point I'm thinking, 'wow, this it too unreal.'  But Sue follows this up with something for me to think about.

"I'm  just calling to let you know that an ensemble called the Mingus Dynasty is still playing my husband's music live and was hoping you could mention their shows."  Which of course I did.

But the whole exchange got me thinking about any number of things.  First, how my actions in the control booth, the music I played and how I presented it, really did go out to so many people...including, in New York City, some of the very musicians who created that music in the first place and those connected to them.  And second, about how those who really love jazz, love living jazz, and, specifically, the musicians who create the music and keep the art form alive.

Which is something that you always got from Phil.  Phil is a genius at the interview.  He just brings things out of people that you didn't know were there.  I remember sitting in on a two hour interview he did with Sun Ra which was just stunning both for Sun's celestial philosophies and how Phil always got him back to how his life connected with his music. (I couldn't find one of Phil's but here is Sun Ra from a 1989 interview with Robert Franza which gives you an idea of the flavor.)

At any rate, it took me awhile to realize that when artists like Dizzy Gillespie or Charles Mingus or Sun Ra sat in with Phil for an interview they knew they were dealing with two things.  Someone who respected them and someone who loved their music.  And the process of an interview in that context often proceeded to reveal that the musician's life influenced the music in so many ways.

And ain't that the truth.

I know that seems like slim political broth.  But that's the whole point right there.  It doesn't have to be jazz musicians...it can be something else.  When we talk to folks, if we convey to them respect for where they're coming from and knowledge of their path...and if we truly listen to their story....in my experience, they will almost always tell us something profound that we didn't know before.  Phil knew that...and we on the Democratic end of the dial could learn a thing or two about it.

You know, here on dKos we're alot like I was in that dj booth.  We just don't know who is listening or what they might teach us.  And sometimes it takes a pleasant surprise to open our eyes...not just to the power of our words...but to have them come back to us in new light.

From the comments on that thread:

Jazzonia (Langston Hughes)

Oh, silver tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

Oh, singing tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve's eyes
In the first garden
Just a bit too bold?
Was Cleopatra gorgeous
In a gown of gold?

Oh, shining tree!
Oh, silver rivers of the soul!

In a whirling cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.

I've always believed that ordinary people have lives that are interesting, full of drama and meaning, and by listening with respect we can get them to share that.

I had a job once where I interviewed (for jobs) dozens of people every week, and I loved that part of it. Someone would understand and connect, and open up to reveal astonishing insights and beliefs.

Too much of our media and culture focuses on the "important" people, and we are poorer as a result.

It's that desire to share that wisdom and to create a shared meaning that I think is part of what drives blogging and the related social software. It's also what keeps me optimistic.