CHARLIE DOWDELL
Funeral service for Mr. Charlie "Big C" Dowdell, 76, of Loachapoka will be held at 1:00 pm Friday, August 29, 2008 at Ebenezer C. M. E. Church with interment in Loachapoka Cemetery. Rev. Hayward Hudson will officiate.
Mr. Dowdell passed away Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at the East Alabama Medical Center. He was a member of Ebenezer C. M. E. Church where he served on the Steward Board. He was a U. S. Army veteran and retired in 1983 from U. S. Steel in Gary, IN.
Survivors: a daughter, Carolyn (Steve) Hopkins, Loachapoka; a son, Jeffrey (Debbie) Dowdell, Newnan, GA; sisters, Florence Ezell and Lois (Charles) Weathers both of Loachapoka; brothers, Willie James Dowdell, Gary, IN and Richard (Narcissus) Dowdell, Cincinnati, OH; stepdaughters, Alice Spence and Belinda Viverette both of Ft. Walton Beach, FL, Betty Malone, Gary, IN, Gloria Williams, Hammond, IN and Brenda Viverette, Merrillville, IN; stepsons, David Viverette and Danny Viverette both of Gary, IN; granddaughter, Laticia Dowdell, Atlanta, GA; great grandson, Terrance Dowdell, Atlanta, GA; a host of step grandchildren, step great grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins, other relatives and friends.
Peterson and Williams Funeral Home, directing
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
T crises, controversies sully Mr. Fix-it image of Grabauskas
By Noah Bierman, Globe Staff | August 26, 2008
Daniel A. Grabauskas arrived at the MBTA as the guy who could fix the unfixable.
He had transformed the state's Registry of Motor Vehicles, a pit that held drivers virtually hostage for two or three hours when they renewed their licenses, into a place with Wal-Mart-style greeters at the door, a modern computer system, and 15-minute waiting times.
But three years later, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is far from fixed, and there are more political darts aimed at Grabauskas. He has earned praise from transportation activists for putting a focus on efficiency and access and has instituted customer service improvements such as the automated CharlieCard and the beginning of cellphone service on subways. But overwhelming debt, political infighting, and a recent series of controversies and crises at the T have tarnished his image.
In May, a trolley operator was killed in a jolting Green Line crash that highlighted the old equipment's susceptibility to human error. Soon after, Grabauskas fended off criticism for letting employees drive home state cars. This month, a federal lawsuit against a group of MIT students exposed how the T's electronic fare tickets could be reprogrammed to give free rides, leading one of the T's board members to say she had "lost all confidence" in the ability of Grabauskas to manage the agency.
"We're moving the ball in the right direction," he said. "But in this particular job, there is no end zone. You're either moving in the right direction, or you're moving in the wrong direction."
His team provided reams of lists and graphics, including a monthly system accountability book he initiated, to show where he is improving service and saving money. Canceled trips on buses and subways are down, and the fleets are running longer without breaking down, with fewer speed restrictions. Commuter rail, however, continues to run late more often than promised.
As Grabauskas grappled with the fare card public relations problem, he stumbled into another, when he granted nonunion employees a 9 percent pay increase days after warning that hefty fare increases may be necessary in 2010. The ill-timed raises led to a rebuke from the state's top transportation official and a reversal that displeased many of his managers, who have gone three years without a raise.
"That is one tough place," said Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a free market think tank, comparing the T to the Registry.
Increasingly, the confident face of public transportation in Boston has become a target, one of the last Republican holdovers in state government and, some allies contend, a scapegoat for a system struggling with decades of debt.
"There's a little surprise that he's not able to get things done like he did" at the Registry, said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who is generally a fan. But at the T, Grabauskas has less control, more factions, unions, boards, and internal politics to deal with, Menino said. "Somebody's always trying to undercut what he's doing."
Governor Deval Patrick's office declined to answer questions for this article, only issuing a statement through Secretary of Transportation Bernard Cohen asserting that the two men have a "constructive working relationship" while pointing to the need for the "MBTA board's continued vigilance."
But Cohen's public responses to the pay raises last week revealed what many see as growing antagonism from the administration. Cohen also serves as chairman of the nine-member MBTA board, which signed Grabauskas, who makes $255,000 a year, to a five-year contract in 2005.
Much of this discussion of debt and politics is academic to the system's hundreds of thousands of riders, who simply want to get to work on time, with some level of comfort.
Walk into a subway car, and everyone, whether they have heard of Grabauskas or not, can tell you about tardy service, late construction, crowded trains, or "boiling hot" stations.
"Some of the bus drivers are rude," said Michael Greg, a 53-year-old construction worker from Boston.
Grabauskas hears it all, even at dinner parties, though he says he also gets compliments on the CharlieCard and constructive suggestions about routes and schedules.
He points to his efforts at communications, such as newer sound systems and digital signs. He fortified the call center so operators answer more calls, speak more languages, and report back to him with more consistent feedback. Stations are generally cleaner, he said. Employee overtime costs are down.
Grabauskas is proudest of his efforts to settle a disability lawsuit and improve access on the T, something he said helps everyone get on and off buses and trains with more ease.
But some problems, such as the ongoing construction of the Kenmore station, leave many with the impression that the agency is unable to complete tasks. The station near Fenway Park is already at least 20 months overdue.
"That's kind of become legend," said Michael Dukakis, the former governor and frequent T rider, citing a string of construction delays.
Grabauskas, 45, looks as if he sleeps in a pressed shirt and necktie. He lives in Ipswich with his partner of nearly 20 years, Paul Keenan. Grabauskas drives to work, but takes the T when he travels around town. He jokes with friends that he will grow a bushy beard and open a garden center when he leaves public life.
His polished and assured presence in front of a camera has helped him accelerate through the public sector. Early in his career, when he ran the state's office of consumer affairs, he was on the nightly news exposing how lobstermen were padding the price of their catch by including the weight of the water.
He built a reputation as a manager there and was asked three times by former governor Paul Cellucci to fix the Registry before he accepted. He started by setting clear goals, putting managers to work on the front lines so they could understand motorists' problems, and turning over some staff, said Kimberly Hinden, his top deputy at the Registry, who later replaced him.
Then he persuaded the state to invest about $16 million to replace green-screen computers from the 1980s with a modern system called the Q-Matic that spit out customized tickets to customers, with estimated wait times.
The reputation from the Registry was not enough to elect him when he ran for state treasurer in 2002 against Timothy P. Cahill. So Grabauskas moved to transportation, appointed first as Governor Mitt Romney's secretary of transportation and then as general manager of the MBTA.
There, he learned quickly that $16 million didn't go far at the MBTA. The T's debt is more than $8 billion including interest payments, mostly because of expansion projects.
Record high ridership, the result of $4-per-gallon gas prices, has not been enough to compensate for the debt payments, the smaller-than-expected sales tax subsidy, and the rising cost of gas for buses.
His talk of substantial fare hikes earlier this month has put pressure on the agency to save money and avoid the appearance of wasting it. Grabauskas stood by his decision to let employees take home cars, arguing that they need to respond to emergencies and that the financial impact was relatively small. He held that managers deserved the pay raises after three years without one and were being compensated in line with new union wages.
State Senator Steven A. Baddour, a Methuen Democrat who leads the Transportation Committee, suggested criticism of these decisions has been driven by politics.
"Just because he was appointed by a Republican governor and he ran for treasurer against the current treasurer shouldn't prohibit him from doing his job," Baddour said.
Grabauskas is keenly aware that his time is running out, one way or another. He said he will probably work in the private or nonprofit sector next and doubts he will seek public office again.
"I've got about 20 months left here, at the most," he said. "That's when my contract expires."
The Patrick administration, which controls the MBTA board, could oust him immediately. But it would require a costly payout, nearly a half-million dollars, and would be politically difficult.
"They have to buy me out," said Grabauskas. "And I don't intend to quit."
Noah Bierman can be reached at nbierman@globe.com.
Daniel A. Grabauskas arrived at the MBTA as the guy who could fix the unfixable.
He had transformed the state's Registry of Motor Vehicles, a pit that held drivers virtually hostage for two or three hours when they renewed their licenses, into a place with Wal-Mart-style greeters at the door, a modern computer system, and 15-minute waiting times.
But three years later, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is far from fixed, and there are more political darts aimed at Grabauskas. He has earned praise from transportation activists for putting a focus on efficiency and access and has instituted customer service improvements such as the automated CharlieCard and the beginning of cellphone service on subways. But overwhelming debt, political infighting, and a recent series of controversies and crises at the T have tarnished his image.
In May, a trolley operator was killed in a jolting Green Line crash that highlighted the old equipment's susceptibility to human error. Soon after, Grabauskas fended off criticism for letting employees drive home state cars. This month, a federal lawsuit against a group of MIT students exposed how the T's electronic fare tickets could be reprogrammed to give free rides, leading one of the T's board members to say she had "lost all confidence" in the ability of Grabauskas to manage the agency.
"We're moving the ball in the right direction," he said. "But in this particular job, there is no end zone. You're either moving in the right direction, or you're moving in the wrong direction."
His team provided reams of lists and graphics, including a monthly system accountability book he initiated, to show where he is improving service and saving money. Canceled trips on buses and subways are down, and the fleets are running longer without breaking down, with fewer speed restrictions. Commuter rail, however, continues to run late more often than promised.
As Grabauskas grappled with the fare card public relations problem, he stumbled into another, when he granted nonunion employees a 9 percent pay increase days after warning that hefty fare increases may be necessary in 2010. The ill-timed raises led to a rebuke from the state's top transportation official and a reversal that displeased many of his managers, who have gone three years without a raise.
"That is one tough place," said Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a free market think tank, comparing the T to the Registry.
Increasingly, the confident face of public transportation in Boston has become a target, one of the last Republican holdovers in state government and, some allies contend, a scapegoat for a system struggling with decades of debt.
"There's a little surprise that he's not able to get things done like he did" at the Registry, said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who is generally a fan. But at the T, Grabauskas has less control, more factions, unions, boards, and internal politics to deal with, Menino said. "Somebody's always trying to undercut what he's doing."
Governor Deval Patrick's office declined to answer questions for this article, only issuing a statement through Secretary of Transportation Bernard Cohen asserting that the two men have a "constructive working relationship" while pointing to the need for the "MBTA board's continued vigilance."
But Cohen's public responses to the pay raises last week revealed what many see as growing antagonism from the administration. Cohen also serves as chairman of the nine-member MBTA board, which signed Grabauskas, who makes $255,000 a year, to a five-year contract in 2005.
Much of this discussion of debt and politics is academic to the system's hundreds of thousands of riders, who simply want to get to work on time, with some level of comfort.
Walk into a subway car, and everyone, whether they have heard of Grabauskas or not, can tell you about tardy service, late construction, crowded trains, or "boiling hot" stations.
"Some of the bus drivers are rude," said Michael Greg, a 53-year-old construction worker from Boston.
Grabauskas hears it all, even at dinner parties, though he says he also gets compliments on the CharlieCard and constructive suggestions about routes and schedules.
He points to his efforts at communications, such as newer sound systems and digital signs. He fortified the call center so operators answer more calls, speak more languages, and report back to him with more consistent feedback. Stations are generally cleaner, he said. Employee overtime costs are down.
Grabauskas is proudest of his efforts to settle a disability lawsuit and improve access on the T, something he said helps everyone get on and off buses and trains with more ease.
But some problems, such as the ongoing construction of the Kenmore station, leave many with the impression that the agency is unable to complete tasks. The station near Fenway Park is already at least 20 months overdue.
"That's kind of become legend," said Michael Dukakis, the former governor and frequent T rider, citing a string of construction delays.
Grabauskas, 45, looks as if he sleeps in a pressed shirt and necktie. He lives in Ipswich with his partner of nearly 20 years, Paul Keenan. Grabauskas drives to work, but takes the T when he travels around town. He jokes with friends that he will grow a bushy beard and open a garden center when he leaves public life.
His polished and assured presence in front of a camera has helped him accelerate through the public sector. Early in his career, when he ran the state's office of consumer affairs, he was on the nightly news exposing how lobstermen were padding the price of their catch by including the weight of the water.
He built a reputation as a manager there and was asked three times by former governor Paul Cellucci to fix the Registry before he accepted. He started by setting clear goals, putting managers to work on the front lines so they could understand motorists' problems, and turning over some staff, said Kimberly Hinden, his top deputy at the Registry, who later replaced him.
Then he persuaded the state to invest about $16 million to replace green-screen computers from the 1980s with a modern system called the Q-Matic that spit out customized tickets to customers, with estimated wait times.
The reputation from the Registry was not enough to elect him when he ran for state treasurer in 2002 against Timothy P. Cahill. So Grabauskas moved to transportation, appointed first as Governor Mitt Romney's secretary of transportation and then as general manager of the MBTA.
There, he learned quickly that $16 million didn't go far at the MBTA. The T's debt is more than $8 billion including interest payments, mostly because of expansion projects.
Record high ridership, the result of $4-per-gallon gas prices, has not been enough to compensate for the debt payments, the smaller-than-expected sales tax subsidy, and the rising cost of gas for buses.
His talk of substantial fare hikes earlier this month has put pressure on the agency to save money and avoid the appearance of wasting it. Grabauskas stood by his decision to let employees take home cars, arguing that they need to respond to emergencies and that the financial impact was relatively small. He held that managers deserved the pay raises after three years without one and were being compensated in line with new union wages.
State Senator Steven A. Baddour, a Methuen Democrat who leads the Transportation Committee, suggested criticism of these decisions has been driven by politics.
"Just because he was appointed by a Republican governor and he ran for treasurer against the current treasurer shouldn't prohibit him from doing his job," Baddour said.
Grabauskas is keenly aware that his time is running out, one way or another. He said he will probably work in the private or nonprofit sector next and doubts he will seek public office again.
"I've got about 20 months left here, at the most," he said. "That's when my contract expires."
The Patrick administration, which controls the MBTA board, could oust him immediately. But it would require a costly payout, nearly a half-million dollars, and would be politically difficult.
"They have to buy me out," said Grabauskas. "And I don't intend to quit."
Noah Bierman can be reached at nbierman@globe.com.
Skunks Take Village
Skunks Take Village
Liverpool residents say neighbors are feeding them
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
By Tom Leo
Staff writer
Skunks living in and around residential areas is common, but in one Liverpool neighborhood the skunks are getting a little too bold.
Village resident Dennis Hebert and his wife, Juli, who live at 213 Third St., recently were trapped in their car - in their own driveway - because skunks decided to hang out there.
"We beeped at the skunks, flashed the lights at the skunks," said Hebert, a village trustee. "It was like they were saying 'I belong here more than you.' We sat in the car for more than five minutes."
Gary White recently was driving through the village when he was flagged down by someone who wanted to chat about the skunk problem.
"As we were talking, at about 5:30 in the afternoon, a skunk walked right behind us, across the front lawn like it was perfectly fine," said White, who also is a trustee. "They're typically more nocturnal. These guys are out in the daytime and don't seem to be bothered by people at all."
There appears to be an explanation why one Liverpool neighborhood has a skunk problem.
An open compost pile has provided shelter and food for the skunks, say residents of an area bordered by First, Bass, Sycamore and Third streets. The skunks also may be getting a boost from a neighborhood woman who said she puts pet food outside for her cat.
An unusually wet summer has contributed, too. Skunks come out more often when it rains because it makes the ground softer, and easier for the animals to dig for grubs and other insects, trapper Jim Gleason said.
But why are the animals being so bold?
Gleason, who owns and operates Good Riddance Animal Control and Removal, is hired by the town of Salina to trap and relocate wild animals. He said he currently has about 15 traps placed in the village and has caught at least 50 skunks in the past three to four weeks.
He said the number of skunks in the village is not higher than usual. He thinks the number actually might be lower, judging from a decrease in the number of dead
skunks found on the road this year compared to last.
"The issue is not the amount of skunks. The issue is the skunks are being domesticated," said Mike Romano, of 309 Sycamore St.
Romano and other neighbors, including Nancy Richmond, of 205 Third St., said Betty Nordheim, of 208 Third St., is feeding the skunks.
"She feeds them right out of her hand; I've seen her," Richmond said.
Nordheim said she doesn't feed skunks.
"That is foolish," she said. "I have a cat that won't come in at night, so before I go to bed I put some kibbles out in the bowl and the cat eats them."
The skunks could eat them, too. It's not uncommon to find skunks and domestic cats dining peacefully together, Gleason said. There have been documented cases of skunks entering homes through pet doors, dining with the family cat and finding a quiet closet or empty bed to spend the night, he said.
As long as the skunk does not feel threatened, it won't spray, Gleason said.
"This is not my fault," Nordheim said. "You ask anybody in the village, there's been a skunk problem here for 100 years during this time of year. Skunks hide in the winter. They come out as soon as it's warm. They'll be gone as soon as it's cold again."
A Department of Environmental Conservation official said it's not illegal for residents to feed any wild animal, except deer.
"My concern is we have small children between us and where the skunks are being fed," Hebert said. "They parade between the two yards, past the children. I saw eight in a row a couple of weeks ago that literally paraded past the small children. Sooner or later, someone is going to get bit."
No one in the neighborhood has been bitten or sprayed, the neighbors said. Skunks are, according to several Web sites, major hosts for rabies.
Liverpool Mayor Marlene Ward said there's little village government can do to help eradicate the problem. She encouraged residents to take advantage of Gleason's trapping service. As part of a contract with the town of Salina, village residents can pay a one-time fee of $16 for Gleason to set as many traps as needed.
Ward also said she'd have codes enforcement look into regulations for the compost pile, which is behind a shed owned by Willard Bahn, of 203 Third St.
Bahn said he hasn't used the compost pile for about two years. It appears others in the neighborhood are throwing grass clippings and brush into the pile, along with discarded food.
"Skunks adapt well to neighborhoods," Gleason said.
He recommends that residents keep pet foods inside, keep lids on trash cans and cover compost piles.
Tom Leo can be reached at tleo@syracuse.com or 470-6013.
Liverpool residents say neighbors are feeding them
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
By Tom Leo
Staff writer
Skunks living in and around residential areas is common, but in one Liverpool neighborhood the skunks are getting a little too bold.
Village resident Dennis Hebert and his wife, Juli, who live at 213 Third St., recently were trapped in their car - in their own driveway - because skunks decided to hang out there.
"We beeped at the skunks, flashed the lights at the skunks," said Hebert, a village trustee. "It was like they were saying 'I belong here more than you.' We sat in the car for more than five minutes."
Gary White recently was driving through the village when he was flagged down by someone who wanted to chat about the skunk problem.
"As we were talking, at about 5:30 in the afternoon, a skunk walked right behind us, across the front lawn like it was perfectly fine," said White, who also is a trustee. "They're typically more nocturnal. These guys are out in the daytime and don't seem to be bothered by people at all."
There appears to be an explanation why one Liverpool neighborhood has a skunk problem.
An open compost pile has provided shelter and food for the skunks, say residents of an area bordered by First, Bass, Sycamore and Third streets. The skunks also may be getting a boost from a neighborhood woman who said she puts pet food outside for her cat.
An unusually wet summer has contributed, too. Skunks come out more often when it rains because it makes the ground softer, and easier for the animals to dig for grubs and other insects, trapper Jim Gleason said.
But why are the animals being so bold?
Gleason, who owns and operates Good Riddance Animal Control and Removal, is hired by the town of Salina to trap and relocate wild animals. He said he currently has about 15 traps placed in the village and has caught at least 50 skunks in the past three to four weeks.
He said the number of skunks in the village is not higher than usual. He thinks the number actually might be lower, judging from a decrease in the number of dead
skunks found on the road this year compared to last.
"The issue is not the amount of skunks. The issue is the skunks are being domesticated," said Mike Romano, of 309 Sycamore St.
Romano and other neighbors, including Nancy Richmond, of 205 Third St., said Betty Nordheim, of 208 Third St., is feeding the skunks.
"She feeds them right out of her hand; I've seen her," Richmond said.
Nordheim said she doesn't feed skunks.
"That is foolish," she said. "I have a cat that won't come in at night, so before I go to bed I put some kibbles out in the bowl and the cat eats them."
The skunks could eat them, too. It's not uncommon to find skunks and domestic cats dining peacefully together, Gleason said. There have been documented cases of skunks entering homes through pet doors, dining with the family cat and finding a quiet closet or empty bed to spend the night, he said.
As long as the skunk does not feel threatened, it won't spray, Gleason said.
"This is not my fault," Nordheim said. "You ask anybody in the village, there's been a skunk problem here for 100 years during this time of year. Skunks hide in the winter. They come out as soon as it's warm. They'll be gone as soon as it's cold again."
A Department of Environmental Conservation official said it's not illegal for residents to feed any wild animal, except deer.
"My concern is we have small children between us and where the skunks are being fed," Hebert said. "They parade between the two yards, past the children. I saw eight in a row a couple of weeks ago that literally paraded past the small children. Sooner or later, someone is going to get bit."
No one in the neighborhood has been bitten or sprayed, the neighbors said. Skunks are, according to several Web sites, major hosts for rabies.
Liverpool Mayor Marlene Ward said there's little village government can do to help eradicate the problem. She encouraged residents to take advantage of Gleason's trapping service. As part of a contract with the town of Salina, village residents can pay a one-time fee of $16 for Gleason to set as many traps as needed.
Ward also said she'd have codes enforcement look into regulations for the compost pile, which is behind a shed owned by Willard Bahn, of 203 Third St.
Bahn said he hasn't used the compost pile for about two years. It appears others in the neighborhood are throwing grass clippings and brush into the pile, along with discarded food.
"Skunks adapt well to neighborhoods," Gleason said.
He recommends that residents keep pet foods inside, keep lids on trash cans and cover compost piles.
Tom Leo can be reached at tleo@syracuse.com or 470-6013.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Condren: Setting boundaries with manipulators
Dear Debra: My co-workers have gotten into the habit of taking advantage of my hard-working approach by constantly manipulating me into doing their jobs. I have trouble saying no. How can I set limits without getting into conflict or without coming across as, well, a bitch? — Spineless, 26
A: You’ve got to get comfortable saying no without fear of offending. One great way to learn this is to “bookend” something a co-worker won’t want to hear with a positive statement before it and after it. Don’t leave an opening for your co-worker to argue. Instead, be clear, to the point and firm. Example: Your co-worker asks you to attend, in her place, an after-work client schmoozing event. You say, “I can see why you’d like for someone to go in your place (positive spin), but it’s not a good fit for me. Good luck finding someone else.” The “good luck” says that your decision is final.
If she pressures you to reconsider, resist debating. Instead, simply restate what you’ve just said, slightly reframed, again without offering up a rationale that could invite her to continue arguing. Example: She cajoles you with, “Come on! You’ll connect with great people that others would kill to meet. Plus, it will really help me out.” Repeat your tactic of bookending your “no” with a positive spin: “Your connections are impressive, but it won’t work for me. Thanks anyway.”
Bullies often persist. She might ask, “Why won’t it work for you?” Don’t give a reason. Again, use bookends: “Thanks, but I’ll pass. Your offer is appreciated, though.” Repeat yourself two or three times if needed until she gives up. You’ll feel fine about saying no because, by using this technique, you won’t get sucked into a debate where your energy is depleted. You won’t end up feeling badly about yourself because your opponent out-talked you. Instead, you’ll walk away feeling calm, and happy that you preserved your right to set limits — and you did it with integrity.
Dr. Debra Condren is a coach, speaker and author of “Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word” (Broadway). E-mail your burning questions to debra@ambitionisnotadirtyword.com.
A: You’ve got to get comfortable saying no without fear of offending. One great way to learn this is to “bookend” something a co-worker won’t want to hear with a positive statement before it and after it. Don’t leave an opening for your co-worker to argue. Instead, be clear, to the point and firm. Example: Your co-worker asks you to attend, in her place, an after-work client schmoozing event. You say, “I can see why you’d like for someone to go in your place (positive spin), but it’s not a good fit for me. Good luck finding someone else.” The “good luck” says that your decision is final.
If she pressures you to reconsider, resist debating. Instead, simply restate what you’ve just said, slightly reframed, again without offering up a rationale that could invite her to continue arguing. Example: She cajoles you with, “Come on! You’ll connect with great people that others would kill to meet. Plus, it will really help me out.” Repeat your tactic of bookending your “no” with a positive spin: “Your connections are impressive, but it won’t work for me. Thanks anyway.”
Bullies often persist. She might ask, “Why won’t it work for you?” Don’t give a reason. Again, use bookends: “Thanks, but I’ll pass. Your offer is appreciated, though.” Repeat yourself two or three times if needed until she gives up. You’ll feel fine about saying no because, by using this technique, you won’t get sucked into a debate where your energy is depleted. You won’t end up feeling badly about yourself because your opponent out-talked you. Instead, you’ll walk away feeling calm, and happy that you preserved your right to set limits — and you did it with integrity.
Dr. Debra Condren is a coach, speaker and author of “Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word” (Broadway). E-mail your burning questions to debra@ambitionisnotadirtyword.com.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Sculptures stolen from cemetery
Sculptures stolen from cemetery
Thieves may sell pieces for scrap
By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | August 15, 2008
Thieves have looted several sculptures, including the work of a famed South End artist, from the Forest Hills Cemetery, possibly to sell as scrap metal, in a sign that the theft of bronze and copper has spread to the serenity of cemeteries.
The work of Kahlil Gibran, "Seated Ceres," and two sculptures by other artists were taken over the past week from the Contemporary Sculpture Path, a nationally renowned walking trail of more than 30 works, cemetery officials said.
The thefts have prompted the officials to remove at least three other bronze sculptures from the heavily traveled walking path, fearing that the theft was not for art's sake but for the commodity in the hot metals market. Some other pieces were loosened at the base, as if someone has tried, but failed, to remove them, the officials said.
"These pieces of work were great for everyone, and someone has taken them," said George Milley, president and chief executive of the privately run cemetery. "Anything they think they can scrap for quick cash and that they can easily remove can be targeted."
The "Seated Ceres" piece was a favorite of Gibran, a renowned artist from the South End and cousin of the poet bearing the same name. He died in April and was buried in Forest Hills. A separate bronze sculpture by Gibran, "Boy With a Dove," was removed from his gravestone out of fear it, too, could be stolen.
Gibran's pieces were unique, not made with a casting, so they can't be duplicated, and the loss of "Seated Ceres" is like a second bereavement for a family still in mourning.
"An artist's work is an artist's legacy," said his wife, Jean English Gibran. "If it gets sold and melted down, it vanishes."
Gibran made "Seated Ceres" as a tribute to the Roman goddess of harvest, as part of a series devoted to the goddess that he made more than a decade ago. The sculpture was placed in the first exhibition in the cemetery to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 1998, and the piece had remained there as a permanent display.
Cecily Miller, executive director of the Forest Hills Educational Trust, said the piece was fitting for the cemetery, with its symbolism of the harvest. The goddess is holding wheat on her lap, and visitors have placed flowers there before, she said.
The piece was part of an overall collection that served as a tribute to the serenity of the 275 acres of Forest Hills Cemetery, built as a grieving site but also one of the city's first areas dedicated to nature, Miller said.
Thieves also took "Garden's Edge," a bronze sculpture of a rabbit by Tim Cherry of Missouri, that was also part of the original display. Also stolen was "Bark Balls," by Carol Spack of Framingham. The work included three bronze spheres with a surface cast in bark that were meant to represent the spirits of the trees in the cemetery, Miller said.
"Everybody has favorite pieces in the contemporary sculpture path," Miller said, "but I know all three of those works were very much loved."
The cemetery has offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of any of the pieces.
The sculptures are worth more in the arts community and for visitors to the cemetery than on the streets. One arts agent estimated the "Seated Ceres" piece could fetch $75,000.
But as the market for medals heats up, the commodity has become the target of thieves who will break into basements and warehouses or loot wiring and manhole covers to melt them for cash.
At arts foundries, a pound of bronze can sell for nearly $5, when it was worth $1.50 a few years ago, said Reno Pisano, a Nahant-based sculptor who helped Gibran develop a park project along Columbus Avenue in the South End. Gibran's friends estimate the "Seated Ceres" piece weighed about 100 pounds, and so it would sell for far less than its art worth.
Stuart Denenberg, California-based agent for Gibran and his family, said the theft of bronze artwork has plagued other arts communities in recent years. In England, thieves took a multiton statue from the Henry Moore Foundation; authorities believe they were after the metal. In California, where thieves are brazenly stealing bronze pieces, lawmakers are proposing a law that would require anyone selling scrap metal to show identification to a dealer.
Milley, who is also president of the Massachusetts Cemetery Association, said cemeteries throughout the state have reported thefts of copper or bronze materials, but he has never heard of renowned artwork being taken.
Miller said that the Forest Hills Cemetery was unique in that it risked displaying artwork that was fitting for a museum. She said the cemetery will have to decide whether to keep bronze as part of the display.
"One of the wonderful things about this environment was that people normally treated it with respect because it is a cemetery," she said. "It just seems particularly terrible that thieves would violate that space and destroy something that has much larger value."
Milton Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com.
Thieves may sell pieces for scrap
By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | August 15, 2008
Thieves have looted several sculptures, including the work of a famed South End artist, from the Forest Hills Cemetery, possibly to sell as scrap metal, in a sign that the theft of bronze and copper has spread to the serenity of cemeteries.
The work of Kahlil Gibran, "Seated Ceres," and two sculptures by other artists were taken over the past week from the Contemporary Sculpture Path, a nationally renowned walking trail of more than 30 works, cemetery officials said.
The thefts have prompted the officials to remove at least three other bronze sculptures from the heavily traveled walking path, fearing that the theft was not for art's sake but for the commodity in the hot metals market. Some other pieces were loosened at the base, as if someone has tried, but failed, to remove them, the officials said.
"These pieces of work were great for everyone, and someone has taken them," said George Milley, president and chief executive of the privately run cemetery. "Anything they think they can scrap for quick cash and that they can easily remove can be targeted."
The "Seated Ceres" piece was a favorite of Gibran, a renowned artist from the South End and cousin of the poet bearing the same name. He died in April and was buried in Forest Hills. A separate bronze sculpture by Gibran, "Boy With a Dove," was removed from his gravestone out of fear it, too, could be stolen.
Gibran's pieces were unique, not made with a casting, so they can't be duplicated, and the loss of "Seated Ceres" is like a second bereavement for a family still in mourning.
"An artist's work is an artist's legacy," said his wife, Jean English Gibran. "If it gets sold and melted down, it vanishes."
Gibran made "Seated Ceres" as a tribute to the Roman goddess of harvest, as part of a series devoted to the goddess that he made more than a decade ago. The sculpture was placed in the first exhibition in the cemetery to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 1998, and the piece had remained there as a permanent display.
Cecily Miller, executive director of the Forest Hills Educational Trust, said the piece was fitting for the cemetery, with its symbolism of the harvest. The goddess is holding wheat on her lap, and visitors have placed flowers there before, she said.
The piece was part of an overall collection that served as a tribute to the serenity of the 275 acres of Forest Hills Cemetery, built as a grieving site but also one of the city's first areas dedicated to nature, Miller said.
Thieves also took "Garden's Edge," a bronze sculpture of a rabbit by Tim Cherry of Missouri, that was also part of the original display. Also stolen was "Bark Balls," by Carol Spack of Framingham. The work included three bronze spheres with a surface cast in bark that were meant to represent the spirits of the trees in the cemetery, Miller said.
"Everybody has favorite pieces in the contemporary sculpture path," Miller said, "but I know all three of those works were very much loved."
The cemetery has offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of any of the pieces.
The sculptures are worth more in the arts community and for visitors to the cemetery than on the streets. One arts agent estimated the "Seated Ceres" piece could fetch $75,000.
But as the market for medals heats up, the commodity has become the target of thieves who will break into basements and warehouses or loot wiring and manhole covers to melt them for cash.
At arts foundries, a pound of bronze can sell for nearly $5, when it was worth $1.50 a few years ago, said Reno Pisano, a Nahant-based sculptor who helped Gibran develop a park project along Columbus Avenue in the South End. Gibran's friends estimate the "Seated Ceres" piece weighed about 100 pounds, and so it would sell for far less than its art worth.
Stuart Denenberg, California-based agent for Gibran and his family, said the theft of bronze artwork has plagued other arts communities in recent years. In England, thieves took a multiton statue from the Henry Moore Foundation; authorities believe they were after the metal. In California, where thieves are brazenly stealing bronze pieces, lawmakers are proposing a law that would require anyone selling scrap metal to show identification to a dealer.
Milley, who is also president of the Massachusetts Cemetery Association, said cemeteries throughout the state have reported thefts of copper or bronze materials, but he has never heard of renowned artwork being taken.
Miller said that the Forest Hills Cemetery was unique in that it risked displaying artwork that was fitting for a museum. She said the cemetery will have to decide whether to keep bronze as part of the display.
"One of the wonderful things about this environment was that people normally treated it with respect because it is a cemetery," she said. "It just seems particularly terrible that thieves would violate that space and destroy something that has much larger value."
Milton Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
General Lovell Rousseau
of Rousseau's Raiders fame
Rousseau terrorized Loachapoka and the surrounding communities during the Civil War.
Rousseau terrorized Loachapoka and the surrounding communities during the Civil War.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
LOACHAPOKA, ALABAMA
Loachapoka has a population of about 135 on an ordinary day. But on syrup Sopping Day an estimated 15,000 people make an annual pilgrimage to Loachapoka for Syrup Sopping Day at Loachapoka.
They come out of the hills, hollows, and cities. They come from all around -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
The Town of Loachapoka
Loachapoka is governed by a mayor and town council who are elected and serve without pay.
Loachapoka History
* 16th century: Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto passed about four miles south of Loachapoka in the 16th century when he traveled through the area looking for gold.
* Creek Indians: Loachapoka was first settled by Creek Indians who were excellent farmers. The earliest known village was settled by 1796. Loachapoka's name is derived from two Creek words: "locha," meaning turtle and "polga," meaning either killing place or gathering place. Combined, the word Loachapoka means land where turtles live or are killed.
* 1832 census: According to the 1832 census, about 564 Indians, representing 164 families, lived in Loachapoka.
* Treaty of Cusseta: In 1819 Alabama was proclaimed a state. The March 24, 1832, Treaty of Cusseta ceded the Creeks' land to the United States, opening it to white settlement. Soon thereafter the Alabama General Assembly organized counties, forming Macon County which included Loachapoka.
* Square Talley: Loachapoka became home to its first white man in 1836. Square Talley decided to continue pushing west from the new town of Auburn. About seven miles out, he and his slaves built a home for his family at a site just off the Indian path. This crossroads was called Ball's Fork, the first name white settlers gave to land that would ultimately be known as Loachapoka.
* Indian uprising: Talley was followed by about twenty migrants. Population growth was hindered by an uprising of local Indians who resisted being removed to reservations in the West. Some Indians, however, were more willing to leave. White settlers purchased their property from Creek Indians with exotic names such as Hadjo, Harjo, Fixico, Emarthlar, and Yoholo. The Creeks began moving west to allotted land in Oklahoma by late 1836.
* First store: The crossroads at Ball's Fork became the town's first settlement. Williamson W. Plant erected the first store, selling whiskey, operating a hotel for travelers, and offering a livery stable for stagecoach teams. A stagecoach ran through Loachapoka on its route from Montgomery to Tallapoosa County. Wagon trains also embarked west from Ball's Fork.
* Religion: Churches and schools were quickly established. The Baptists were the first to hold religious services, using a wigwam and a whiskey keg for the pulpit. The Methodists soon thereafter had a church (in fact the bells for both churches were cast at the same time in New York in 1859). A circuit rider lived in Loachapoka, tending congregations nearby.
* Center of commerce: A trade center (the present-day museum) was built by 1845 when the Western of Alabama Railroad from Montgomery reached Loachapoka. Loachapoka became the main shipping center for nearby Tallapoosa and Chambers counties. The settlement at Ball's Fork was relocated closer to the tracks, approximately one-half mile south to what is the current center of town. Loachapoka citizens could buy a variety of goods such as tools, salt pork, horse collars, guns, clothes, lobster, oysters, and whiskey in a barrel at the trading center.
* Railroad: A depot was built with a nearby turntable to reverse engines back to Montgomery. The railroad took two years to reach Auburn, and it extended to Opelika in March 1848. Passengers could buy tickets to various destinations to and from Loachapoka. At the railroad's peak, 12 trains ran daily. Currently the track is used only to transport freight.
* Business: Grain was ground and lumber sawed at mills on the Saugahatchee Creek then transported into town to sell. The thriving town consisted of a millinery shop, dancing school, tanyard, cotton gin, carriage factory, Masonic Lodge, drugstore, hardware store, dry good store, general store, slave block, finishing schools, and five saloons. Hitching posts dotted the sidewalks to secure the transportation mode of the times--horses, mules, and oxen. Seven doctors as well as numerous butchers, grocers, seamstresses, shoe makers, blacksmiths, and tailors plied their trades. The Trammell family's granite quarry on Saugahatchee Creek produced the granite used to built the Atlanta Terminal Station in the 1890s.
* Homes: Housing in Loachapoka evolved from log cabins to elaborately designed houses. Herb gardens were carefully cultivated to add spice to meals and formulate home remedies. The roads, full of ruts and tree stumps, gradually improved, meeting higher standard grades. More people moved to Loachapoka while others moved West, continuing their quest for something better.
* Politics: Loachapoka hosted political rallies with silver-tongued orators. In July 1856, several hundred people rode a train from Columbus, Georgia, to attend a rally and barbecue. Four years later presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas spoke from the J.F. Mahone house at Ball's Fork, trying to convince Loachapokans to vote for him instead of Abraham Lincoln.
* Civil War: During the Civil War, the trading center served as a Confederate armory. Lee, Tallapoosa, and Chamber county residents came to Loachapoka to enlist. Three regiments (the 34th, 46th, and 47th Alabama) were formed in Loachapoka in 1862, and the Loachapoka Rifles (Co. B of the 6th Alabama) also contributed men to the southern cause. Loachapokan John R. Leftwich served General Robert E. Lee as his chief clerk from 1863 to 1865.
* More Civil War: Loachapoka was twice raided by federal troops during the war. General Lovell Rousseau entered the town with several thousand troops in July 1864, burning the train depot and supplies and heating and twisting the metal rails to render them useless. Warned of the raiders impending arrival, Loachapokans buried meat and silver wrapped in sheets in corn fields and hid their livestock. In mid-April 1865 General James Wilson's raiders passed south of Loachapoka.
* Jefferson Davis: Confederate President Jefferson Davis ate dinner at the Havis Hotel in the 1860s.
* Auburn as a suburb: Nineteenth-century Loachapoka was much larger than Auburn or Opelika. Loachapoka resident Thomas B. Peddy was a state legislator from 1872-1876. Unfortunately a fire gutted much of the town in the 1870s, and Loachapoka's trading preeminence ended abruptly when the Central of Georgia Railroad connected Opelika to Birmingham, offering a better trade route for neighboring counties. Some farmers continued to grow and sell cotton locally until the Loachapoka Gin Company burned in 1969.
* Post Civil War: Lee County suffered severe economic conditions during Reconstruction. Boll weevils, exhausted land, and cankerworms blighted any hopes for agricultural prosperity. By 1896 only 136 voters (white citizens) remained in Loachapoka. A one-and-one-half-minute eclipse on May 8, 1900, was labeled "the black day" by farmers who witnessed stars during the day and had their chickens roost. The sun's disappearance symbolized to many their despair and sense of hopelessness.
* Incorporation: In 1903 Route 1, Loachapoka's first mail route, was established. Two years later the town was incorporated but no records were kept "due to the neglect of certain county officials." In 1910 Loachapoka's incorporation was filed, including a census of 359 citizens (both white and black). The town was laid out in a rectangle centered on the town well which was on the present-day syrup sopping site. The town borders were 1.5 miles north to south and 2 miles east to west. Loachapoka was reincorporated in 1926 and 1974. A variety of mayors, both male and female, have governed the town. Tink Finley was the first mayor.
* Airplane: In 1917 Loachapokans saw their first airplane.
* World Wars: During the World Wars, residents joined the service while those at home experienced rationing.
* Depression: The Depression of the 1930s brought back the hard times of the post-Civil War years, and many farmers were seen with steers pulling their plows instead of mules or horses.
* National Register of Historic Places: In 1973 Loachapoka was named to the National Register of Historic Places because of seventeen structures built in the 1840s and 1850s that represented Greek Revival and Victorian architectural influences. Congressman Bill Nichols remarked that "The Loachapoka Historic District is an excellent example of an antebellum trading center in Alabama." Five years later an historical marker, declaring "Boom and Change," recalled Loachapoka's days as an historical trade center.
* Syrup Sopping Day: Every autumn since 1972 the Loachapoka Ruritan Club, Ladies Improvement Club, and Lee County Historical Society have organized a syrup sopping and historical fair. Traditionally since the town's earliest days, Loachapoka farmers have made fine tasting syrup from sorghum and ribbon cane. Mr. Emphel William Paradise, who sharecropped for Robert Sheldon Page of Loachapoka for 38 years, remembered that Page used his syrup mill to process his own cane and that his neighbors hauled to him to "make some of the prettiest syrup, it looked just like honey. Everybody from Montgomery all down in there would come and buy that syrup. His was the best in the world."
prepared by: Dr. Elizabeth Schafer, Loachapoka Historian
They come out of the hills, hollows, and cities. They come from all around -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
The Town of Loachapoka
Loachapoka is governed by a mayor and town council who are elected and serve without pay.
Loachapoka History
* 16th century: Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto passed about four miles south of Loachapoka in the 16th century when he traveled through the area looking for gold.
* Creek Indians: Loachapoka was first settled by Creek Indians who were excellent farmers. The earliest known village was settled by 1796. Loachapoka's name is derived from two Creek words: "locha," meaning turtle and "polga," meaning either killing place or gathering place. Combined, the word Loachapoka means land where turtles live or are killed.
* 1832 census: According to the 1832 census, about 564 Indians, representing 164 families, lived in Loachapoka.
* Treaty of Cusseta: In 1819 Alabama was proclaimed a state. The March 24, 1832, Treaty of Cusseta ceded the Creeks' land to the United States, opening it to white settlement. Soon thereafter the Alabama General Assembly organized counties, forming Macon County which included Loachapoka.
* Square Talley: Loachapoka became home to its first white man in 1836. Square Talley decided to continue pushing west from the new town of Auburn. About seven miles out, he and his slaves built a home for his family at a site just off the Indian path. This crossroads was called Ball's Fork, the first name white settlers gave to land that would ultimately be known as Loachapoka.
* Indian uprising: Talley was followed by about twenty migrants. Population growth was hindered by an uprising of local Indians who resisted being removed to reservations in the West. Some Indians, however, were more willing to leave. White settlers purchased their property from Creek Indians with exotic names such as Hadjo, Harjo, Fixico, Emarthlar, and Yoholo. The Creeks began moving west to allotted land in Oklahoma by late 1836.
* First store: The crossroads at Ball's Fork became the town's first settlement. Williamson W. Plant erected the first store, selling whiskey, operating a hotel for travelers, and offering a livery stable for stagecoach teams. A stagecoach ran through Loachapoka on its route from Montgomery to Tallapoosa County. Wagon trains also embarked west from Ball's Fork.
* Religion: Churches and schools were quickly established. The Baptists were the first to hold religious services, using a wigwam and a whiskey keg for the pulpit. The Methodists soon thereafter had a church (in fact the bells for both churches were cast at the same time in New York in 1859). A circuit rider lived in Loachapoka, tending congregations nearby.
* Center of commerce: A trade center (the present-day museum) was built by 1845 when the Western of Alabama Railroad from Montgomery reached Loachapoka. Loachapoka became the main shipping center for nearby Tallapoosa and Chambers counties. The settlement at Ball's Fork was relocated closer to the tracks, approximately one-half mile south to what is the current center of town. Loachapoka citizens could buy a variety of goods such as tools, salt pork, horse collars, guns, clothes, lobster, oysters, and whiskey in a barrel at the trading center.
* Railroad: A depot was built with a nearby turntable to reverse engines back to Montgomery. The railroad took two years to reach Auburn, and it extended to Opelika in March 1848. Passengers could buy tickets to various destinations to and from Loachapoka. At the railroad's peak, 12 trains ran daily. Currently the track is used only to transport freight.
* Business: Grain was ground and lumber sawed at mills on the Saugahatchee Creek then transported into town to sell. The thriving town consisted of a millinery shop, dancing school, tanyard, cotton gin, carriage factory, Masonic Lodge, drugstore, hardware store, dry good store, general store, slave block, finishing schools, and five saloons. Hitching posts dotted the sidewalks to secure the transportation mode of the times--horses, mules, and oxen. Seven doctors as well as numerous butchers, grocers, seamstresses, shoe makers, blacksmiths, and tailors plied their trades. The Trammell family's granite quarry on Saugahatchee Creek produced the granite used to built the Atlanta Terminal Station in the 1890s.
* Homes: Housing in Loachapoka evolved from log cabins to elaborately designed houses. Herb gardens were carefully cultivated to add spice to meals and formulate home remedies. The roads, full of ruts and tree stumps, gradually improved, meeting higher standard grades. More people moved to Loachapoka while others moved West, continuing their quest for something better.
* Politics: Loachapoka hosted political rallies with silver-tongued orators. In July 1856, several hundred people rode a train from Columbus, Georgia, to attend a rally and barbecue. Four years later presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas spoke from the J.F. Mahone house at Ball's Fork, trying to convince Loachapokans to vote for him instead of Abraham Lincoln.
* Civil War: During the Civil War, the trading center served as a Confederate armory. Lee, Tallapoosa, and Chamber county residents came to Loachapoka to enlist. Three regiments (the 34th, 46th, and 47th Alabama) were formed in Loachapoka in 1862, and the Loachapoka Rifles (Co. B of the 6th Alabama) also contributed men to the southern cause. Loachapokan John R. Leftwich served General Robert E. Lee as his chief clerk from 1863 to 1865.
* More Civil War: Loachapoka was twice raided by federal troops during the war. General Lovell Rousseau entered the town with several thousand troops in July 1864, burning the train depot and supplies and heating and twisting the metal rails to render them useless. Warned of the raiders impending arrival, Loachapokans buried meat and silver wrapped in sheets in corn fields and hid their livestock. In mid-April 1865 General James Wilson's raiders passed south of Loachapoka.
* Jefferson Davis: Confederate President Jefferson Davis ate dinner at the Havis Hotel in the 1860s.
* Auburn as a suburb: Nineteenth-century Loachapoka was much larger than Auburn or Opelika. Loachapoka resident Thomas B. Peddy was a state legislator from 1872-1876. Unfortunately a fire gutted much of the town in the 1870s, and Loachapoka's trading preeminence ended abruptly when the Central of Georgia Railroad connected Opelika to Birmingham, offering a better trade route for neighboring counties. Some farmers continued to grow and sell cotton locally until the Loachapoka Gin Company burned in 1969.
* Post Civil War: Lee County suffered severe economic conditions during Reconstruction. Boll weevils, exhausted land, and cankerworms blighted any hopes for agricultural prosperity. By 1896 only 136 voters (white citizens) remained in Loachapoka. A one-and-one-half-minute eclipse on May 8, 1900, was labeled "the black day" by farmers who witnessed stars during the day and had their chickens roost. The sun's disappearance symbolized to many their despair and sense of hopelessness.
* Incorporation: In 1903 Route 1, Loachapoka's first mail route, was established. Two years later the town was incorporated but no records were kept "due to the neglect of certain county officials." In 1910 Loachapoka's incorporation was filed, including a census of 359 citizens (both white and black). The town was laid out in a rectangle centered on the town well which was on the present-day syrup sopping site. The town borders were 1.5 miles north to south and 2 miles east to west. Loachapoka was reincorporated in 1926 and 1974. A variety of mayors, both male and female, have governed the town. Tink Finley was the first mayor.
* Airplane: In 1917 Loachapokans saw their first airplane.
* World Wars: During the World Wars, residents joined the service while those at home experienced rationing.
* Depression: The Depression of the 1930s brought back the hard times of the post-Civil War years, and many farmers were seen with steers pulling their plows instead of mules or horses.
* National Register of Historic Places: In 1973 Loachapoka was named to the National Register of Historic Places because of seventeen structures built in the 1840s and 1850s that represented Greek Revival and Victorian architectural influences. Congressman Bill Nichols remarked that "The Loachapoka Historic District is an excellent example of an antebellum trading center in Alabama." Five years later an historical marker, declaring "Boom and Change," recalled Loachapoka's days as an historical trade center.
* Syrup Sopping Day: Every autumn since 1972 the Loachapoka Ruritan Club, Ladies Improvement Club, and Lee County Historical Society have organized a syrup sopping and historical fair. Traditionally since the town's earliest days, Loachapoka farmers have made fine tasting syrup from sorghum and ribbon cane. Mr. Emphel William Paradise, who sharecropped for Robert Sheldon Page of Loachapoka for 38 years, remembered that Page used his syrup mill to process his own cane and that his neighbors hauled to him to "make some of the prettiest syrup, it looked just like honey. Everybody from Montgomery all down in there would come and buy that syrup. His was the best in the world."
prepared by: Dr. Elizabeth Schafer, Loachapoka Historian
illegal fish sales
3 men arrested for illegal fish sales
DEC charges two Syracuse brothers and a Rochester market owner.
Two Syracuse brothers and a Rochester fish market owner are facing thousands of dollars in fines and prison time for illegally selling and buying black crappies - fish that investigators say were caught on Oneida Lake.
A total of 1,185 fish were confiscated by state Department of Environmental Conservation officers: 86 were bluegills, 23 were pumpkinseeds and the balance, 1,076, were black crappies, which are commonly referred to as "strawberry bass" in the retail fish market. The total weight: 682 pounds....continue
Monday, August 18, 2008
A small town struggles after immigration raid
By MONICA RHOR
POSTVILLE, Iowa (AP) - A vague unease whispered through this tiny town in northeastern Iowa, where the rolling hills are a study in vivid colors - red barns, white clapboard houses, and vibrant green cornfields plowed with almost architectural precision.
It drifted through Postville's downtown, where restaurants serving tamales share three short blocks with El Vaquero clothing store, a kosher food market and the Spice-N-Ice Liquor and Redemption store.
It nagged at Irma Rucal that Monday morning after Mother's Day weekend, as the Guatemalan immigrant worked her regular shift salting chickens at Agriprocessors, the world's largest kosher meatpacking plant and Postville's biggest employer.
Then, just after 10 a.m., that insistent murmur burst to the surface with a frantic shout:"La Migra! Salvese el que pueda!" Immigration! Save yourself if you can.
The bulk of the plant's 900 workers - mostly Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants - dashed out doors, through hallways and into corners, trying to escape federal agents conducting what would be the largest immigration raid in U.S. history....continue
POSTVILLE, Iowa (AP) - A vague unease whispered through this tiny town in northeastern Iowa, where the rolling hills are a study in vivid colors - red barns, white clapboard houses, and vibrant green cornfields plowed with almost architectural precision.
It drifted through Postville's downtown, where restaurants serving tamales share three short blocks with El Vaquero clothing store, a kosher food market and the Spice-N-Ice Liquor and Redemption store.
It nagged at Irma Rucal that Monday morning after Mother's Day weekend, as the Guatemalan immigrant worked her regular shift salting chickens at Agriprocessors, the world's largest kosher meatpacking plant and Postville's biggest employer.
Then, just after 10 a.m., that insistent murmur burst to the surface with a frantic shout:"La Migra! Salvese el que pueda!" Immigration! Save yourself if you can.
The bulk of the plant's 900 workers - mostly Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants - dashed out doors, through hallways and into corners, trying to escape federal agents conducting what would be the largest immigration raid in U.S. history....continue
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Knocked up - 5 best scenes
Whacky movie - with a chilling, serious message woven in. I liked it for the enemies it made.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
When Pastors Go Postal - Barbara Ehrenreich
When Pastors Go Postal
Comment
By Barbara Ehrenreich
August 12, 2008
For heartsick former supporters of John Edwards, this week offers an edifying tabloid alternative: the civil trial of Victoria Osteen, wife of mega-church minister and televangelist Joel Osteen, for assaulting a flight attendant. The issue was what is sometimes described as a "spill" and sometimes as a "stain" on the armrest of Mrs. Osteen's first-class seat, which the flight attendant refused to clean up with sufficient alacrity because she was busy assisting others to board. Although there is no evidence that the spill consisted of tuberculosis-ridden phlegm or avian flu-rich bird poop, Osteen was mightily pissed, allegedly pushing and punching the flight attendant and making such a ruckus that the Osteen family had to be removed from the flight.
I would be more sympathetic to the flight attendant, Sharon Brown, if she weren't demanding 10 percent of Osteen's fortune to compensate for injuries including a "loss of faith" and hemorrhoids somehow incurred from a frontal assault. But it isn't easy being a flight attendant in this era of layoffs, pay cuts and packed planes--certainly not compared to being a millionaire on her way to Vail. Whatever dubious substance Victoria Osteen faced on that first-class armrest, she should have been able to derive some serenity from the fact that the church she co-pastors draws 40,000 worshippers a week and that her husband has been dubbed "America's Most Influential Christian."
Just another celebrity meltdown set off by insufficiently servile servers? Recall Russell Crowe's 2005 assault with a telephone on a SoHo hotel clerk, or Naomi Campbell's attacks with similar weapons--cell phone and Blackberry--on members of her own staff. But there's a curious antecedent here that Christians would do well to ponder: in 1997, another megachurch pastor and leading televangelist--Robert Schuller--was prosecuted for an eerily similar first-class tantrum.
Schuller, like the Osteens, is a proponent of positive thinking--the doctrine that God intends for you to be rich, healthy and generally "great" right here in this life. While politicos have focused on the Christian Right, there's been far less attention to the fast-growing brand of Christianity Lite, also represented by televangelists Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar. Positive thinking is the theology of the modern mega-church, and it avoids all mention of sin--including the "sins" of abortion and homosexuality--lest such "negative" topics turn off any potential converts or "seekers." Its promise is that you can have anything you want simply by "visualizing" it or, as Osteen puts it, "believing for it"--a doctrine derided by some Christian critics as "name it and claim it."
Schuller faced a different biohazard on his first class flight in '97--cheese. When the flight attendant gave him a fruit and cheese plate for dessert, Schuller insisted that the cheese be removed. The flight attendant refused, explaining, reasonably enough, that all the fruit had been plated with cheese and could be contaminated, from a cheese-allergy- sufferer's point of view. But the pastor was simply on a low-fat diet and did not want to see the cheese on his plate, so he got out of his seat and accosted the flight attendant, shaking him violently by the shoulders. Schuller ended up paying an $1,100 fine and undergoing six months of police supervision.
In the theology of Christian positive thinking, "everything happens for a reason." The Osteens may conclude that the divine intention was to prod them into to emulating Joyce Meyers and Creflo Dollar by investing in a private jet. But there's another possible message from on high: that this brand of Christianity fosters a distinctly un-Christian narcissism.
Consider the ways the Lord works in the life of the Osteens, as recounted in Joel's book, Your Best Life Now, which has sold 4 million copies and is graced by a back cover photo of the smiling couple. Acting through Victoria, who kept "speaking words of faith and victory" on the subject, Joel was led to build the family "an elegant home." On other occasions, God intervened to save Joel from a speeding ticket and to get him not only a good parking spot but "the premier spot in that parking lot." Why God did not swoop down with a sponge and clean up the offending stain on the armrest remains a mystery, because Osteen's deity is less the Master of the Universe than an obliging factotum.
Plenty of Christians have already made the point that the positive thinking of Christianity Lite is demeaning to God, and I leave them to pursue this critique. More important, from a secular point of view, it's dismissive of other humans, and not only flight attendants. If a person is speeding, shouldn't he get a ticket to deter him from endangering others? And if Osteen gets the premier parking spot, what about all the other people consigned to the remote fringes of the lot? Christianity, at best, is about a sacrificial love for others, not about getting to the head of the line.
If the Osteens' brand of religion is what flight attendant Sharon Brown lost faith in as a result of being manhandled by on that plane to Vail, then the suit should be dropped, because Victoria Osteen has already done her enough of a favor.
About Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed (Owl), is the winner of the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize. more...
Comment
By Barbara Ehrenreich
August 12, 2008
For heartsick former supporters of John Edwards, this week offers an edifying tabloid alternative: the civil trial of Victoria Osteen, wife of mega-church minister and televangelist Joel Osteen, for assaulting a flight attendant. The issue was what is sometimes described as a "spill" and sometimes as a "stain" on the armrest of Mrs. Osteen's first-class seat, which the flight attendant refused to clean up with sufficient alacrity because she was busy assisting others to board. Although there is no evidence that the spill consisted of tuberculosis-ridden phlegm or avian flu-rich bird poop, Osteen was mightily pissed, allegedly pushing and punching the flight attendant and making such a ruckus that the Osteen family had to be removed from the flight.
I would be more sympathetic to the flight attendant, Sharon Brown, if she weren't demanding 10 percent of Osteen's fortune to compensate for injuries including a "loss of faith" and hemorrhoids somehow incurred from a frontal assault. But it isn't easy being a flight attendant in this era of layoffs, pay cuts and packed planes--certainly not compared to being a millionaire on her way to Vail. Whatever dubious substance Victoria Osteen faced on that first-class armrest, she should have been able to derive some serenity from the fact that the church she co-pastors draws 40,000 worshippers a week and that her husband has been dubbed "America's Most Influential Christian."
Just another celebrity meltdown set off by insufficiently servile servers? Recall Russell Crowe's 2005 assault with a telephone on a SoHo hotel clerk, or Naomi Campbell's attacks with similar weapons--cell phone and Blackberry--on members of her own staff. But there's a curious antecedent here that Christians would do well to ponder: in 1997, another megachurch pastor and leading televangelist--Robert Schuller--was prosecuted for an eerily similar first-class tantrum.
Schuller, like the Osteens, is a proponent of positive thinking--the doctrine that God intends for you to be rich, healthy and generally "great" right here in this life. While politicos have focused on the Christian Right, there's been far less attention to the fast-growing brand of Christianity Lite, also represented by televangelists Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar. Positive thinking is the theology of the modern mega-church, and it avoids all mention of sin--including the "sins" of abortion and homosexuality--lest such "negative" topics turn off any potential converts or "seekers." Its promise is that you can have anything you want simply by "visualizing" it or, as Osteen puts it, "believing for it"--a doctrine derided by some Christian critics as "name it and claim it."
Schuller faced a different biohazard on his first class flight in '97--cheese. When the flight attendant gave him a fruit and cheese plate for dessert, Schuller insisted that the cheese be removed. The flight attendant refused, explaining, reasonably enough, that all the fruit had been plated with cheese and could be contaminated, from a cheese-allergy- sufferer's point of view. But the pastor was simply on a low-fat diet and did not want to see the cheese on his plate, so he got out of his seat and accosted the flight attendant, shaking him violently by the shoulders. Schuller ended up paying an $1,100 fine and undergoing six months of police supervision.
In the theology of Christian positive thinking, "everything happens for a reason." The Osteens may conclude that the divine intention was to prod them into to emulating Joyce Meyers and Creflo Dollar by investing in a private jet. But there's another possible message from on high: that this brand of Christianity fosters a distinctly un-Christian narcissism.
Consider the ways the Lord works in the life of the Osteens, as recounted in Joel's book, Your Best Life Now, which has sold 4 million copies and is graced by a back cover photo of the smiling couple. Acting through Victoria, who kept "speaking words of faith and victory" on the subject, Joel was led to build the family "an elegant home." On other occasions, God intervened to save Joel from a speeding ticket and to get him not only a good parking spot but "the premier spot in that parking lot." Why God did not swoop down with a sponge and clean up the offending stain on the armrest remains a mystery, because Osteen's deity is less the Master of the Universe than an obliging factotum.
Plenty of Christians have already made the point that the positive thinking of Christianity Lite is demeaning to God, and I leave them to pursue this critique. More important, from a secular point of view, it's dismissive of other humans, and not only flight attendants. If a person is speeding, shouldn't he get a ticket to deter him from endangering others? And if Osteen gets the premier parking spot, what about all the other people consigned to the remote fringes of the lot? Christianity, at best, is about a sacrificial love for others, not about getting to the head of the line.
If the Osteens' brand of religion is what flight attendant Sharon Brown lost faith in as a result of being manhandled by on that plane to Vail, then the suit should be dropped, because Victoria Osteen has already done her enough of a favor.
About Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed (Owl), is the winner of the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize. more...
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
Cease ..fire!
RUSSIA continued its airstrikes on battered Georgia last night despite seizing control of disputed South Ossetia.
What's current conflict about?
WAR broke out between Russia and Georgia at the weekend — but what’s behind the conflict?
Here The Sun explains:
Q: Where is Georgia? Georgia straddles Asia and Europe, between Turkey and southern Russia.
Q: What is South Ossetia? Officially part of Georgia, the breakaway territory runs its own affairs. The size of Suffolk, it has a population of 70,000 — most of them hold Russian passports.
Q: Why is there a conflict? The South Ossetians want full independence from Georgia but the government wants it to remain part of Georgia. The two went to war in 1991-92 before peacekeepers were sent in. But fighting has continued between separatists and the Georgians.
Q: How did this new war start? Separatists allegedly fired at Georgian peacekeepers. Georgia started to bomb Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia on Friday. Russia responded by sending in tanks and bombing parts of Georgia.
Q: Why does it matter to us? Georgia is pro-Western and has troops in Iraq. The £2billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil and gas pipeline passes through Georgia on its way to supplying the West.
Q: What happens next? Georgia say they have pulled their troops out of South Ossetia and Western leaders want the Russians to do the same. But the conflict could spread to another Georgian region, the larger Abkhazia, which also has Russian-backed separatists.
More
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Annie Lois Bradford Jackson August 6, 2008
Mrs. Annie Lois Bradford Jackson, 85, a resident of Auburn, Alabama, and former resident of Syracuse, New York, passed away Wednesday, August 6, 2008. Prior to retiring, she was employed with the Veterans Administration Hospital Syracuse, NY in the food service department. Funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. Tuesday, August 12, 2008, at Peterson and Williams Chapel with interment in Auburn Memorial Park Cemetery.
Published in the Syracuse Post Standard on 8/9/2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
David Duke: ‘We Have Lost Control Of Our Country’
Groups Eye Boost If Obama Elected
David Duke: ‘We Have Lost Control Of Our Country’
POSTED: 9:12 am EDT August 8, 2008
PEARL, Miss. -- They're not exactly rooting for him, but prominent white supremacists anticipate a boost to their cause if Barack Obama becomes the first black president.
Compare Candidates
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, of Louisiana, said Democrat Obama would be a "visual aid" to the idea that whites have lost control of America.
Duke, once a Democrat who became a Republican in 1988 and served in the Louisiana House of Representatives, posted an essay on his Web site in June titled, "Obama Wins Demo Nomination: A Black Flag for White America."
Obama "will be a clear signal for millions of our people," Duke wrote. "Obama is a visual aid for White Americans who just don't get it yet that we have lost control of our country, and unless we get it back we are heading for complete annihilation as a people."
Richard Barrett, a 65-year-old lawyer who traveled the country for 40 years advocating what he perceives as the white side in racial issues, is convinced Obama will defeat Republican John McCain in November.
One of the leaders in the Nationalist Movement, Barrett told The Associated Press in an interview at his rural Mississippi home that, "Instead of this so-called civil rights bill, for example, that says you have to give preferences to minorities, I think the American people are going -- once they see the 'Obamanation' -- they're going to demand a tweaking of that and say, 'You have to put the majority into office,'" Barrett said.
While most Americans have little or no direct contact with white supremacists, organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center keep close tabs; the law center estimates some 200,000 people nationwide are active in such groups.
Explore More:
Find out more about Hate and Extremist Groups, Racial Issues, Racism and Bigotry and Social Issues, or try these articles:
* August 1, 2008: Who's Negative? Depends On Who's Asking
* July 10, 2008: Jackson 'Very Sorry' For Obama Comments
* June 2, 2008: Being Brown In A City Of Black And White
* May 29, 2008: Multiracial Americans Surge In Number, Voice
* May 21, 2008: Obama's Executive Sounding Board
David Duke: ‘We Have Lost Control Of Our Country’
POSTED: 9:12 am EDT August 8, 2008
PEARL, Miss. -- They're not exactly rooting for him, but prominent white supremacists anticipate a boost to their cause if Barack Obama becomes the first black president.
Compare Candidates
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, of Louisiana, said Democrat Obama would be a "visual aid" to the idea that whites have lost control of America.
Duke, once a Democrat who became a Republican in 1988 and served in the Louisiana House of Representatives, posted an essay on his Web site in June titled, "Obama Wins Demo Nomination: A Black Flag for White America."
Obama "will be a clear signal for millions of our people," Duke wrote. "Obama is a visual aid for White Americans who just don't get it yet that we have lost control of our country, and unless we get it back we are heading for complete annihilation as a people."
Richard Barrett, a 65-year-old lawyer who traveled the country for 40 years advocating what he perceives as the white side in racial issues, is convinced Obama will defeat Republican John McCain in November.
One of the leaders in the Nationalist Movement, Barrett told The Associated Press in an interview at his rural Mississippi home that, "Instead of this so-called civil rights bill, for example, that says you have to give preferences to minorities, I think the American people are going -- once they see the 'Obamanation' -- they're going to demand a tweaking of that and say, 'You have to put the majority into office,'" Barrett said.
While most Americans have little or no direct contact with white supremacists, organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center keep close tabs; the law center estimates some 200,000 people nationwide are active in such groups.
Explore More:
Find out more about Hate and Extremist Groups, Racial Issues, Racism and Bigotry and Social Issues, or try these articles:
* August 1, 2008: Who's Negative? Depends On Who's Asking
* July 10, 2008: Jackson 'Very Sorry' For Obama Comments
* June 2, 2008: Being Brown In A City Of Black And White
* May 29, 2008: Multiracial Americans Surge In Number, Voice
* May 21, 2008: Obama's Executive Sounding Board
Mayor posts bond on 2 new felony charges for allegedly assaulting cops
somebody else's comments from elsewhere:
Oh Kwame - just quit, leave now - you are a disgrace.
itsjustcommonsense wrote:
Let us review quickly:
Kwame is charged with multiple felonies in 2 cases, should have been more and maybe will be when the Manoogian party story really comes out
Kwame is out on bail bond in 2 cases. Lucky for him Judge Jackson felt sorry for him, Giles didn't
Kwame spent one night in jail cause he can't follow the rules everybody else has to follow
Kwame has no travel authorization, personal or business. No Democratic Convention, no Florida vation. Too bad
Kwame is on a tether. He will fit right in
Kwame's wife can't trust him past the front door
Kwame's kids must be very confused or embarrassed, probably both both
Kwame doesn't have a girlfriend anymore, at least that we know of
Everybody and their brother is now calling for him to resign
Nothing getting done in the city of Detroit because Kwame is in court all the time
Everybody is afraid to do business with Detroit for fear of getting screwed or caught up in this mess
AND
KWAME IS STILL IN OFFICE! ?????????????/
Walking On Water by Randall Kenan - Review by Walton Muyumba
WALKING ON WATER: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
Walton Muyumba
WALKING ON WATER: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century By Randall Kenan Alfred A. Knopf, 1999 New York 672 pages Hardback: $30.00
Randall Kenan's new book, Walking on Water, is written in the tradition of classical American travel literature. Yet uniquely, this travelogue, historical archive, memoir, ethnographic survey, and literary documentary addresses the complexities inherent in discussions of identity and race.
The author is best known for his fiction: his novel, A Visitation of Spirits, and a critically acclaimed collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. The blend of his elegantly wrought prose and impeccable historical documentation makes Kenan's impulse for exploration resonate with importance.
Kenan's Walking on Water enterprise, eight years in the making, was ignited by this set of "basic" questions: What does it mean to be a Black American? What exactly is African American culture? Who is Black? All are extremely unruly questions to pose, let alone answer. Rather than sift through these complicated matters alone, Kenan presses others for their interpretations.
The author avoids the most redundant settings. Instead of dwelling on the fecundity of Chicago's "Blackness," he ventures to Grand Forks, N.D., and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, for sounds from the "lower frequencies." Kenan travels to almost every regional quadrant and he introduces a cadre of folks -- artists, activists, students, and politicians -- whose narratives destabilize any notions of an "essential" Black experience or culture.
Kenan masterfully presents historical background for every area. He tells the story of the Black soldiers of the Army Corps of Engineers who built the most treacherous portion of the Alcan (the Alaskan-Canadian) highway. In San Francisco, Kenan ruminates on the cultural, political, and economic power of Mary Ellen Pleasant, confidante and financier behind the abolitionist, John Brown. Woven throughout is Kenan's voice guiding, suggesting, and surprising us with new ways to think about ourselves.
It is mind-boggling to read the multifarious explanations of what constitutes Blackness. From Clara Villarosa at the Hue-Man Experience Bookstore in Denver, to the Creoles and Black Frenchmen of Lafayette, La., to Herbert Heughan in Maine, there are no concrete answers to Kenan's questions. And yet, the variety of the voices transcribed to life by Kenan urge the reader to follow him to the book's end. Interestingly, Kenan may answer his interrogatives when he suggests that long before the term was coined, "Black culture was a postmodern culture; folks made it up as they went along. Therefore, who can be authentically Black, when every Black person holds the codes and blueprints of that Blackness?"
Indeed, it seems difficult to chart racial authenticity -- after all, isn't race a false category? There is no essential experience except for that ubiquitous moment when race is used by the "powers that be" to authorize, essentialize, ostracize, oppress, condemn, and murder black, brown, and beige bodies.
However, race -- Blackness in this case -- still has political necessity. There is a need for unity among Negroes to "band together against discrimination, to fight for parity, to safeguard against injustice inherently aimed at a person solely because of his or her skin color." Is the I snake swallowing or giving birth to itself?
One should take this book on, if for no other reason than to reconsidering how we imagine our individual relations to Blackness. Kenan extends the overtures made by recent, excellent memoirs like John Wideman's Fatheralong, Anthony Walton's Mississippi, and Deborah McDowell's Leaving Pipe Shop.
The remarkable quality of Kenan's book is that it is utterly his own, stylized and rendered in his unmistakable voice. It is buoyed by the clarity of the informants he includes within. Among other things, Walking on Water articulates that the attempt to work out our preoccupations with race and culture is attached to travel and exploration -- and that this remains a part of our American make-up. Walking on Water will become a movement in the journey worth revisiting again and again.
-- Walton Muyumba is a writer and a doctoral candidate, completing a dissertation on the philosophical aspects of the blues and African American literature at Indiana University.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Cox, Matthews & Associates
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
Walking on Water @ Amazon.com
Walton Muyumba
WALKING ON WATER: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century By Randall Kenan Alfred A. Knopf, 1999 New York 672 pages Hardback: $30.00
Randall Kenan's new book, Walking on Water, is written in the tradition of classical American travel literature. Yet uniquely, this travelogue, historical archive, memoir, ethnographic survey, and literary documentary addresses the complexities inherent in discussions of identity and race.
The author is best known for his fiction: his novel, A Visitation of Spirits, and a critically acclaimed collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. The blend of his elegantly wrought prose and impeccable historical documentation makes Kenan's impulse for exploration resonate with importance.
Kenan's Walking on Water enterprise, eight years in the making, was ignited by this set of "basic" questions: What does it mean to be a Black American? What exactly is African American culture? Who is Black? All are extremely unruly questions to pose, let alone answer. Rather than sift through these complicated matters alone, Kenan presses others for their interpretations.
The author avoids the most redundant settings. Instead of dwelling on the fecundity of Chicago's "Blackness," he ventures to Grand Forks, N.D., and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, for sounds from the "lower frequencies." Kenan travels to almost every regional quadrant and he introduces a cadre of folks -- artists, activists, students, and politicians -- whose narratives destabilize any notions of an "essential" Black experience or culture.
Kenan masterfully presents historical background for every area. He tells the story of the Black soldiers of the Army Corps of Engineers who built the most treacherous portion of the Alcan (the Alaskan-Canadian) highway. In San Francisco, Kenan ruminates on the cultural, political, and economic power of Mary Ellen Pleasant, confidante and financier behind the abolitionist, John Brown. Woven throughout is Kenan's voice guiding, suggesting, and surprising us with new ways to think about ourselves.
It is mind-boggling to read the multifarious explanations of what constitutes Blackness. From Clara Villarosa at the Hue-Man Experience Bookstore in Denver, to the Creoles and Black Frenchmen of Lafayette, La., to Herbert Heughan in Maine, there are no concrete answers to Kenan's questions. And yet, the variety of the voices transcribed to life by Kenan urge the reader to follow him to the book's end. Interestingly, Kenan may answer his interrogatives when he suggests that long before the term was coined, "Black culture was a postmodern culture; folks made it up as they went along. Therefore, who can be authentically Black, when every Black person holds the codes and blueprints of that Blackness?"
Indeed, it seems difficult to chart racial authenticity -- after all, isn't race a false category? There is no essential experience except for that ubiquitous moment when race is used by the "powers that be" to authorize, essentialize, ostracize, oppress, condemn, and murder black, brown, and beige bodies.
However, race -- Blackness in this case -- still has political necessity. There is a need for unity among Negroes to "band together against discrimination, to fight for parity, to safeguard against injustice inherently aimed at a person solely because of his or her skin color." Is the I snake swallowing or giving birth to itself?
One should take this book on, if for no other reason than to reconsidering how we imagine our individual relations to Blackness. Kenan extends the overtures made by recent, excellent memoirs like John Wideman's Fatheralong, Anthony Walton's Mississippi, and Deborah McDowell's Leaving Pipe Shop.
The remarkable quality of Kenan's book is that it is utterly his own, stylized and rendered in his unmistakable voice. It is buoyed by the clarity of the informants he includes within. Among other things, Walking on Water articulates that the attempt to work out our preoccupations with race and culture is attached to travel and exploration -- and that this remains a part of our American make-up. Walking on Water will become a movement in the journey worth revisiting again and again.
-- Walton Muyumba is a writer and a doctoral candidate, completing a dissertation on the philosophical aspects of the blues and African American literature at Indiana University.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Cox, Matthews & Associates
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
Walking on Water @ Amazon.com
All Colored Folk Kin
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Thursday, August 7, 2008
activistism
"Action Will Be Taken": Left Anti-intellectualism and Its Discontents
By Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti
"We can't get bogged down in analysis," one activist told us at an anti-war rally in New York last fall, spitting out that last word like a hairball. He could have relaxed his vigilance. This event deftly avoided such bogs, loudly opposing the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan without offering any credible ideas about it (we're not counting the notion that the entire escapade was driven by Unocal and Lockheed Martin, the "analysis" advanced by many speakers). But the moment called for doing something more than brandishing the exact same signs - "Stop the Bombing" and "No War for Oil" - that activists poked skywards during the Gulf War. This latest war called for some thinking, and few were doing much of that.
So what is the ideology of the activist left (and by that we mean the global justice, peace, media democracy, community organizing, financial populist, and green movements)? Socialist? Mostly not - too state-phobic. Some actvisits are anarchists - but mainly out of temperamental reflex, not rigorous thought. Others are liberals - though most are too confrontational and too skeptical about the system to embrace that label. And many others profess no ideology at all. So over all is the activist left just an inchoate, "post-ideological" mass of do-gooders, pragmatists and puppeteers?
No. The young troublemakers of today do have an ideology and it is as deeply felt and intellectually totalizing as any of the great belief systems of yore. The cadres who populate those endless meetings, who bang the drum, who lead the "trainings" and paint the puppets, do indeed have a creed. They are Activismists.
That's right, Activismists. This brave new ideology combines the political illiteracy of hyper-mediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a nineteenth century temperance crusade. In this worldview, all roads lead to more activism and more activists. And the one who acts is righteous. The activistists seem to borrow their philosophy from the factory boss in a Heinrich Boll short story who greets his employees each morning with the exhortation "Let's have some action." To which the workers obediently reply: "Action will be taken!"
Activists unconsciously echoing factory bosses? The parallel isn't as far-fetched as it might seem, as another German, Theodor Adorno, suggests. Adorno - who admittedly doesn't have the last word on activism, since he called the cops on University of Frankfurt demonstrators in 1968 - nonetheless had a good point when he criticized the student and antiwar movement of the 1960s for what he called "actionism." In his eyes this was an unreflective "collective compulsion for positivity that allows its immediate translation into practice." Though embraced by people who imagine themselves to be radical agitators, that thoughtless compulsion mirrors the pragmatic empiricism of the dominant culture - "not the least way in which actionism fits so smoothly into society's prevailing trend." Actionism, he concluded, "is regressive...it refuses to reflect on its own impotence."
It may seem odd to cite this just when activistism seems to be working fine. Protest is on an upswing; even the post 9/11 frenzy of terror baiting didn't shut down the movement. Demonstrators were out in force to protest the World Economic Forum, with a grace and discipline that buoyed sprits worldwide. The youth getting busted, gassed and trailed by the cops are putting their bodies on the line to oppose global capital; they are brave and committed, even heroic.
But is action enough? We pose this question precisely because activism seems so strong. The flipside of all this agitation is a corrosive and aggressive anti-intellectualism. We object to this hostility toward thinking - not only because we've all got a cranky intellectual bent, but also because it limits the movement's transformative power.
Our gripe is historically specific. If everyone was busy with bullshit doctrinal debates we would prescribe a little anti-intellectualism. But that is not the case right now.
The Real Price of Not Thinking
How does activist anti-intellectualism manifest on the ground? One instance is the reduction of strategy to mere tactics, to horrible effect. Take for example the largely failed San Francisco protest against the National Association of Broadcasters, an action which ended up costing tens of thousand of dollars, gained almost no attention, had no impact on the NAB, and nearly ruined one of the sponsoring organizations. During a post-mortem discussion of this debacle one of the organizers reminded her audience that: "We had three thousand people marching through [the shopping district] Union Square protesting the media. That's amazing. It had never happened before." Never mind the utter non-impact of this aimless march. The point was clear: we marched for ourselves. We were our own targets. Activism made us good.
Thoughtless activism confuses the formulation of political aims. One of us was on a conference panel during which an activist lawyer went on about the virtues of small businesses, and the need for city policy to encourage them. When it was pointed out that enthusiasm for small business should be tempered by a recognition that smaller businesses tend to pay less, are harder to organize, offer fewer fringe benefits, and are more dangerous than larger businesses, the lawyer dismissed this as "the paralysis of analysis." On another panel, when it was pointed out that Alinsky-style community organizing is a practical and theoretical failure whose severe limitations need to be recognized, an organizer and community credit union promoter shut down the conversation with a simple: "I just don't want to discuss this."
The anti-war "movement" is perhaps the most egregious recent example of a promising political phenomenon that was badly damaged by the anti-intellectual outlook of activistism. While activists frequently comment on the success of the growing peace movement - many actions take place, conferences are planned, new people become activists, a huge protest is scheduled for April in Washington, D.C. - no one seems to notice that it's no longer clear what war we're protesting. Repression at home? Future wars in Somalia or Iraq? Even in the case of Afghanistan, it turned out to be important to have something to say to skeptics who asked: "What's your alternative? I think the government should protect me from terrorists, and plus this Taliban doesn't seem so great." The movement failed to address such questions, and protests dwindled.
On some college campuses, by contrast, where the war has been seen as a complicated opportunity for conversation rather than sign-waving, the movement has done better. But everywhere, the unwillingness to think about what it means to be against the war and how war fits into the global project of American empire, has also led to a poverty of thinking about what kind of actions make sense. "How can we strategically affect the situation?" asks Lara Jiramanus of Boston's Campus Anti-War Coalition. "So we want to stop the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan - what does it mean to have that as our goal? I don't think we talk about that enough."
We're not arguing for conformist ideologies. The impulse to resist hierarchy and mind-control is one of the more appealing and useful facets of the new activism. Consider the campus anti-sweatshop movement, which includes members of the International Socialist Organization, SDS-type radical democrats, anarchists and plain-vanilla liberals. This movement's willingness to embrace radicals and non-radicals alike has been a strength, attracting both policy wonks and people who like to chain their throats to the dean's desk. Such flexibility is usually commendable. What bothers us about activistism as an ideology is that is renders taboo any discussion of ideas or beliefs, and thus stymies both thought and action.
Many activists agree. Jiramanus, who is also involved in the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, says that some in that group believe that the fight for a living wage is part of a "larger ideal" while others don't. "But if your analysis is not broad enough," she points out, "you're not much different from those groups that do charity work." In her campus labor solidarity group, "people will say, 'I'm not progressive, I just care about this issue.' There's a failure to think of our work in a larger context, and a reluctance to ask people what they believe. There needs to be a venue for talking about alternative economic systems." But she says these questions don't get talked about, and people who do think about them are afraid to bring them up in meetings. "It's like, 'there's no time for it, we need to win the living wage campaign right now.'"
Thoughtful people find this censorious hyperpragmatism alienating and can drop away from organizing as a result. But that's not the only problem. It's important to encourage better thinking, says Jiramanus, "so hippie-to-yuppie doesn't happen again." As she points out, without an analysis of what's really wrong with the world - or a vision of the better world you're trying to create - people have no reason to continue being activists once a particular campaign is over. In this way, activist-ism plus single-issue politics can end up defeating itself. Activistism is tedious, and its foot soldiers suffer constant burnout. Thinking, after all, is engaging; were it encouraged, Jiramanus pleads, "We'd all be enjoying ourselves a bit more."
Increasingly, there are activists who treat ideas as important. "We need to develop a new rhetoric that connects sweatshops -- and living wage and the right to organize -- to the global economy," says the University of Michigan's Jackie Bray, an anti-sweatshop activist. Liana Molina of Santa Clara University agrees: "I think our economic system determines everything!" But about the student movement's somewhat vague ideology, she has mixed feelings. "It's good to be ambiguous and inclusive," so as not to alienate more conservative, newer, or less politicized members, she says. "But I also think a class analysis is needed. Then again, that gets shady, because people are like, 'Well, what are you for, socialism? What?'"
The problem is that activists, like Molina, who are asking the difficult questions that push into new political terrain are very often forced to operate in frustrating isolation, without the support of a community of fellow thinkers.
From Whence Came This Malady?
Steve Duncombe, a NYC-DAN activist, author, and NYU professor, says his fellow activists "think very little about capitalism outside a moral discourse: big is bad, and nothing about the state except in a sort of right wing dismissal: state as authoritarian daddy."
Activistism is also intimately related to the decline of Marxism, which at its best thrived on debates about the relations between theory and practice, part and whole. Unfortunately, much of this tradition has devolved into the alternately dreary and hilarious rants in sectarian papers. Marxism's decline (but not death: the three of us would happily claim the name) has led to wooly ideas about a nicer capitalism, and an indifference to how the system works as a whole. This blinkering is especially virulent in the U.S. where a petit-bourgeois populism is the native radical strain, and anti-intellectualism is almost hard-wired into the culture. And because activistism emphasizes practicality, achievability, and implementation over all else, a theory dedicated to understanding deep structures with an eye towards changing them necessarily gets shunted aside.
Marxism's decline isn't just an intellectual concern - it too has practical effects. If you lack any serious understanding of how capitalism works, then it's easy to delude yourself into thinking that moral appeals to the consciences of CEOs and finance ministers will have some effect. You might think that central banks' habit of provoking recessions when the unemployment rate gets too low is a policy based on a mere misunderstanding. You might think that structural adjustment and imperial war are just bad lifestyle choices.
Unreflective pragmatism is also encouraged by much of the left's dependency on foundations. Philanthropy's role in structuring activism is rarely discussed, because almost everyone wants a grant (including us). But it should be. Foundations like focused entities that undertake specific politely meliorative schemes. They don't want anyone to look too closely at the system that's given them buckets of money that less fortunate people are forced to pay for.
Activistism is contaminated by the cultural forms and political content of the non-profit sector. Because nonprofits are essentially businesses that sell press coverage of themselves to foundation program officers, they operate according to the anti-intellectual logic of hyper-pragmatism and the fiscal year short-termism generated by financial competition with their peer organizations. When nonprofit business lead, the whole left begins to take on the same obsessive focus with "deliverables" and "take aways" and "staying on message." For many political nonprofits, actions - regardless of their value or real impact - are the product, which in turn promise access to more grants.
Nonprofit culture fosters an array of mind-killing practices. Brainstorming on butcher paper and the use of break out groups are effective methods for generating and collecting ideas and or organizing pieces of a larger action. However when used to organize political discussions these nonprofit tools can be disastrous. More often than not, everybody says some thing, break out groups report back to the whole group, lists are complied - and nothing really happens.
What is to be done?
Our point is not that there should be less activism. The left is nothing without visible, disruptive displays of power. We applaud activism and engage in it ourselves. What we are calling for is an assault on the stupidity that pervades American culture. This implies a more democratic approach to the life of the mind and creating spaces for ideas in our lives and political work.
We're not calling for leadership by intellectuals. On the contrary, we challenge left activist culture to live up to its anti-hierarchical claims: activists should themselves become intellectuals. Why reproduce the larger society's division between mental and physical labor? The rousing applause for Noam Chomsky at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre was hardly undeserved, but ideas don't belong on pedestals. They belong in the street, at work, in the home, at the bar and on the barricades.
We put out this call - to indulge a bit of activist-ism lingo - because the current moment demands some thinking. With overwhelming approval for Bush and his endless war, waving one's "Stop the Bombing" sign from ten years ago won't build a mass movement. Nor will bland moralism win the day: "War is Not the Answer" is little better than "War is the Answer" -- as read a counter demonstrator's placard recently spotted in Manhattan.
The Movement is also undergoing a fascinating rhetorical shift, as activists reject terms like "antiglobalization," which emphasized - not very lucidly - what they're against, in favor of slogans like "Another World is Possible" which dare to evoke the possibility of radically different economic arrangements. What would that other world look like?
Activists must engage that question - and to do so, they have to do a better job of understanding how this world really works. Intellectuals briefing activist groups on some aspect of how things are often face a tediously reductive question: "That's all very interesting, but how can we organize around that? What would be the slogans?"
None of us were in Genoa or Porto Alegre, but we're told that there was plenty of serious discussion of both this world and the better one. But Americans shouldn't have to go all the way to Brazil or Italy to talk and think about this stuff. Unfortunately here at home, those with the confidence to discuss such questions are too often the ones with the silliest ideas: at the "Another World Is Possible rally" during WEF weekend, speakers waxed hopefully of a world in which all produce will be locally grown. That's absurd, unless you're planning to abandon cities, give up on industrial civilization, and reduce the world's population by 95%. But we're barely acknowledging these issues, much less debating them.
The spirit we wish to inspire was expressed a few years ago by a Latin American graduate student. Seeing one of us holding a copy of Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory, he exclaimed with all seriousness: "That book is like having an intellectual grenade in your hand. Hasta la Victoria." In many other countries, activists' tiny apartments are stacked with the well-thumbed works of Bakunin, Marx and Fanon. We'd like to see that kind of engagement here. And judging at least from the European experience, it would pay off even in activistism's own pragmatic terms: protests in major European cities routinely dwarf our own, and activists there have far more influence on mainstream discourse and even government policy. In the long run, movements that can't think can't really do too much either.
By Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti
"We can't get bogged down in analysis," one activist told us at an anti-war rally in New York last fall, spitting out that last word like a hairball. He could have relaxed his vigilance. This event deftly avoided such bogs, loudly opposing the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan without offering any credible ideas about it (we're not counting the notion that the entire escapade was driven by Unocal and Lockheed Martin, the "analysis" advanced by many speakers). But the moment called for doing something more than brandishing the exact same signs - "Stop the Bombing" and "No War for Oil" - that activists poked skywards during the Gulf War. This latest war called for some thinking, and few were doing much of that.
So what is the ideology of the activist left (and by that we mean the global justice, peace, media democracy, community organizing, financial populist, and green movements)? Socialist? Mostly not - too state-phobic. Some actvisits are anarchists - but mainly out of temperamental reflex, not rigorous thought. Others are liberals - though most are too confrontational and too skeptical about the system to embrace that label. And many others profess no ideology at all. So over all is the activist left just an inchoate, "post-ideological" mass of do-gooders, pragmatists and puppeteers?
No. The young troublemakers of today do have an ideology and it is as deeply felt and intellectually totalizing as any of the great belief systems of yore. The cadres who populate those endless meetings, who bang the drum, who lead the "trainings" and paint the puppets, do indeed have a creed. They are Activismists.
That's right, Activismists. This brave new ideology combines the political illiteracy of hyper-mediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a nineteenth century temperance crusade. In this worldview, all roads lead to more activism and more activists. And the one who acts is righteous. The activistists seem to borrow their philosophy from the factory boss in a Heinrich Boll short story who greets his employees each morning with the exhortation "Let's have some action." To which the workers obediently reply: "Action will be taken!"
Activists unconsciously echoing factory bosses? The parallel isn't as far-fetched as it might seem, as another German, Theodor Adorno, suggests. Adorno - who admittedly doesn't have the last word on activism, since he called the cops on University of Frankfurt demonstrators in 1968 - nonetheless had a good point when he criticized the student and antiwar movement of the 1960s for what he called "actionism." In his eyes this was an unreflective "collective compulsion for positivity that allows its immediate translation into practice." Though embraced by people who imagine themselves to be radical agitators, that thoughtless compulsion mirrors the pragmatic empiricism of the dominant culture - "not the least way in which actionism fits so smoothly into society's prevailing trend." Actionism, he concluded, "is regressive...it refuses to reflect on its own impotence."
It may seem odd to cite this just when activistism seems to be working fine. Protest is on an upswing; even the post 9/11 frenzy of terror baiting didn't shut down the movement. Demonstrators were out in force to protest the World Economic Forum, with a grace and discipline that buoyed sprits worldwide. The youth getting busted, gassed and trailed by the cops are putting their bodies on the line to oppose global capital; they are brave and committed, even heroic.
But is action enough? We pose this question precisely because activism seems so strong. The flipside of all this agitation is a corrosive and aggressive anti-intellectualism. We object to this hostility toward thinking - not only because we've all got a cranky intellectual bent, but also because it limits the movement's transformative power.
Our gripe is historically specific. If everyone was busy with bullshit doctrinal debates we would prescribe a little anti-intellectualism. But that is not the case right now.
The Real Price of Not Thinking
How does activist anti-intellectualism manifest on the ground? One instance is the reduction of strategy to mere tactics, to horrible effect. Take for example the largely failed San Francisco protest against the National Association of Broadcasters, an action which ended up costing tens of thousand of dollars, gained almost no attention, had no impact on the NAB, and nearly ruined one of the sponsoring organizations. During a post-mortem discussion of this debacle one of the organizers reminded her audience that: "We had three thousand people marching through [the shopping district] Union Square protesting the media. That's amazing. It had never happened before." Never mind the utter non-impact of this aimless march. The point was clear: we marched for ourselves. We were our own targets. Activism made us good.
Thoughtless activism confuses the formulation of political aims. One of us was on a conference panel during which an activist lawyer went on about the virtues of small businesses, and the need for city policy to encourage them. When it was pointed out that enthusiasm for small business should be tempered by a recognition that smaller businesses tend to pay less, are harder to organize, offer fewer fringe benefits, and are more dangerous than larger businesses, the lawyer dismissed this as "the paralysis of analysis." On another panel, when it was pointed out that Alinsky-style community organizing is a practical and theoretical failure whose severe limitations need to be recognized, an organizer and community credit union promoter shut down the conversation with a simple: "I just don't want to discuss this."
The anti-war "movement" is perhaps the most egregious recent example of a promising political phenomenon that was badly damaged by the anti-intellectual outlook of activistism. While activists frequently comment on the success of the growing peace movement - many actions take place, conferences are planned, new people become activists, a huge protest is scheduled for April in Washington, D.C. - no one seems to notice that it's no longer clear what war we're protesting. Repression at home? Future wars in Somalia or Iraq? Even in the case of Afghanistan, it turned out to be important to have something to say to skeptics who asked: "What's your alternative? I think the government should protect me from terrorists, and plus this Taliban doesn't seem so great." The movement failed to address such questions, and protests dwindled.
On some college campuses, by contrast, where the war has been seen as a complicated opportunity for conversation rather than sign-waving, the movement has done better. But everywhere, the unwillingness to think about what it means to be against the war and how war fits into the global project of American empire, has also led to a poverty of thinking about what kind of actions make sense. "How can we strategically affect the situation?" asks Lara Jiramanus of Boston's Campus Anti-War Coalition. "So we want to stop the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan - what does it mean to have that as our goal? I don't think we talk about that enough."
We're not arguing for conformist ideologies. The impulse to resist hierarchy and mind-control is one of the more appealing and useful facets of the new activism. Consider the campus anti-sweatshop movement, which includes members of the International Socialist Organization, SDS-type radical democrats, anarchists and plain-vanilla liberals. This movement's willingness to embrace radicals and non-radicals alike has been a strength, attracting both policy wonks and people who like to chain their throats to the dean's desk. Such flexibility is usually commendable. What bothers us about activistism as an ideology is that is renders taboo any discussion of ideas or beliefs, and thus stymies both thought and action.
Many activists agree. Jiramanus, who is also involved in the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, says that some in that group believe that the fight for a living wage is part of a "larger ideal" while others don't. "But if your analysis is not broad enough," she points out, "you're not much different from those groups that do charity work." In her campus labor solidarity group, "people will say, 'I'm not progressive, I just care about this issue.' There's a failure to think of our work in a larger context, and a reluctance to ask people what they believe. There needs to be a venue for talking about alternative economic systems." But she says these questions don't get talked about, and people who do think about them are afraid to bring them up in meetings. "It's like, 'there's no time for it, we need to win the living wage campaign right now.'"
Thoughtful people find this censorious hyperpragmatism alienating and can drop away from organizing as a result. But that's not the only problem. It's important to encourage better thinking, says Jiramanus, "so hippie-to-yuppie doesn't happen again." As she points out, without an analysis of what's really wrong with the world - or a vision of the better world you're trying to create - people have no reason to continue being activists once a particular campaign is over. In this way, activist-ism plus single-issue politics can end up defeating itself. Activistism is tedious, and its foot soldiers suffer constant burnout. Thinking, after all, is engaging; were it encouraged, Jiramanus pleads, "We'd all be enjoying ourselves a bit more."
Increasingly, there are activists who treat ideas as important. "We need to develop a new rhetoric that connects sweatshops -- and living wage and the right to organize -- to the global economy," says the University of Michigan's Jackie Bray, an anti-sweatshop activist. Liana Molina of Santa Clara University agrees: "I think our economic system determines everything!" But about the student movement's somewhat vague ideology, she has mixed feelings. "It's good to be ambiguous and inclusive," so as not to alienate more conservative, newer, or less politicized members, she says. "But I also think a class analysis is needed. Then again, that gets shady, because people are like, 'Well, what are you for, socialism? What?'"
The problem is that activists, like Molina, who are asking the difficult questions that push into new political terrain are very often forced to operate in frustrating isolation, without the support of a community of fellow thinkers.
From Whence Came This Malady?
Steve Duncombe, a NYC-DAN activist, author, and NYU professor, says his fellow activists "think very little about capitalism outside a moral discourse: big is bad, and nothing about the state except in a sort of right wing dismissal: state as authoritarian daddy."
Activistism is also intimately related to the decline of Marxism, which at its best thrived on debates about the relations between theory and practice, part and whole. Unfortunately, much of this tradition has devolved into the alternately dreary and hilarious rants in sectarian papers. Marxism's decline (but not death: the three of us would happily claim the name) has led to wooly ideas about a nicer capitalism, and an indifference to how the system works as a whole. This blinkering is especially virulent in the U.S. where a petit-bourgeois populism is the native radical strain, and anti-intellectualism is almost hard-wired into the culture. And because activistism emphasizes practicality, achievability, and implementation over all else, a theory dedicated to understanding deep structures with an eye towards changing them necessarily gets shunted aside.
Marxism's decline isn't just an intellectual concern - it too has practical effects. If you lack any serious understanding of how capitalism works, then it's easy to delude yourself into thinking that moral appeals to the consciences of CEOs and finance ministers will have some effect. You might think that central banks' habit of provoking recessions when the unemployment rate gets too low is a policy based on a mere misunderstanding. You might think that structural adjustment and imperial war are just bad lifestyle choices.
Unreflective pragmatism is also encouraged by much of the left's dependency on foundations. Philanthropy's role in structuring activism is rarely discussed, because almost everyone wants a grant (including us). But it should be. Foundations like focused entities that undertake specific politely meliorative schemes. They don't want anyone to look too closely at the system that's given them buckets of money that less fortunate people are forced to pay for.
Activistism is contaminated by the cultural forms and political content of the non-profit sector. Because nonprofits are essentially businesses that sell press coverage of themselves to foundation program officers, they operate according to the anti-intellectual logic of hyper-pragmatism and the fiscal year short-termism generated by financial competition with their peer organizations. When nonprofit business lead, the whole left begins to take on the same obsessive focus with "deliverables" and "take aways" and "staying on message." For many political nonprofits, actions - regardless of their value or real impact - are the product, which in turn promise access to more grants.
Nonprofit culture fosters an array of mind-killing practices. Brainstorming on butcher paper and the use of break out groups are effective methods for generating and collecting ideas and or organizing pieces of a larger action. However when used to organize political discussions these nonprofit tools can be disastrous. More often than not, everybody says some thing, break out groups report back to the whole group, lists are complied - and nothing really happens.
What is to be done?
Our point is not that there should be less activism. The left is nothing without visible, disruptive displays of power. We applaud activism and engage in it ourselves. What we are calling for is an assault on the stupidity that pervades American culture. This implies a more democratic approach to the life of the mind and creating spaces for ideas in our lives and political work.
We're not calling for leadership by intellectuals. On the contrary, we challenge left activist culture to live up to its anti-hierarchical claims: activists should themselves become intellectuals. Why reproduce the larger society's division between mental and physical labor? The rousing applause for Noam Chomsky at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre was hardly undeserved, but ideas don't belong on pedestals. They belong in the street, at work, in the home, at the bar and on the barricades.
We put out this call - to indulge a bit of activist-ism lingo - because the current moment demands some thinking. With overwhelming approval for Bush and his endless war, waving one's "Stop the Bombing" sign from ten years ago won't build a mass movement. Nor will bland moralism win the day: "War is Not the Answer" is little better than "War is the Answer" -- as read a counter demonstrator's placard recently spotted in Manhattan.
The Movement is also undergoing a fascinating rhetorical shift, as activists reject terms like "antiglobalization," which emphasized - not very lucidly - what they're against, in favor of slogans like "Another World is Possible" which dare to evoke the possibility of radically different economic arrangements. What would that other world look like?
Activists must engage that question - and to do so, they have to do a better job of understanding how this world really works. Intellectuals briefing activist groups on some aspect of how things are often face a tediously reductive question: "That's all very interesting, but how can we organize around that? What would be the slogans?"
None of us were in Genoa or Porto Alegre, but we're told that there was plenty of serious discussion of both this world and the better one. But Americans shouldn't have to go all the way to Brazil or Italy to talk and think about this stuff. Unfortunately here at home, those with the confidence to discuss such questions are too often the ones with the silliest ideas: at the "Another World Is Possible rally" during WEF weekend, speakers waxed hopefully of a world in which all produce will be locally grown. That's absurd, unless you're planning to abandon cities, give up on industrial civilization, and reduce the world's population by 95%. But we're barely acknowledging these issues, much less debating them.
The spirit we wish to inspire was expressed a few years ago by a Latin American graduate student. Seeing one of us holding a copy of Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory, he exclaimed with all seriousness: "That book is like having an intellectual grenade in your hand. Hasta la Victoria." In many other countries, activists' tiny apartments are stacked with the well-thumbed works of Bakunin, Marx and Fanon. We'd like to see that kind of engagement here. And judging at least from the European experience, it would pay off even in activistism's own pragmatic terms: protests in major European cities routinely dwarf our own, and activists there have far more influence on mainstream discourse and even government policy. In the long run, movements that can't think can't really do too much either.
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