"Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For"

This Rolling Stone article is apparently causing a big stir in various places - but a lot of it sure makes sense to me (particularly #1).    The system we're using is clearly broken at this point - so why can't we just try something else for awhile?    

Why must we be stuck with this "deregulated free-market" ideology when it's obviously not working?  Why can't people who are unemployed work on, for instance, the "infrastructure" that we're always hearing is falling apart?    Why must we all be beholden to a financial/speculative class that produces nothing at all?

And Millennials aren't the only ones who ought to support major economic reforms; the system is broken, and I don't think it's going to get any better on its own.

It's a new year, but one thing hasn't changed: The economy still blows. Five years after Wall Street crashed, America's banker-gamblers have only gotten richer, while huge swaths of the country are still drowning in personal debt, tens of millions of Americans remain unemployed – and the new jobs being created are largely low-wage, sub-contracted, part-time grunt work.

Millennials have been especially hard-hit by the downturn, which is probably why so many people in this generation (like myself) regard capitalism with a level of suspicion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But that egalitarian impulse isn't often accompanied by concrete proposals about how to get out of this catastrophe. Here are a few things we might want to start fighting for, pronto, if we want to grow old in a just, fair society, rather than the economic hellhole our parents have handed us.

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
Unemployment blows. The easiest and most direct solution is for the government to guarantee that everyone who wants to contribute productively to society is able to earn a decent living in the public sector. There are millions of people who want to work, and there's tons of work that needs doing – it's a no-brainer. And this idea isn't as radical as it might sound: It's similar to what the federal Works Progress Administration made possible during Roosevelt's New Deal, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. vocally supported a public-sector job guarantee in the 1960s.

A job guarantee that paid a living wage would anchor prices, drive up conditions for workers at megacorporations like Walmart and McDonald's, and target employment for the poor and long-term unemployed – people to whom conventional stimulus money rarely trickles all the way down. The program would automatically expand during private-sector downturns and contract during private-sector upswings, balancing out the business cycle and sending people from job to job, rather than job to unemployment, when times got tough.

Some economists have proposed running a job guarantee through the non-profit sector, which would make it even easier to suit the job to the worker. Imagine a world where people could contribute the skills that inspire them – teaching, tutoring, urban farming, cleaning up the environment, painting murals – rather than telemarketing or whatever other stupid tasks bosses need done to supplement their millions. Sounds nice, doesn't it?

2. Social Security for All
But let's think even bigger. Because as much as unemployment blows, so do jobs. What if people didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month. A proposal along these lines has been gaining traction in Switzerland, and it's starting to get a lot of attention here, too.

We live in the age of 3D printers and self-replicating robots. Actual human workers are increasingly surplus to requirement – that's one major reason why we have such a big unemployment problem. A universal basic income would address this epidemic at the root and provide everyone, in the words of Duke professor Kathi Weeks, "time to cultivate new needs for pleasures, activities, senses, passions, affects, and socialities that exceed the options of working and saving, producing and accumulating."

Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.

The next two, 3. Take Back The Land, and 4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody probably aren't going to happen - and probably shouldn't happen.  But I really do like #5:

5. A Public Bank in Every State
You know what else really blows? Wall Street. The whole point of a finance sector is supposed to be collecting the surplus that the whole economy has worked to produce, and channeling that surplus wealth toward its most socially valuable uses. It is difficult to overstate how completely awful our finance sector has been at accomplishing that basic goal. Let's try to change that by allowing state governments into the banking game.

There is only one state that currently has a public option for banking: North Dakota. When North Dakotans pay state taxes, the money gets deposited in the state's bank, which in turn offers cheap loans to farmers, students and businesses. The Bank of North Dakota doesn't make seedy, destined-to-default loans, slice them up inscrutably and sell them on a secondary market. It doesn't play around with incomprehensible derivatives and allow its executives to extract billions of dollars. It just makes loans and works with debtors to pay them off.

If that idea – or any of the others described in this piece – sounds good to you, there's a bitter political struggle to be waged. Let's get to work.

The point is:  major reforms are going to be necessary because the world is changing in many ways, and we can't be so invested in the "capitalist ideal" that we will never reform anything - and that we continue to ignore obvious major problems.

"Your Brain on Poverty"

A good article by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic.   The logic here applies not only to poverty, of course, but to depression and mental illness generally - and to any kind of "bleakness" or brokenness, as mentioned in the Gawker quote:

In August, Science published a landmark study concluding that poverty, itself, hurts our ability to make decisions about school, finances, and life, imposing a mental burden similar to losing 13 IQ points.

It was widely seen as a counter-argument to claims that poor people are "to blame" for bad decisions and a rebuke to policies that withhold money from the poorest families unless they behave in a certain way. After all, if being poor leads to bad decision-making (as opposed to the other way around), then giving cash should alleviate the cognitive burdens of poverty, all on its own.

Sometimes, science doesn't stick without a proper anecdote, and "Why I Make Terrible Decisions," a comment published on Gawker's Kinja platform by a person in poverty, is a devastating illustration of the Science study. I've bolded what I found the most moving, insightful portions, but it's a moving and insightful testimony all the way through.

I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It’s not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn’t that I blow five bucks at Wendy’s. It’s that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There’s a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there’s money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.

Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It’s why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that’s all you get. You’re probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don’t plan long-term because if we do we’ll just get our hearts broken. It’s best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.

When neuroscientists Joseph W. Kable and Joseph T. McGuire studied time, uncertainty and decision-making, they found that virtues like patience and self-control weren't as simple previous studies suggested. In the ubiquitous Marshmallow study, for example, kids who ate the treat quickly were deemed impatient and kids who waited had self-control and, on the whole, went on to lead more productive lives, the study found.

But rational self-control in the real world, Kable says, isn't so black-and-white. Perhaps you have enough patience to wait an hour for a train, or to lose one pound each week with exercise and dieting. That sounds responsible. But what happens if the train isn't there in 90 minutes? If you never lose weight and you're making yourself miserable with your diet? Maybe you should give up! "In this situation, giving up can be a natural — indeed, a rational — response to a time frame that wasn’t properly framed to begin with," Maria Konnikova summed it up for the Times.

As Andrew Golis points out, this might suggest something even deeper than the idea that poverty's stress interferes with our ability to make good decisions. The inescapability of poverty weighs so heavily on the author that s/he abandons long-term planning entirely, because the short term needs are so great and the long-term gains so implausible. The train is just not coming. What if the psychology of poverty, which can appear so irrational to those not in poverty, is actually "the most rational response to a world of chaos and unpredictable outcomes," he wrote.

None of this is an argument against poorer families trying to save or plan for the long-term. It's an argument for context. As Eldar Shafir, the author of the Science study, told The Atlantic Cities' Emily Badger: “All the data shows it isn't about poor people, it’s about people who happen to be in poverty. All the data suggests it is not the person, it's the context they’re inhabiting.”

"What the church has that the Sunday Assembly doesn’t"

Here's something interesting at "Mission Minded":

The Sunday Assembly—an atheist, churchlike organization based in London—has received a bit of press lately, first in the Economist and then on the BBC.

On the one hand, I think the apparent success of the Sunday Assembly points to the deeply felt need in the Euro-Atlantic world for community and togetherness. So much of our lives is pulling us apart these days (or bringing us together in unhelpful ways) that I think lots of people are looking for a safe place simply to be with one another. If, for one reason or another, they can’t find it in church, they might look for something like the Sunday Assembly. That they have to look to the Sunday Assembly for this is an indictment of the church, not a critique of the Sunday Assembly.

But as I was listening to the BBC story—lots of upbeat, encouraging chatter, like “who’s ready for another song?”—I could think only of one thing: my many years as a summer camp counselor. In that line of work, the keys to success are enthusiasm and energy—the more the better. I have convinced scores of children to sing inane songs by acting like it was the most wonderful, best, coolest thing ever—my enthusiasm led to my success. The way these Sunday Assembly folks were whipping up their congregation was, I thought, more than a little similar.

But there are problems in this world—illness, addiction, death—to which more enthusiasm is not the answer. The Christian tradition, however, addresses these issues by speaking of sin, grace, repentance, forgiveness, mercy, and so on. I hope people go to church when they are feeling good about life. But it is when people are struggling with life that they should feel especially welcome.   Church is the place you go when things aren’t working out. (That it is not always seen this way is another indictment of the church.) It is hard to see how a new widower grieving the loss of his wife would find comfort or solace in singing “Celebration” but hopefully in the celebration of the Eucharist he finds the reminder of Christ’s ultimate triumph over death. And even my energy and enthusiasm as a camp counselor could give way to pastoral attention when the situation called for it.

(I grant that my knowledge of the Sunday Assembly is limited and perhaps they have ways of addressing these concerns I do not know about. Still, it’s hard to see a moment of silence compares to the triumphant victory of Christ.)

Church people don’t always like to admit this, but churches exist in a competitive marketplace—whether it is the Sunday Assembly, soccer games, or simply morning television, there are lots of other activities out there competing for people’s attention. But one thing about competition is that it can force organizations to refocus on their core competencies, their competitive advantage.

I wonder if the Sunday Assembly can help churches return to the central themes and traditions that have carried it the past 2000 years.

As I wrote over there, I actually think it’s a very good sign that people are meeting this way. I myself returned to the church after decades away (since childhood, really), and found it was good be there, to sing (and pray) together and think about the larger reality of things (something we normally don’t do, or do only rarely).

The question, really, will be: is there anything there that can continue to bind people together on a long-term basis?  It seems to me that only theology can do this – and from the evidence, only religion has ever accomplished it. Nothing else has ever lasted - and I do think that has a great deal to do with Jesse Zink's idea that "Church is the place you go when things aren’t working out. .... It is hard to see how a new widower grieving the loss of his wife would find comfort or solace in singing 'Celebration' but hopefully in the celebration of the Eucharist he finds the reminder of Christ’s ultimate triumph over death."   That is the church’s real strength: its ability to deal with all of human life, from the depths to the heights, is indeed “What the church has that Sunday assembly doesn’t” – at least not yet.  (It also, BTW, has something that’s absolutely central to the spiritual life – yet at the same time so unnatural to us that we’d never think of it on our own if it weren’t a regular and deeply embedded discipline: self-examination, self-criticism, and “amendment of life.”)

William James said, about religion, that “First, [religion] says that the best things are more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. …. The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true.” This, to me, is one of the very valuable things about religion, and about its being in deep touch with the human past – something that’s now almost unique to religion, in fact.

Getting in touch with the deep things, the eternal things – the book club and philosophy groups are attempts to do this – are ways of putting our own lives and our own problems into perspective. This also helps us identify with other people in a deeper way.

In fact, I won’t be at all surprised if the church ultimately benefits from things like this; it has 2,000 years of experience in doing these things, and does them as a matter of course.  The church's ability to deal at once in every kind of human joy, and also with the deep pains of life, is its central strength.  Once I returned to the church, and had a little taste of music and togetherness – I realized that the church had many deeper things to say, and I gravitated towards people and parishes that were unabashed about saying them.

I think the church today is living with the burden of its history – and its perceived (and sometimes real!) role as part of the “status quo” and of the “Powers That Be.” That is going away now, which means that the church can get back to its better and more fundamental role. 

"'Catholic' confession is good for the soul - says Archbishop of Canterbury"

In the Telegraph.   Things are happening! 

The Most Rev Justin Welby advised churchgoers that it could be an “enormously
powerful” experience to unburden themselves to a confessor, even if it was
not always a “bunch of laughs”.

His comments came as he addressed the heads of other churches – including the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England Wales, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols – about divisions between Christians.

Although Archbishop Welby comes from the evangelical wing of Anglicanism, his personal spiritual director is a Swiss Roman Catholic priest, Fr Nicolas Buttet, and he is a strong advocate of Catholic worship styles.

He spoke of being part of a wider “catholic tradition”, adding: “I’ve learnt over the last 10 years about the great sacrament of reconciliation: confession.

“It is enormously powerful and hideously painful when it’s done properly … it’s really horrible when you go to see your confessor – I doubt you wake up in the morning and think, this is going to be a bunch of laughs.

“It’s really uncomfortable. But through it God releases forgiveness and absolution and a sense of cleansing.”

He acknowledged that he had his own personal struggles, remarking: “I’m an Archbishop; I know about the absence of humility. I struggle with it.”

Although more commonly associated with Catholicism, the Church of England has long offered a form of confession to worshippers, on request.

Anglican priests meet parishioners to hear confession face to face, often in their own home, without such trappings as confessional booths, and offer absolution for sins.

Speaking at a meeting at Lambeth Palace, organised by the group “Churches Together in England”, he also urged Christians to recognise the Church’s racist past.

“I often think about the fact that in the 1960s when Afro-Caribbean people first came to this country they were not made welcome in our churches,” he said.

“It’s the reality; it was a sin, a very bad sin.”

"Allyson Abrams, Detroit Baptist Pastor, Resigns After Marrying A Woman"

At Huffington Post; my bold:

Photo from Allyson Abrams' Facebook page

A pastor resigned after announcing to her congregation that she had married a woman.

Bishop Allyson Abrams, 43, stepped down from Zion Progress Baptist Church in Detroit Friday, according to the Detroit Free Press. She told her congregation earlier in the month that she married Diana Williams in March in Iowa, where gay marriage is legal.

She served as pastor at the church for five years, according to the Michigan Chronicle.

Abrams told the Chronicle that she was not forced out, but chose to resign because she didn't want to cause a divide within the church.

“It really hurts me because I don’t want to be the reason for the church to split, and potentially for family members to be at odds with one another," she said.  "Therefore, I felt that it was in the best interest of everyone to resign.”

The pastor, who was previously married to a man, told the Free Press she had changed her views a year ago and would not classify herself when it comes to sexual orientation.

“I progressed in my theology and came to the point where I would love whichever came to me," she told the paper. "I wasn’t just open to (a specific) gender, I was open to love in whatever way the Lord would bless me.”

Abrams told the Chronicle that Williams, bishop emeritus of the Imani Temple of the African-American Catholic Congregation in Washington, D.C. is her best friend and a support system.

Abrams, who has a masters in divinity and a doctorate in ministry from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, goes into detail on her website about how she reached the understanding that same-sex marriage is aligned with Christian teachings.

"The Bible teaches that ANYONE who believes in Jesus Christ will be accepted into God's realm," she wrote. "You can be a child of God and living in loving committed relationships with persons of the same sex. For the Bible could not be clearer. Everywhere the Bible confronts loving committed homosexual relationships, they are affirmed."
 
Abrams told NewsOne that she plans to lead a church in the future.

"God has called me to pastor," she said.

According to the Free Press, she also resigned from positions at other faith-based organizations: stepping down as secretary of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity and as co-editor of the Progressive National Baptist Convention's magazine, the Baptist Progress.

Her resignation comes days after a federal judge heard arguments in a case challenging Michigan's ban on gay marriage. A trial will begin in February.

Before her marriage and before the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned by the Supreme Court in June, allowing same-sex marriages to be recognized by the federal government, Abrams wrote a blog post for People for the American Way, arguing that it was time to "dump DOMA" and allow every person the opportunity to marry:

We are in the 21st century, and the way I see it, it’s time to dump DOMA simply because it discriminates against those who deserve to have their relationships recognized in whatever way they choose – which should include as marriages. It’s time to dump DOMA because it hurts and humiliates those who know love and who practice showing it each and every day. It’s time to dump DOMA because it alienates and afflicts those who love with their heart and are simply in need of their rights being extended to them. It’s time to dump DOMA and celebrate the manifestation of love in every relationship. It’s time to afford every human the opportunity to marry and be respected as loving families who contribute to the wonderful world that God created and are a part of making it go around.

"Why Are You Not Dead Yet?"

An interesting article about increased lifespan on Slate.

The most important difference between the world today and 150 years ago isn’t airplane flight or nuclear weapons or the Internet. It’s lifespan. We used to live 35 or 40 years on average in the United States, but now we live almost 80. We used to get one life. Now we get two.

You may well be living your second life already. Have you ever had some health problem that could have killed you if you’d been born in an earlier era? Leave aside for a minute the probabilistic ways you would have died in the past—the smallpox that didn’t kill you because it was eradicated by a massive global vaccine drive, the cholera you never contracted because you drink filtered and chemically treated water. Did some specific medical treatment save your life? It’s a fun conversation starter: Why are you not dead yet?It turns out almost everybody has a story, but we rarely hear them; life-saving treatments have become routine. I asked around, and here is a small sample of what would have killed my friends and acquaintances:

• Adrian’s lung spontaneously collapsed when he was 18.
• Becky had an ectopic pregnancy that caused massive internal bleeding.
• Carl had St. Anthony’s Fire, a strep infection of the skin that killed John Stuart Mill.*
• Dahlia would have died delivering a child (twice) or later of a ruptured gall bladder.
• David had an aortic valve replaced.
• Hanna acquired Type 1 diabetes during a pregnancy and would die without insulin.
• Julia had a burst appendix at age 14.
• Katherine was diagnosed with pernicious anemia in her 20s. She treats it with supplements of vitamin B-12, but in the past she would have withered away.
• Laura (that’s me) had scarlet fever when she was 2, which was once a leading cause of death among children but is now easily treatable with antibiotics.
• Mitch was bitten by a cat (filthy animals) and had to have emergency surgery and a month of antibiotics or he would have died of cat scratch fever.

After a while, these not-dead-yet stories start to sound sort of absurd, like a giddy, hooray-for-modernity response to The Gashleycrumb Tinies. Edward Gorey’s delightfully dark poem is an alphabetical list of children (fictional!) who died gruesome deaths: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs/ B is for Basil assaulted by bears.” Here’s how modern science, medicine, and public health would amend it:

M is for Maud who was swept out to sea … then brought back to shore by a lifeguard and resuscitated by emergency medical technicians.

O is for Olive run through with an awl … but saved during a four-hour emergency surgery to repair her collapsed lung.

S is for Susan, who perished of fits … or who would have, anyway, if her epilepsy hadn’t been diagnosed promptly and treated with powerful anticonvulsant drugs.

This, to me, may be the single biggest change in the human condition ever - and to my mind explains, in one go, why the churches have emptied out.   (The increase is not actually due, BTW, to recent advances in medicine as I had thought; the article says that the change began during the last century, and is credited to public health initiatives:  clean water, sewage treatment, washing hands, etc.  Also to improved farming methods; we're no longer subject to starvation.  Of course, vaccines and medical treatment have had a huge effect, too - particularly I think on worldviews; my mother - just one generation back - was deathly afraid of illness, particularly polio, for some reason.)

To understand why people live so long today, it helps to start with how people died in the past. (To take a step back in time, play our interactive game.) People died young, and they died painfully of consumption (tuberculosis), quinsy (tonsillitis), fever, childbirth, and worms. There’s nothing like looking back at the history of death and dying in the United States to dispel any romantic notions you may have that people used to live in harmony with the land or be more in touch with their bodies. Life was miserable—full of contagious disease, spoiled food, malnutrition, exposure, and injuries.

But disease was the worst. The vast majority of deaths before the mid-20th century were caused by microbes—bacteria, amoebas, protozoans, or viruses that ruled the Earth and to a lesser extent still do. It’s not always clear which microbes get the credit for which kills. Bills of mortality (lists of deaths by causes) were kept in London starting in the 1600s and in certain North American cities and parishes starting in the 1700s. At the time, people thought fevers were spread by miasmas (bad air) and the treatment of choice for pretty much everything was blood-letting. So we don’t necessarily know what caused “inflammatory fever” or what it meant to die of “dropsy” (swelling), or whether ague referred  to typhoid fever, malaria, or some other disease. Interpreting these records has become a fascinating sub-field of history. But overall, death was mysterious, capricious, and ever-present.

.....

One of the best tours of how people died in the past is The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America by Gerald Grob. It’s a great antidote to all the heroic pioneer narratives you learned in elementary school history class, and it makes the Little House on the Prairie books seem delusional in retrospect. Pioneers traveling west in wagon trains had barely enough food, and much of it spoiled; their water came from stagnant, larvae-infested ponds. They died in droves of dysentery. Did you ever play with Lincoln logs or dream about living in a log cabin? What a fun fort for grown-ups, right? Wrong. The poorly sealed, damp, unventilated houses were teeming with mosquitoes and vermin. Because of settlement patterns along waterways and the way people cleared the land, some of the most notorious places for malaria in the mid-1800s were Ohio and Michigan. Everybody in the Midwest had the ague!

* * *

How did we go from the miseries of the past to our current expectation of long and healthy lives? “Most people credit medical advances,” says David Jones, a medical historian at Harvard—“but most historians would not.” One problem is the timing. Most of the effective medical treatments we recognize as saving our lives today have been available only since World War II: antibiotics, chemotherapy, drugs to treat high blood pressure. But the steepest increase in life expectancy occurred from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. Even some dramatically successful medical treatments such as insulin for diabetics have kept individual people alive—send in those #NotDeadYet stories!—but haven’t necessarily had a population-level impact on average lifespan. We’ll examine the second half of the 20th century in a later story, but for now let’s look at the bigger early drivers of the doubled lifespan.

The credit largely goes to a wide range of public health advances, broadly defined, some of which were explicitly aimed at preventing disease, others of which did so only incidentally. “There was a whole suite of things that occurred simultaneously,” says S. Jay Olshansky, a longevity researcher at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Mathematically, the interventions that saved infants and children from dying of communicable disease had the greatest impact on lifespan. (During a particularly awful plague in Europe, James Riley points out in Rising Life Expectancy: A Global History, the average life expectancy could temporarily drop by five years.) And until the early 20th century, the most common age of death was in infancy.

Clean water may be the biggest lifesaver in history. Some historians attribute one-half of the overall reduction in mortality, two-thirds of the reduction in child mortality, and three-fourths of the reduction in infant mortality to clean water. In 1854, John Snow traced a cholera outbreak in London to a water pump next to a leaky sewer, and some of the big public works projects of the late 1900s involved separating clean water from dirty. Cities ran water through sand and gravel to physically trap filth, and when that didn’t work (germs are awfully small) they started chlorinating water.

More at the link.  More later as to how this ties in with "The Trouble With Anglicanism" and "Why prooftexting?"

Mother of alleged Navy Yard gunman: 'My heart is broken'

At USAToday; audio file at the link:

"Our son Aaron Alexis has murdered 12 people and wounded several others," Cathleen Alexis says in the statement. "His actions have had a profound and everlasting effect on the families of the victims. I don't know why he did what what he did, and I'll never be able to ask him, why. Aaron is now in a place where he can no longer do harm to anyone, and for that I am glad. To the families of the victims, I am so, so very sorry that this has happened. My heart is broken."

"Jane Addams, world's 'best-loved woman,' honored with Google doodle"

From CSMonitor.com; September 6 was her birthday.  

In September of 1889, Jane Addams, just 29 years old, opened a red house at 800 South Halsted Street in Chicago as a place of refuge for the new immigrants to the blighted neighborhood. That home, pictured today in a Google doodle that celebrates Ms. Addams, would become the tangible epicenter of Addams’s work and her vision for a fairer, more peaceful world.

Addams, who is credited in the New York Times 1935 obituary for her work in developing “a scientific approach to the relief of poverty and suffering,” is difficult to categorize. That’s perhaps due to the sheer number of titles that have been given to her – feminist; social activist; internationalist; philosopher; author; and sociologist.

Addams was born to Quaker parents in Cedarville, Illinois on Sept. 6, 1860. Her father, a miller, was a former congressman and friend to Abraham Lincoln, and Addams would later credit the belief both men had in the equality of man as underpinning her own hope for the equality of all people, women included.

Addams, an 1881 graduate of Rockford College for Women, moved with Ellen Gates Starr (the two were a couple) to Chicago in 1889. There, she founded Hull House and began receiving Chicago’s new immigrants from all around the world into the home.

At Addams’s leased mansion, where numbers burgeoned to around 2,000 each week after just a year of operations, immigrants paid rent to receive lessons in the English 
language and American government, as well as practical skills like cooking and sewing. Addams’s goal was assimilation – an iconoclastic goal at a time at which immigrants were often ghettoized and de facto barred from middle class life.

That home soon became the locus of Addams’ broader social activism. No topic, so long as it gestured toward broader fairness for all people, was outside the bounds of Addams’ advocacy: Her work included pushing for more opportunities for women, for the poor, and for immigrants; She was a pacifist and fought against war with Germany and, later, for generous peace terms; She pressed for better sanitary conditions in Chicago, taking up the official post of garbage inspector of the Nineteenth Ward, and for more sensitive care for the mentally ill, disabled, and sick. She wanted better milk, better midwife training, and better childcare.

Some of those beliefs made fast enemies for Addams. In particular, her progressive support for and representation of women’s equal rights made her unpopular with leading male figures: In 1912, Charles Elliot, the president of Harvard at the time, criticized what he called Addams’s politics after she seconded Franklin D. Roosevelt’s nomination for president. “Women,” he wrote in an interview published in the New York Times, “have no proper share in political convention.” Addams’ participation was “in very bad taste," he said.

And her disdain for war was equally ill-received in certain camps. In letters published in the press as the US lunged into world war, the parents of World War I soldiers lampooned her pacifism. Addams, wrote one of them, “evidently knows nothing of the joys of combat.” Around that time, as Addams began taking up positions in anti-war groups, the Daughters of the American Revolution also booted her out.

Even now, Addams is a controversial figure. Recent biographies that plumb her early life and work have noted that Hull House was a patriarchal, evangelist place, where immigrants were objects of sympathy that required rescuing from their old ways of life.

But, for all the criticism, Addams was and is regarded as an extraordinary figure, even by most of her critics. In 1931, Addams, already the first woman to have received an honorary degree from Yale University, was awarded the Noble Peace Prize, making her the first American woman to win that award.

A few weeks before her death, Addams was the guest of honor at a dinner in Washington, where Eleanor Roosevelt called her “the greatest living woman.” That, the New York Times obituary said, was just one of the titles – as numerous as the causes for which Addams fought – that had been given to her. “Miss Addams,” the Times wrote, “has been called ‘the greatest woman in the world,’ the ‘mother of social service,’ ‘the greatest woman internationalist’ and the ‘first citizen of Chicago.’ And the Times added its own to the list: “She was, perhaps, the world's best-known and best-loved woman.”

Robert Farrar Capon, 1925-2013

Robert Farrar Capon died yesterday: 

"Heaven is populated entirely by forgiven sinners" Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013) pic.twitter.com/AN0LYcUH7Z
— Robert Farrar Capon (@Robert_F_Capon) September 6, 2013

Here's a great RFC quote, from Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus: 

What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion.

Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle to the Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever finally succeed (see the Epistle to the Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade. The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.  

Here's another, and an idea that somehow continues to stick with me, again from Kingdom, Grace, Judgment:

Christian education is not the communication of correct views about what the various works and words of Jesus might mean; rather it is the stocking of the imagination with the icons of those works and words themselves.

It is most successfully accomplished, therefore, not by catechisms that purport to produce understanding but by stories that hang the icons, understood or not, on the walls of the mind. We do not include the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, because we understand it, nor do we omit the parable of the Unjust Steward because we can't make head or tail of it. Rather, we commit both to the Christian memory because that's the way Jesus seems to want the inside of his believers' heads decorated. Indeed, the only really mischievous thing anyone can do with the Gospel is insist on hanging only the pictures he happens to like. That's what heresy really is: picking and choosing, on the basis of my interpretations, between the icons provided to me. Orthodoxy, if it's understood correctly, is simply the constant displaying of the entire collection.

And check these out, too!  A sampler:

“The cross is a sign of the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems.” -Robert Capon

 And:

“The church’s job in filling pulpits is to find derelict nobodies who are willing to admit that they’re sinners and mean it.” -Robert Capon

And:

“We are in a war between dullness and astonishment. The most critical issue facing Christians is not abortion, pornography, the disintegration of the family, moral absolutes, MTV, drugs, racism, sexuality, or school prayer. The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer good news, it is okay news. Christianity is no longer life changing, it is life enhancing. Jesus doesn’t change people into wild-eyed radicals anymore; He changes them into ‘nice people’.” -Robert Farrar Capon, The Astonished Heart, page 120

And:

“Christianity is not a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however—the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over—period.” – Robert Capon, The Mystery of Christ…and Why We Don’t Get It, page 62

And:

“Let me tell you how God redeemed the world. On the eve of the Big Bang, over single-malt scotch and cigars, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were making a final run-through of their plans for the event. The Son was enthusiastic. ‘I think we’ve nailed it,’ he said to the Father. ‘I’m going to speak everything into being as your Word, and the Spirit here is going to breathe life into it. Then the two of us toss it back to you, and the cosmic party dances itself right into our Trinitarian lap. Elegant! Tov meod! Kala lian! Valde bona, and all that!’

‘I have a problem, though,’ the Spirit says. ‘I’m the one responsible for the PR in all this, especially when it comes to the fail-safe gambit of the Incarnation we’ve planned to cover both creation and redemption. The Son really does make the world, right? But with the human race locked into time and space, it’s going to look as if we haven’t seriously tried to redeem the mess they’ve made until Jesus shows up late in history. The fact that we’ve had the Son in there tidying things up from the beginning is the last thing they’ll think of. How do I convince them that the Incarnation isn’t just an afterthought?’

‘Easy,’ says the Father. ‘Sure, it will look as if the Incarnation of my Word is simply a response to sin. But since all three of us will have been intimately present to everything from square one, all you have to do is give them images that show both creation and redemption going on full force from the start. From before the beginning, in fact, since we’re talking about it right now. What’s the problem with that?’

‘The problem,’ the Spirit explains, ‘is precisely with the images. However many mysterious, right-brain images of the Word’s age-long presence I give them, they’re going to dream up transactional, left-brain ones and view him as something you inserted late in the day. Think of the damage they can do to your reputation as the Father who creates or even to the Son’s, as the one who redeems if they decide to think of you as the coach in a football game and the Son as the quarterback. Since you’re not going to reveal the Word’s Incarnation until some two-thirds of history has gone by, how do I stop them from thinking you kept him in the locker room until the fourth quarter? We three may know he’s been in there right from the first possession, but no one else will. Even your biggest fans are going to be hard put to sell that as brilliant management.’

‘Listen,’ the Father says. ‘I decide what’s brilliant management, not the fans. And as for my reputation, that’s your department, not mine. Besides, haven’t we talked about this practically forever? You know the drill. All through the process of revealing my Son in history, you keep slipping them images of the hiddenness of his Incarnation – of the mystery of the Word’s activity in the world even before you arrange for him to be born of Mary. You’re going to hang images like the Paschal Lamb and the Rock in the Wilderness in their minds. After that, all you’ll have to do is get somebody like Paul to say that those things were presences of Christ before Christ – that the Lamb and the Rock are in fact my Incarnate Word anticipating himself. What’s so hard about that?’

‘Plenty,’ the Spirit answers. ‘I’ve been doing simulations of human thought in my mind. I think we’ve underestimated the effects of cooping people up in four dimensions. Look at it from my point of view. You plunk Jesus into the world at one spot in history, and then you expect me to convince them he’s present as your Word in all of history – before, during, and after Jesus?’

The Son interrupts him. ‘But I really am going to be present. Or to put it their way, I really will have been all along. So I don’t see…’

The Spirit’s patience is wearing thin. ‘Give me a break! Since I’m the one who has to take everything that’s yours and get it across to them, I’m trying to solve your problems here too. Just think about what they’ll do with a Jesus who stays in history for only thirty-three years. Even if I get John to say that he’s the Word who made everything from the beginning, they’ll probably imagine him as a pot of holy soup we delivered too late for a good many of our customers. And after they’ve jumped to the conclusion that the Word wasn’t present to anyone who lived before Jesus, they’ll leap to the even more dreadful notion that nobody who lived after him can have his benefits until their assorted churches get him canned, marketed, and distributed to them.’

The Father tries to break in. ‘But what about the Pentecost party we’ve planned to get the church going? Won’t that…?’

‘I’m sorry,’ the Spirit insists, ‘but I’m afraid Pentecost will be just one more thing for them to misread. Don’t get me wrong: I’m totally on board with both of you. But suppose I do give you the rushing mighty wind and the party hats made out of fire. Even suppose I throw in the mystery of speaking in different languages in order to get the universality of the Son’s work into the picture. They’re still going to think the church is in the world to sell clam chowder to customers who never had it before. I mean, think of the possibilities for ecclesiastical arrogance. Jesus takes away the sins of the world, right? In him, everyone who ever lived gets free forgiveness for whatever went wrong in full, in advance, and all in one cosmic shot, no strings attached. I’m even going to get the church to include ‘one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins’ in the Nicene Creed so they’ll see that the Baptism of Jesus himself does the whole job, even if no one else ever gets baptized. But do you know what they’re going to do with that? They’re going to paint themselves into a corner and say that the unbaptized go to hell or even that sins after Baptism make forgiveness flake off like a bad paint job, and that unless Christians go to confession for a second coat before they die, they’ll go to hell too. Oh, sure. We’ve also agreed on this Reformation business where I convince them that nobody has to do anything to be forgiven except trust the grace that Jesus has already given everybody. But give them a hundred years after that and they’ll manage to turn faith itself into a requirement for grace: no faith, no forgiveness. Out the window again goes the free gift we’ve given them once and for all; and back in comes forgiveness as a deal that’s good only as long as they behave themselves.’

‘But why on earth,’ the Son wonders, ‘would they balk at getting something for nothing like that? Free grace and dying love isn’t enough for them? Would they rather we dealt with them on the basis of accountability?’

The Spirit just keeps pressing his point. ‘I don’t understand it any better than you do; all I know is what my simulations tell me. Human beings aren’t afraid of accountability; they’re crazy about it. If they can’t get credit for themselves or dish out blame to others, they cry “Unfair!” That’s why I pleaded with you to let me include something less subtle in the revelation. Remember? I suggested an image of the Son hiding a box of chocolates in every person’s house: the gift would be there whether they know it or not, like it or not, believe it or not. Maybe then they’d see that their faith doesn’t do anything to get them the chocolates of forgiveness; it simply enables them to enjoy what they already have. If they don’t trust the gift, of course, it won’t mean a thing to them. But the chocolates will always be there. I was even willing to make them miraculous, just to keep the element of mystery in the mix: no matter how many pieces anyone ate, the box would always be full. I still think it would have been a good idea.’

Finally, though, the Father has had enough. ‘I understand your difficulties,’ he says; ‘but after all, somebody’s got to be in charge here. In my mind, we’ve come up with a revelation that does the work of your chocolates without making us look like candy-pushers. The Son and I have every confidence in you. If you want to inspire the odd Christian apologist here or there to come up with images like that, be our guest. As I said, it’s your department. But we’re coming down to the wire here, so let’s call this a wrap. We have a big day tomorrow’.” –Robert Capon, The Fingerprints of God: Tracking the Divine Suspect through a History of Images, pages 1-4]

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord;
And let light perpetual shine upon him.
May his soul, and the souls of all the departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

And may he have a great time at the party...! 

"Watch Martin Luther King Jr. go on 'Meet the Press' in 1963"

Very interesting video here:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
 

HT Lee.

"School Clerk In Georgia Persuaded Gunman To Lay Down Weapons"

At NPR. Listen:

Tuesday's terrifying incident at an elementary school near Atlanta — in which a gunman with an assault rifle and other weapons entered the building — ended with no one being hurt after a school clerk apparently spent about an hour talking to the young man. She says she persuaded him to put down his gun and surrender.

 "I just started praying for him," Antoinette Tuff tells Atlanta's Channel 2 Action News. "I just started talking to him ... and let him know what was going on with me and that it would be OK. And then [I] let him know that he could just give himself up. ... I told him to put [the guns] on the table, empty his pockets. He had me actually get on the intercom and tell everybody he was sorry, too. But I told them, 'He was sorry, but do not come out of their rooms.' ... I give it all to God, I'm not the hero. I was terrified."

In an interview with ABC-TV's World News With Diane Sawyer, Tuff says "[I saw] a young man ready to kill anybody that he could and take any lives he wanted to." According to ABC:

"The school clerk said she tried to keep the assailant calm by asking him his name but, she said, at first he wouldn't tell it to her. Then, he began listening to her tell her life story. She said she told him about how her marriage fell apart after 33 years and the 'roller coaster' of opening her own business."

Tuff says she told 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill that "OK, we all have situations in our lives. I went through a tragedy myself."

Then, ABC writes, "Tuff made the request that she said helped end the standoff. She said she asked the suspect to put his weapons down, empty his pockets and backpack and lay on the floor. 'I told the police he was giving himself up. I just talked him through it,' she said."

During the incident, the 870 or so pre-kindergarten to fifth-graders at the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur were safely evacuated. At one point, the gunman exchanged some shots with police. But no one was struck.

"Are we still a Church capable of warming hearts?"

At "catholicity and covenant" today:

Considerable attention is being given to Francis' address to the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean, it being regarded as setting out the institutional agenda for his pontificate.  For catholicity and covenant, however, more striking was his address to the Brazilian RC episcopate.  What we see in this address is how Francis understands the missionary Church - of what it means to be a Church with the ability to warm hearts, to authentically bear to the world the grace and love of the Crucified and Risen One. Below are some extracts from the address.

The subtitles are based on the language Francis employed.  

The Grammar of Mystery  

A Church which makes room for God’s mystery; a Church which harbours that mystery in such a way that it can entice people, attract them. Only the beauty of God can attract. God’s way is through enticement, allure. God lets himself be brought home. He awakens in us a desire to keep him and his life in our homes, in our hearts. He reawakens in us a desire to call our neighbours in order to make known his beauty. Mission is born precisely from this divine allure, by this amazement born of encounter.

Icon of Emmaus  

We need a Church unafraid of going forth into their night. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church capable of entering into their conversation. We need a Church able to dialogue with those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering aimlessly, alone, with their own disappointment, disillusioned by a Christianity now considered barren, fruitless soil, incapable of generating meaning ...

Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people’s side, of doing more than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on their journey; a Church able to make sense of the “night” contained in the flight of so many of our brothers and sisters from Jerusalem; a Church which realizes that the reasons why people leave also contain reasons why they can eventually return. But we need to know how to interpret, with courage, the larger picture.

I would like all of us to ask ourselves today: are we still a Church capable of warming hearts? A Church capable of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of bringing them home? Jerusalem is where our roots are: Scripture, catechesis, sacraments, community, friendship with the Lord, Mary and the apostles… Are we still able to speak of these roots in a way that will revive a sense of wonder at their beauty?  

Slow Church

We see a desperate need for calmness, I would even say slowness. Is the Church still able to move slowly: to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency? Dear brothers, let us recover the calm to be able to walk at the same pace as our pilgrims, keeping alongside them, remaining close to them, enabling them to speak of the disappointments present in their hearts and to let us address them.  

Church as womb of mercy  

Concerning pastoral conversion, I would like to recall that “pastoral care” is nothing other than the exercise of the Church’s motherhood. She gives birth, suckles, gives growth, corrects, nourishes and leads by the hand … So we need a Church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy. Without mercy we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of “wounded” persons in need of understanding, forgiveness, love.

(The painting is Daniel Bonnell's The Road to Emmaus #2, 2003.)

"Rebel pope urges Catholics to shake up dioceses"

From Huffington Post, HT Pray Tell.  My bold; I'm really liking this guy so far (although certainly the HP headline is a bit over the top).  To my mind, there's nothing more exciting than somebody who understands and believes that human beings have both physical needs and a "hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy" - and who aims to seriously address both - while at the same time acting on the idea that the church itself has to be a place of repentance (AKA "perpetual change and growth").

When the church can consistently apply its own principles of metanoia to itself - well, at that point we'll really have something.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Pope Francis showed his rebel side Thursday, urging young Catholics to shake up the church and make a "mess" in their dioceses by going out into the streets to spread the faith. It's a message he put into practice by visiting one of Rio's most violent slums and opening the church's World Youth Day on a rain-soaked Copacabana Beach.

Francis was elected pope on a mandate to reform the church, and in four short months he has started doing just that: He has broken long-held Vatican rules on everything from where he lays his head at night to how saints are made. He has cast off his security detail to get close to his flock, and his first international foray as pope has shown the faithful appreciate the gesture.

Dubbed the "slum pope" for his work with the poor, Francis received a rapturous welcome in the Varginha shantytown, part of a slum area of northern Rio so violent it's known as the Gaza Strip. The 76-year-old Argentine seemed entirely at home, wading into cheering crowds, kissing people young and old and telling them the Catholic Church is on their side.

"No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world!" Francis told a crowd of thousands who braved a cold rain and stood in a muddy soccer field to welcome him. "No amount of peace-building will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself."

It was a message aimed at reversing the decline in the numbers of Catholics in most of Latin America, with many poor worshippers leaving the church for Pentecostal and evangelical congregations. Those churches have taken up a huge presence in favelas, or shantytowns such as Varginha, attracting souls with nuts-and-bolts advice on how to improve their lives.

The Varginha visit was one of the highlights of Francis' weeklong trip to Brazil, his first as pope and one seemingly tailor-made for the first pontiff from the Americas.

The surprise, though, came during his encounter with Argentine pilgrims, scheduled at the last minute in yet another sign of how this spontaneous pope is shaking up the Vatican's staid and often stuffy protocol.

He told the thousands of youngsters, with an estimated 30,000 Argentines registered, to get out into the streets and spread their faith and make a "mess," saying a church that doesn't go out and preach simply becomes a civic or humanitarian group.

"I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!" he said, speaking off the cuff in his native Spanish. "I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!"

Apparently realizing the radicalness of his message, he apologized in advance to the bishops at home.

Later Thursday, he traveled in his open-sided car through a huge crowd in the pouring rain to a welcoming ceremony on Copacabana beach. It was his first official event with the hundreds of thousands of young people who have flocked to Rio for World Youth Day. Vatican officials estimated the crowd at 1 million.

Cheering pilgrims from 175 nations lined the beachfront drive to catch a glimpse of the pontiff, with many jogging along with the vehicle behind police barricades. The car stopped several times for Francis to kiss babies – and take a long sip of his beloved mate, the traditional Argentine tea served in a gourd with a straw, which was handed up to him by someone in the crowd.

After he arrived at the beach-front stage, though, the crowd along the streets melted away, driven home by the pouring rain that brought out vendors selling the plastic ponchos that have adorned cardinals and pilgrims alike during this unseasonably cold, wet week.

In an indication of the havoc wreaked by four days of steady showers, organizers made an almost unheard-of change in the festival's agenda, moving the Saturday vigil and climactic Sunday Mass to Copacabana Beach from a rural area 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the city center. The terrain of the area, Guaratiba, had turned into a vast field of mud, making the overnight camping plans of pilgrims untenable.

The news was welcome to John White, a 57-year-old chaperone from the Albany, New York, diocese who attended the past five World Youth Days and complained that organization in Rio was lacking.

"I'm super relieved. That place is a mud pit and I was concerned about the kid's health and that they might catch hypothermia," he said. "That's great news. I just wish the organizers would have told us."

Francis' visit to the Varginha slum followed in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, who visited two such favelas during a 1980 trip to Brazil, and Mother Teresa, who visited Varginha itself in 1972. Her Missionaries of Charity order has kept a presence in the shantytown ever since.

Like Mother Teresa, Francis brought his own personal history to the visit: As archbishop of Buenos Aires, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio frequently preached in the poverty-wracked slums of his native city, putting into action his belief that the Catholic Church must go to the farthest peripheries to preach and not sit back and wait for the most marginalized to come to Sunday Mass.

Francis' open-air car was mobbed on a few occasions as he headed into Varginha's heavily policed, shack-lined streets, but he never seemed in danger. He was showered with gifts as he walked down one of the slum's main drags without an umbrella to shield him from the rain. A well-wisher gave him a paper lei to hang around his neck and he held up another offering – a scarf from his favorite soccer team, Buenos Aires' San Lorenzo.

"Events like this, with the pope and all the local media, get everyone so excited," said Antonieta de Souza Costa, a 56-year-old vendor and resident of Varginha. "I think this visit is going to bring people back to the Catholic Church."

Addressing Varginha's residents, Francis acknowledged that young people in particular have a sensitivity toward injustice.

"You are often disappointed by facts that speak of corruption on the part of people who put their own interests before the common good," Francis told the crowd. "To you and all, I repeat: Never yield to discouragement, do not lose trust, do not allow your hope to be extinguished."

It was a clear reference to the violent protests that paralyzed parts of the country in recent weeks as Brazilians furious over rampant corruption and inefficiency within the country's political class took to the streets.

Francis blasted what he said was a "culture of selfishness and individualism" that permeates society today, demanding that those with money and power share their wealth and resources to fight hunger and poverty.

"It is certainly necessary to give bread to the hungry – this is an act of justice. But there is also a deeper hunger, the hunger for a happiness that only God can satisfy," he said.

 I'm very much hoping he won't deeply disappoint me by going anti-gay....

"The Fall of the American Worker"

By George Packer, in The New Yorker.

There’s a moment in Dale Maharidge and Michael S. Williamson’s “Someplace Like America,” a documentary account of three decades of American downward mobility, when Maharidge spontaneously decides to phone up Charles Murray. It’s around the year 2000, welfare reform is on the books, and Maharidge wants to know what Murray, the author of “Losing Ground” and the country’s harshest critic of the welfare state, has to say about the growing phenomenon of the working poor—Americans who have jobs but still can’t make ends meet.

“Give me an example,” Murray says. Maharidge begins to describe a woman named Maggie Segura, employed by the state of Texas, whom Maharidge met, along with her daughter, at a food bank. “Is she a single mother?” Murray demands. Guilty as charged. Maggie Segura shouldn’t have had a child with the wrong guy—point Murray. He asks for another example, and Maharidge describes an intact family: three kids, mom, and dad, Obie, who works as a janitor but has to sell his blood plasma to make up for shortfalls in the family budget. Murray is undeterred. “What is the appropriate success for working families? The guy is making ten bucks an hour, the wife is working part time. They’ve got three kids. Should we feel bad?” Murray does some quick calculations. “If I had to, I could figure out ways to live on $550 a week with three kids. I probably wouldn’t live in Austin. I’d go someplace else, where it was a lot cheaper. I’d make choices.”

Point Murray again. Whatever stories from around the country Maharidge hits his way, Murray kills with the return. You can win every point when your social theory tells you that the only poor people in America—especially the America of the nineties boom, when “the general trajectory is up and away. You can make a decent living without the government helping you”—are ones undeserving of help. Maggie Segura had a child by the wrong man. Obie should have moved his family to Appalachia. Everybody screws up.

I was reminded of this scene from “Someplace Like America” while watching a new documentary film, “Two American Families,” which will air next Tuesday night, July 9th, on the PBS series “Frontline.” The film, produced by Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes (friends of mine), and narrated by Bill Moyers, follows the lives of two families in Milwaukee, the Stanleys and the Neumanns—the former black, the latter white—over the past two decades, starting in 1991. Both come out of the solid working class, and their fates are familiar ones. Jackie Stanley and Tony Neumann had factory jobs at the huge engine maker Briggs & Stratton, while Claude Stanley worked for A. O. Smith, a leading maker of chassis frames. All were union jobs, and all disappeared around 1990 as manufacturing went overseas. That’s when we meet the Stanleys and the Neumanns—just as both families are beginning to sink. The only work the men can find pays half the factory wage, without benefits—Claude waterproofs basements, Tony retrains and works the overnight shift doing light manufacturing. Jackie Stanley tries to sell real estate; Terry Neumann gets into a cosmetics-selling scheme, works at a school cafeteria, then drives a forklift. Without unions to support them, they are all at the mercy of indifferent employers and the harsh vagaries of the post-industrial economy.

The Stanley kids pick up odd jobs to help their parents. The Neumann kids start to struggle in school as their parents’ work lives leave a vacuum at home. There are never enough hours of work, or hours together at home, or dollars to pay the bills. Vacations disappear; health crises become disasters. The oldest Stanley boy, Keith, goes to college at Alabama State on a credit card. Neither family can get back to where they were before their economic slide began—a slide that coincides with those booming nineties.

This outline barely does justice to “Two American Families,” which will take its place among the central documents of our time. We all know the gist of the story, but its power lies in what we didn’t know, in the details of these American lives: Tony Neumann trying to hold back his tears at Sunday mass, the hardening of Terry Neumann’s features as she feeds a severely disabled boy in her care, Jackie Stanley’s sense of failure, Claude Stanley’s undaunted laugh even as his eyes flash with anger. The white family splits up; the black family stays together. Terry Neumann loses her house, which JPMorgan Chase sells at a fraction of the debt she owed on it. Of the eight kids between the two families, only Keith Stanley gets a four-year college degree, and with it a good job at city hall. The other children survive in varying degrees of dependency on their parents; some become parents themselves, too soon.

If you screened “Two American Families” for Charles Murray and other social critics who believe that the decline of America’s working class comes from a collapse of moral values, social capital, personal responsibility, and traditional authority, they would probably be able to find the evidence they’d need to insulate themselves against the sorrow at the heart of the film. None of the four parents finished college. The Neumanns’ divorce leaves Terry and the children in worse straits than ever. The Stanleys don’t move to rural Mississippi, where life is cheaper. The kids make plenty of their own mistakes. None of them thinks of inventing Napster. The Stanleys and Neumanns are punished to the fullest extent of the economic law for every mistake made, and for all the mistakes they didn’t make.

But the intellectually honest response to this film is much less comforting, for the overwhelming impression in “Two American Families” is not of mistakes but of fierce persistence: how hard the Stanleys and Neumanns work, how much they believe in playing by the rules, how remarkable the cohesion of the Stanley family is, how tough Terry Neumann has to become. Both families devoutly attend church. Government assistance is alien and hateful to them. Keith Stanley says, “I don't know what drugs or even alcohol looks like.” In the words of Tammy Thomas, whose similar story is told in my new book, “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America,” these people do what they’re supposed to do. They have to navigate this heartless economy by themselves. And they keep sinking and sinking.

On Sunday, the Times reported that C.E.O. pay in 2012 increased by sixteen per cent over the previous year, with the median compensation package now at $15.1 million. The blessings at the top grow more fruitful year by year, in good times and bad. There must be a social or economic theory somewhere that explains why all this is necessary and just.

Here's more about “Two American Families,” from Salon:

Here is a very brief summary of the documentary/America since 1991: Tony Neumann lost his job at Briggs and Stratton not long after the family bought a nice, but modest, Milwaukee home. (“But it’s either rent for the rest of your life or own,” says Terry.) In 1991 they’re behind on their mortgage payments. By the time the documentary ends, in 2012, the home, where the family lived for 24 years, has been foreclosed upon: JPMorgan Chase demands $124,000 from Terry to stay in her home and then sells it for $38,000. The Neumanns spent those 24 years working, nonstop, but always for wages insufficient to stay afloat.

The 1990s for the families are a series of crappy, low-paid jobs and ever-present anxiety. In 1991, Claude Stanley takes up manual labor at poverty wages while Jackie gets her real estate license. (“I can’t sell the suburbs here,” she says. “I can’t sell the most affluent areas. But they’ll call me for central city.”) We get to watch the inauguration of President Bill Clinton with the Stanleys. Young Claude Jr. is optimistic: “I guess in the next four years we might have openings, and I guess you might not have to film as many people,” he says. His older brother Keith, who remembers Reagan, is more cynical, but Keith goes on to become the first member of the family to graduate high school and he even goes on to college, thanks to Jackie closing two real estate deals. But the family still needs a $1,000 cash advance on a new credit card, at 18 percent interest, to keep Keith in school. “It’ll tide me over ’til I can get the miracle,” Jackie says. In 1998, the Stanleys have $30,000 in medical bills they can’t afford, and the rest of the Stanley kids are unable to go to college. Klaudale joins the Navy. Keith is working two jobs and still forced to pay for college on credit cards, at usurious interest rates.

And this was during the boom years. The viewer knows, when the documentary jumps from 1999 to 2012, that those skipped years were not kind to families like these. And so we find Claude Stanley working, at 60 years old, two jobs — manual labor, still — for $26,000 plus benefits. (He is one of those lazy, overpaid government employees we hear a lot about.) He is exhausted, obviously, but won’t quite admit it. Retirement is not really a realistic scenario. The Neumanns are divorced and Terry is effectively homeless, working part-time for next to nothing. She is saving money to buy a place in a trailer park. Tony is no longer willing to cooperate with the filmmakers.

The kids are mostly working odd jobs. Keith Stanley is the film’s closest thing to a genuine success story, as an aide to a Milwaukee alderman. He has a college degree and a good job. He’s smart and insightful and will hopefully go on to be some sort of public servant and advocate for people like the ones who raised him. Klaudale is a military contractor working in Afghanistan. Adam Neumann, Terry and Tony’s son, living paycheck to paycheck and expecting his second child, says, “they still call me middle class but I don’t see that.” Terry Neumann sums it up: “We’ll just work until we collapse and keel over and die.”

The film doesn’t say so — it primarily just tells the story of these families — but all of these people are the victims not just of “the economy” but of a series of specific policy decisions made, over the last few decades, by people very much like the ones whose trivial, cloistered lives are documented in “This Town.” So I hope some of those people watched it last night, or catch up with it today. (I also hope WGBH trustee David Koch was watching, but who knows what sort of lesson he’d take from it.) It’s hard not to count your blessings after watching “Two American Families.” I know that I have my very, very nice job in part because a few people seem to enjoy my jokes about Donald Trump but primarily because of a series of incredibly lucky breaks. It may be the case that you and your family were never in danger of falling into poverty, before or after the “Great Recession,” but “Two American Families” makes a pretty convincing case that if you weren’t born into the 1 percent, and a few things had gone wrong, there would’ve been no digging out for you, no matter how hard or for how long you worked. The film is infuriating.

HT Lee (in a roundabout way).

"2013 July 3: Another brutal murder of a lesbian"

At inkanyiso.org:

As the LGBTI community in South Africa on the 1^st July 2013, we were woken up by news of the brutal murder of one of our own; Duduzile Zozo, a 26 year old lesbian from Thokoza, East of Johannesburg.

Daily Sun, a local tabloid newspaper reported that, “The 26-year-old’s half-naked body was found in her kasi in Thokoza, Ekurhuleni yesterday morning (30 June 2013).”

The newspaper further stated that, “a toilet brush was rammed into the deceased vagina.”

Captain Godfrey Maditsi who was also interviewed by the paper, confirmed the news and told daily sun that “A murder case has been opened and we ask the community to come forward with any information that could help put those responsible behind bars.”


However, Maditsi said that, “the cops couldn’t confirm whether Duduzile Zozo was raped or not. They could only confirm that a toilet brush was rammed into her vagina as they found it still inside.”

Her mother, Thuziwe Zozo, told the paper that she suspected that her daughter was killed because of her sexuality: “She was a lesbian but never had any problems before. People loved and appreciated her.”

The case of Duduzile Zozo, like many other lesbian cases caught the attention of the media, as most of local and international media ran with the story.

Since reports of the gruesome murder made headlines locally and internationally, we have since seen political parties and other civil society organisations releasing statements condemning the brutal murder of the young lesbian.

COSATU’s Patrick Craven said in a statement, “COSATU is outraged at the continuing high level of violence against women and girls, and demands that no effort be spared to arrest whoever was responsible for this despicable murder, and that the courts impose an exemplary sentence.”

The Democratic Alliance Shadow Deputy Minister of Women, Youth, Children and People with Disabilities (DWYCPD), Helen Lamoela also released a statement expressing The DA’s is shock and sadness by reports of the brutal rape and murder of Duduzile Zozo.

DA stated that, “Government is not doing nearly enough to eradicate the scourge of violence against women and children in South Africa.”

The DA went further on to criticize the progress of the National Council Against Gender-Based Violence based within the DWYCPD formed over six months ago and the silence of the LGBTI National Task Team which was formed two years ago by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.

Helen Lamoela said, “DA will submit parliamentary questions to the Department of Justice to query the progress of this task team. We will also request that the National Council Against Gender-Based Violence be summoned to Parliament to present progress made on its plans and programmes to curb violence against women and children in South Africa.”

The murder of Duduzile happens just a week after Amnesty International released a report called ‘Making Love a Crime: Criminalisation of Same-sex conduct in Sub Saharan Africa’.

The report highlighting violence, homophobia and laws targeting LGBTI people in Sub Saharan Africa, with particular focus on Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon and South Africa.

Amnesty International reported on the plight of black lesbians in South Africa.

The report stated that, “Taunts, insults and threats are a constant reality and are in fact so common that many LGBTI people do not even recognize them as a form of violence. Sexual assault and other physical attacks against LGBTI people are also all too common. Lesbians, and LGBTI people who do not conform to culturally approved models of femininity and masculinity live in fear of being assaulted, raped and murdered by men”.

Amnesty International over the past few months have partnered with Ekhuruleni Pride Organising Committee (EPOC) an LGBTI organization based in Ekhuruleni, a township which now known to the lesbian community as a hot spot for lesbian rape and murder.

Both organisations have been working together in making sure that the case of Noxolo Nogwaza, a 24 year old lesbian activist who was brutally murdered in Kwa-Thema two years ago, is investigated and perpetrators brought to book.

According to Bontle Khalo of EPOC, “Amnesty International has been campaigning to ensure that Noxolo’s murder is investigated thoroughly and effectively, so that those found to be responsible may be brought to justice.”

Furthermore, Amnesty International has been running a campaign locally and internationally calling for Justice for Noxolo. These campaigns have been running since May 2012, and they have targeted local and provincial police authorities, as well as the Gauteng Premier.

In recent developments of the campaign, Amnesty International has been lobbying for legislation to combat hate crime, legislations that would compel the police to compile statistics of lesbian and gay murders and rapes.

“Hate-crime laws would improve the policing and judicial response to such crimes and help develop effective mechanisms to monitor such crimes”, stated the report.

The case of Noxolo Magwaza that Amnesty International is working on is one of many murder cases that have been under-investigated in Ekhuruleni.

There’s the case of Girly Nkosi who was murdered in 2009, Nokuthula Radebe murdered in 2011, and Patricia Mashigo murdered 2013 and many others which were not reported or are unknown to me.

The aforementioned cases, represent only those murdered in Ekhuruleni alone, South Africa has many more neglected cases of LGBTI people who were murdered for being homosexuals.

The fraction of statistic mentioned shows how little the police authorities are working on making sure that the cases are diligently investigated and perpetrators arrested.

It took the South African Justice System six years and 30 court appearances, for 19 year old Zoliswa Nkonyana’s 2006 murder case to be concluded and her killers sentenced.

The brutal killing of vulnerable LGBTI individuals is extreme, merely releasing a statement condemning the act is not enough; the LGBTI community needs actions, Interventions, and legislations to be put in place in order to combat these barbaric acts.

There is an urgent need for educational programmes and awareness campaigns to address the attitudes and biases that lead to these hateful crimes.

South African townships are no longer safe for lesbians, every day a black lesbian wonders if they are NEXT?.