The Return of Democratic Socialism
Democratic socialism used to be a vibrant force in American life. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Socialist Party of America, headed by the charismatic union leader, Eugene V. Debs, grew rapidly, much like its sister parties in Europe and elsewhere: the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Australian Labor Party, and dozens of similar parties that voters chose to govern their countries. Publicizing its ideas through articles, lectures, rallies, and hundreds of party newspapers, America’s Socialist Party elected an estimated 1,200 public officials, including 79 mayors, in 340 cities, as well as numerous members of state legislatures and two members of Congress. Once in office, the party implemented a broad range of social reforms designed to curb corporate abuses, democratize the economy, and improve the lives of working class Americans. Even on the national level, the Socialist Party became a major player in American politics. In 1912, when Woodrow Wilson’s six million votes gave him the presidency, Debs–his Socialist Party opponent–drew vast, adoring crowds and garnered nearly a million.
This promising beginning, however, abruptly came to an end. Socialist Party criticism of World War I led to a ferocious government crackdown on the party, including raids on its offices, censorship of its newspapers, and imprisonment of its leaders, including Debs. In addition, when Bolshevik revolutionaries seized power in Russia and established the Soviet Union, they denounced democratic socialist parties and established rival Communist parties under Soviet control to spark revolutions. In the United States, the Socialists fiercely rejected this Communist model. But the advent of Communism sharply divided the American Left and, worse yet, confused many Americans about the differences between Socialists and Communists. Although the Socialist Party lingered on during the 1920s and 1930s, many individual Socialists simply moved into the Democratic Party, particularly after its New Deal programs began to steal the Socialist thunder.
The Socialist Party’s situation grew even more desperate during the Cold War. With the Communists serving as cheerleaders for the Soviet Union, Americans often viewed them as, at best, apologists for a dictatorship or, at worst, subversives and traitors. And the Socialists were often mistakenly viewed the same way. By the 1970s, the once-thriving Socialist Party was almost non-existent. Some of its remaining activists, led by Michael Harrington, broke away and organized the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which later morphed into Democratic Socialists of American–a group that dropped third party campaigns, called attention to the value of democratic socialist programs, and worked with progressive forces in the Democratic party to secure them. But, for several decades, it made little headway.
And, then, remarkably, democratic socialism began to revive. Of course, it had never entirely disappeared, and occasional polls found small-scale support for it. But, in December 2011, a startling 31 percent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center said that they had a positive reaction to the word “socialism,” with young people, Blacks, and Hispanics showing the greatest enthusiasm. In November 2012, a Gallup survey found that 39 percent of Americans had a positive reaction to “socialism,” including 53 percent of Democrats.
Why the rising tide of support for socialism in recent years? One key factor was certainly a popular backlash against the growing economic instability and inequality in America fostered by brazen corporate greed, exploitation, and control of public policy. In addition, college-educated young people–saddled with enormous tuition debt, often under-employed, and with little recollection of the Soviet nightmare–began to discover the great untold political story of the postwar years, the remarkable success of European social democracy.
Of course, Bernie Sanders played an important role in this public reappraisal of democratic socialism. Once a member of the Young People’s Socialist League, the youth group of the old Socialist Party, Sanders forged a successful political career as an independent, serving as a popular mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a U.S. Congressman, and, eventually, a U.S. Senator. During these years he consistently attacked the greed of the wealthy and their corporations, assailed economic and social inequality, and stood up for workers and other ordinary Americans. For many on the American Left, he provided a shining example of the continued relevance of democratic socialism in America.
Sanders’s plunge into the Democratic Presidential primaries, though, drew the attention of a much larger audience–and, as it turned out, a surprisingly sympathetic one. Although the communications media were quick to point out that he was a socialist, a fact that many assumed would marginalize him, he didn’t run away from the label. Perhaps most important, he presented a democratic socialist program in tune with the views of many Americans: universal healthcare (Medicare for All); tuition-free public college; a $15/hour minimum wage; increased Social Security benefits; higher taxes on the wealthy; big money out of politics; and a less militaristic foreign policy.
This sounded good to large numbers of voters. In June 2015, shortly after Sanders launched his campaign, a Gallup poll found that 59 percent of Democrats, 49 percent of independents, and 26 percent of Republicans were willing to support a socialist if he were the candidate of their party. This included 69 percent of Americans 18 to 29 years of age and 50 percent of those between 30 and 49 years of age. To the shock (and frequent dismay) of the political pundits, Sanders’s poll numbers rose steadily until they rivaled those of Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee, and he won 20 of the Democratic state primaries and caucuses conducted so far. Indeed, polls showed that, if he became the Democratic nominee, he would win a landslide victory in the race for President.
But whether or not Sanders reaches the White House, it’s clear that democratic socialism has made a comeback in American life.
Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?
Poverty, Militarism, and Public Schools
What’s the difference between education and obedience? If you see very little, you probably have no problem with the militarization of the American school system — or rather, the militarization of the impoverished schools . . . the ones that can’t afford new textbooks or functional plumbing, much less art supplies or band equipment. My town, Chicago, is a case study in this national trend.
The Pentagon has been eyeing these schools — broken and gang-ridden — for a decade now, and seeing its future there. It comes in like a cammy-clad Santa, bringing money and discipline. In return it gets young minds to shape, to (I fear) possess: to turn into the next generation of soldiers, available for the coming wars.
The United States no longer has a draft because the nation no longer believes in war, except abstractly, as background noise. But it has an economic draft: It claims recruits largely from the neighborhoods of hopelessness. Joining the U.S. military is the only opportunity available to millions of young Americans to escape poverty. We have no government programs to build the infrastructure of peace and environmental sustainability — we can’t afford that, so it has to happen on its own (or not at all) — but our military marches on, funded at more than half a trillion dollars a year, into ever more pointless wars of aggression.
Glory, glory hallelujah. I’d never been to a Memorial Day parade in my life, but I went to this year’s parade in downtown Chicago because members of the Chicago chapter of Veterans for Peace were going to be there, protesting the militarization of the city’s schools.
I arrived as the parade was still assembling itself along Wacker Drive. What I saw, along with the Humvees and the floats (Gold Star Families of the Fallen, Paralyzed Veterans of America: Making a difference for 70 years) were thousands of young people — mostly kids of color, of course — bedecked in various uniforms, standing in formation as martial music erupted sporadically, driven by the drumbeat of certainty. Some of the boys and girls seemed as young as 10 or 11. One boy walked past me twirling a rifle like it was a baton. Was it real? Was it loaded?
The concept of America is a totally military phenomenon, I thought as I walked along the parade route. This is what holds it together, not culturally, but as a legally organized entity. The flags, the rifles, the Humvees, the names of the dead . . . the uniformed children. For a moment I wondered if I could continue calling myself an American.
Then I met up with the Vets for Peace people at State and Lake — a small group of men and women handing out stickers that read: “No military in Chicago Public Schools. Education, not militarization.”
“The idea is, just by being here, we’re having people stop for a moment and think about the militarization of Chicago schools,” Kevin Merwin told me. “There’s opposition to the wholesale militarization of youth in Chicago. It’s the most militarized school system in the country, if not the world.”
Indeed, according to various sources, there are between 9,000 and 10,000 young people in the Pentagon’s JROTC program, with “military academies” — often in spite of furious community opposition — taking over portions of 45 of the city’s 104 high schools.
“Kids in seventh grade are being rolled up into this Memorial Day parade,” Merwin said. “We’re inculcating kids into the military system at a young age — the kind of thing we criticized the Soviet Union for back in the day. And it’s mostly kids of color.”
Ann Jones, addressing this hypocrisy, pointed out in an excellent essay that Congress actually passed an act in 2008 — the Child Soldiers Prevention Act — that was “designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid.”
However, not surprisingly, the economic interests of the military-industrial complex eventually gutted the intention of this rare bit of compassionate legislation. Five of the 10 countries on the child-solider list, Chad, South Sudan, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, have been granted “waivers” so they can continue to purchase American weapons.
“Too bad for the young — and the future — of those countries,” Jones wrote. “But look at it this way: Why should Washington help the children of Sudan or Yemen escape war when it spares no expense right here at home to press our own impressionable, idealistic, ambitious American kids into military ‘service’?
“It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest, most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child soldiers in the world.”
Those who want to perpetuate the military mindset — that is to say, the servants of the most powerful economic interests in the country — have to grab the minds of the young, because only in one’s youth does militarism resonate with uncontaminated glory. This is why the Army maintains a gamer website. And it’s why every branch of military service sets up shop in our most desperate schools and parades the Junior ROTC boys and girls before the public on Memorial Day, our national holiday in celebration of arrested development.
Robert Koehler, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an award-winning Chicago journalist and editor.
Building Trust In Afghanistan
Here in Kabul, I read a recent BBC op-ed by Ahmed Rashid, urging a “diplomatic offensive” to build or repair relationships with the varied groups representing armed extremism in Afghanistan. Rashid has insisted, for years, that severe mistrust makes it almost impossible for such groups to negotiate an end to Afghanistan’s nightmare of war.
Glancing upward at one of the six U.S. manufactured aerostat blimps performing constant surveillance over Kabul, I wonder if the expensively high-tech giant’s-eye view encourages a primitive notion that the best way to solve a problem here is to target a “bad guy” and then kill him. If the bad guys appear to be scurrying dots on the ground below, stomp them out.
Crushing only the right dots has proven very difficult for a U.S. drone warfare program documented to have killed many civilians. News sources speculate that the recent drone assassination of Taliban leader Akthar Mansour makes an end to this war far less likely. A commentator for the highly respected Afghan Analyst Network has written that “with the U.S. killing Akhtar Mansur, it is unlikely the Taleban will be set on anything but revenge for now, as can be understood from the movement’s political psychology… There is no reason to believe the fighting will de-escalate with the new leadership.”
Was that simple prediction available to the U.S.A.’s giant’s-eye view?
My young friends among the Afghan Peace Volunteers have shown me a vastly different approach toward problem solving. In a sense, they’ve been launching a diplomatic outreach, refining their approach through trial and error over the course of several years, taking careful steps toward building trust between different ethnic groups, and also relying on their own personal stories to help them understand the cares and concerns of others. Throughout their efforts they’ve tried to be guided by Gandhi’s advice about considering the poorest person’s needs before making a decision.
What has brought a non-violent future closer to Afghanistan – giant sized military and surveillance systems or the accomplishments of young volunteers working to develop inter-ethnic projects?
Twenty teams are working at the Borderfree Center organizing practical activities within communities coping with multiple economic woes, including food insecurity, unemployment, and inadequate income for meeting basic needs
Young people travel to and from the Center along unpaved roads lined on both sides with sewage filled drainage ditches. Traffic is chaotic, and the air is so polluted that many wear protective face masks. Day laborers congregate at intersections waiting in desperation for the opportunity to perform hard labor for $2 a day or less.
Even those fortunate enough to receive an education will likely face extreme difficulty in finding a job. Unemployment is at an all-time high of 40 percent and many jobs are attained only through ‘connections.’
Throughout Kabul, refugees crowd into squalid, sprawling camps where people live without adequate protection from harsh weather. According to The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between Jan. 1 and April 30 this year, “117,976 people fled their homes due to conflict.” And, the U.N. says it has only received 16 percent of funds needed for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan this year.
Nisar, one of the students at the Borderfree Center’s Street Kids School, understands destitution all too well. He has been earning an income for his family since he was a small child, working as a shoeshine boy on Kabul streets and also in a butcher shop. Now, at age 17, he will soon graduate from three years of classes with the Street Kids School. In the past year, he has been a steady volunteer, taking on responsibilities with the duvet project and the organic gardening team. Nisar says that when he first came to the Center, three years ago, he felt astonished to see people from different ethnic backgrounds sitting together. Nisar’s family comes from the Wardak province, and relatives of his are among those who recently fled the Taliban. He clearly understands the terrible risks that armed struggle could bring, even here in “Ka-bubble” as Kabul is sometimes called because of the relative calm that still prevails here. In spite of tensions, Nisar feels sure that when people learn to overcome their fears and start talking with one another, they can set aside hatreds taught to them at young ages.
U.S. planners, heads lost in the sky, seemingly pay little heed to developing ways of building trust. Resources are gobbled up by gigantic multinational “defense” companies dedicated to the task of further, trampling warfare, while withholding anything like the quantity of resources needed for the task of repairing the wreckage they themselves have caused.
U.S. think tanks cleverly promote cartoonized versions of foreign policy wherein the mighty giant strikes a fist and eliminates the “bad guy” whom we are told has caused our problems. But I believe U.S. people would be better off if we could see the often-suffering communities that show admirable qualities as they try to survive. We could learn from their efforts to build mutual trust and solidarity, and their courage to reject war. We could insist that the massively well endowed US and NATO powers finally acknowledge that the best hopes for a lasting peace come when communities experience a measure of stability and prosperity. The giant powers could help alleviate the desperate need faced by people enduring hunger, disease and homelessness.
U.S. people should earnestly ask how the U.S. could help build trust here in Afghanistan, and, as a first step, begin transferring funds from the coffers of weapon companies to the UN accounts trying to meet humanitarian needs. The “giant” could be seen stooping, humbly, to help plant seeds, hoping for a humane harvest.
Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) is distributed by PeaceVoice and co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She is writing from Kabul where she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.
AMAC Protests Invasion-of-Privacy Rule
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Obama’s “invasion of privacy rule” that would force children to share bathrooms in schools has sparked widespread protests across the nation.
“Dissent is rampant on this issue and the Association of Mature American Citizens wants to do something about it,” according to AMAC president Dan Weber. “Our 1.5 million members demand an end to such blatant abuse of power. The government wants to regulate every aspect of our personal lives including our biological need to use the toilet.”
Elementary schools, high schools and institutions of higher learning that receive federal funding are now required to allow boys and girls who seek transgender identities to use whichever toilet facilities they choose under the new federal decree.
“By directing the Department of Education to force schools to allow people of the opposite sex to use whatever bathroom, locker room or shower room they feel like using, President Obama has overstepped his authority and has assumed dictatorial powers. The President has absolutely no ability, according to the Constitution, to pass laws by himself,” Weber said. “But he continues to completely ignored Congress and the checks and balance that are part of our Constitution.”
AMAC is giving away wristbands with the single word, Privacy, on them to anyone who wishes to express their resistance to the government’s latest proclamation. “We want to protest the edicts and regulations issued by this administration that fundamentally change our way of life and take away our individual liberty. Whether the issue is illegal immigration, religious freedom, the I.R.S., or personal modesty.”
The new regulation will likely be tested in the courts. But commentator Larry O’Connor posted an article online that noted: “Regardless of how this gets worked out in the courts, every parent in America will wake up this morning having to deal with an issue they probably never thought they’d have to face several years ago. Parents now have to decide how they will deal with the reality that their child will not enjoy a basic level of privacy when they use a restroom or locker room when they go to school. Will this bring about a rise in private school attendance? Will it inspire more parents to home school their children? Will states flirt with the idea of refusing federal education funds? Either way, if anyone wondered what President Obama meant when he promised to ‘fundamentally transform the United States of America,’ now they know.”
AMAC president Weber said that the association’s wristband give-away is open to anyone who wishes to express “displeasure” at the administration’s action. To order a wristband go to https://amac.us/privacy/ or call 888-262-2006 and ask for “Wristband”
ABOUT AMAC
The Association of Mature American Citizens [http://www.amac.us] is a senior advocacy organization that takes its marching orders from its members.
Lost In Chicago…
Lost In Chicago With A Palestinian Holocaust Survivor
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2016/05/lost-in-chicago-with-palestinian.html
One would think that getting around Chicago by riding its elevated train system would be like a piece of cake. All you gotta do is pay your fare and then get from Point A to Point B. But one would not be counting on my highly-elevated ability to get lost. Anywhere. From Antarctica to Alaska, from the Melbourne to Mecca, from Walgreens to Walmart (except I never go to Walmart because they rip off the working class), I can still manage to get lost — and so Chicago’s “L” system proved to be no different from anyplace else.
But when I found out that Mariam Fathallahan, an 86-year-old survivor of the 1948 Palestinian holocaust, was speaking in Park Ridge, a suburb of Chicago, I decided to take a risk. This was a rare opportunity to hear her speak, so I jumped on the Green Line of the “L”. And jumped off again — onto the Red Line. “You need the Blue Line to get out to Park Ridge,” someone finally told me, “but not the Pink, Orange or Brown.” They got a pink line in Chicago? How cool is that!
So I got off that train and onto another train and then onto another train again. And ended up at O’Hare airport. But finally found the right station and then street-hiked east for a mile. So far so good. Only got lost three times. And when I got to the event, there was lots of free food! Hummus and falafels. Well worth the trip.
Over baklava, I got to talk with this refugee from the 1948 Palestine “Catastrophe” — and she was delightful. Jews don’t have a lock on delightful older holocaust refugees who have lived through Hell and survived, moving on to become wise people who are anti-war right down to the tips of their toes. http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/ Many Native American holocaust survivors are like that as well. And also survivors of Reagan’s 1980s ethnic cleansing of the Maya in Guatemala. But I digress.
As the evening wore on, it started raining cats and dogs outside and had gotten really really dark so I had to leave early so I could find my way back. But I heard later that the rest of the presentation went well. http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/local/palestinian-refugees-talk-about-living-without-a-state-at-columbia/article_19d69746-d60a-5208-9230-29cde5acdd00.html
Amena Ashkar, Fathallah’s translator and also a refugee who was born in the camps in Lebanon, had really interesting stuff to say. “When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, their main purpose was to get rid of Palestinian refugees,” and thus continue the Israeli neo-colonialist brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Having survived one holocaust already, Palestinians were then subject to yet another holocaust in Lebanon.
“Does Israel have a right to exist, you might ask me?” said Ashkar, “and my answer is this: Do I also have a right to exist as well?” Someone else added that it is definitely not cool to ask a rape victim if she recognizes the rights of her rapist. http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/21/widening-cracks-zionism
So in the dark of night and pouring rain, I stumbled around the suburbs of Park Ridge, totally and hopelessly lost — until I finally saw a faint light in the distance. It was a Walgreens! “You walk a mile south then cross a bridge over the freeway and then walk a mile more,” said the friendly and helpful clerk. Great, just great. And then I also found out that parts of suburban Chicago have no sidewalks.
And somehow I finally made it back to the South Loop Hotel and took a hot bath. http://www.chicagosouthloophotel.com/
But how many Palestinian holocaust refugees today even have that option — to take a hot bath?
PS: One of the main reasons that I truly dislike the Clinton-Trump presidential ticket is because they both seem to be taking great glee at the thought of killing even more women and children in the Middle East; more than have already been maimed, slaughtered or made homeless by American-made bombs. Don’t all those millions of victims of the Bush-Obama-Clinton-Trump doctrine in the Middle East hate us enough already? http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/05/bernie-comes-to-vallejo/#more-62696
PPS: I’m not the only one that gets lost easily. America too has lost its way. Instead of heading toward the bright boulevards of Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and the Golden Rule, my country has completely lost its way inside a labyrinth of dark alleys that go nowhere — and have scary names like “Regime Change” and Genocide” and “Homelessness” and “Outsourcing”. https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/17/the-danger-of-demonization/
PPPS: News just in from my Syrian friend that yet another massive suicide bombing by ISIS/al Qaeda just took place in Syria. And the American neo-con RepubliDems are now jumping with joy. “Soon Syria will be another Libya!” they whisper behind their hands. And at the rate that Wall Street and War Street are supporting al Qaeda and ISIS, America will soon become another Libya too. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-wests-massacre-of-the-innocents-in-syria/5525865
“It’s really bad over there today,” writes my friend. “And the West’s pro-zombi media is celebrating their ‘victory’ on the ‘infidels’! But the pattern is so simple though: Whenever the Syrian Arab Army and their allies win against the ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists and armed gangs, then the terrorists target the civilians, not the army! They are blackmailing the Syrian government and army by targeting the people.
“I can imagine the Saudis, Turks, Qataris and whoever else is behind them [American and Israeli neo-colonialists!] saying to the Syrian officials in the negotiations: ‘If you won against our militias or if you are not going to surrender, we gonna order them to slaughter more civilians — and the Western media won’t even mention the Syrian dead (or our crimes)’.
“I wish that these criminals would not be allowed to get away with their crimes. And I also wish to witness their judgement day for the horrors they have inflicted on Syria.” Me too!
Real Health Care Needed
In the United States whatever health care program we accept and provide should cover Americans COMPLETELY, no co-pays, no out of pocket expenses, no hidden costs. Affordable Care Act, a.k.a., Obamacare, does not work for many Americans despite what is said about it.
Medicare is the closest program that works for most Americans who use it, but there are still additional costs and Medicare only pays 80 percent of all costs accepted by Medicare. The remaining 20 percent must be paid by the recipient. Yes, you could always get an additional Medicare Supplement that would pay the remaining 20 percent, but you still have to pay the premium for it.
Remember, those on Medicare still need to buy medication out of pocket or via a Medicare Rx Program.
The truth is that affordable health care is still NOT affordable.
Those who worked most of their lives have paid into the Medicare program. Those who are Medicare recipients continue to pay a small premium and deductible each year to remain on it, yet none are completely covered.
Although I don’t support him for President, like Bernie Sanders I believe a Medicare for All approach is the best option for Americans, although the health care industry would fight that to the death… our death.
We still need a real health care solution that works for most Americans. Medicare for All is the start of that solution.
Iconoclast Historical Writer Dies
By W. Leon Smith
Many readers of The Lone Star Iconoclast are mourning the recent passing of one of the publication’s former editorial contributors, Joe Marchman, 83, who died on March 2, 2016, at his residence after an extended illness. Burial was in Oak Grove Cemetery in Walnut Springs, Texas.
Marchman had an illustrious career and for The Iconoclast in his later years contributed intensely researched features about the founding of the Lone Star State. He was an award-winning writer, a reporter, an investigator, and an author. At one time he was involved in banking.
He was born on Sept. 25, 1932, in Meridian, Texas, the son of the late Herschel V. and Mary Ruth Rosenquist Marchman. He graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1957 and became the first city manager for the City of Plano, Texas, where he served as a developer and pioneer, creating the famed Western Heritage Sale with former Texas Gov. John Connally, Louis Pearce, Tio Kleburg, Bobby Shelton, and Bill Burford.
He was a collector of historical 19th century French and British art and was also a Santa Gertrudis rancher.
Marchman, who was intrigued about Texas history, wrote about E.T. “Bull” Adams, his wife, Mabel Wayland Adams of Glen Rose, and her father, Dr. James H. Wayland, a horse-and-buggy, High Plains pioneer of Plainview and West Texas.
Marchman’s “spotlight on history” series in The Iconoclast dealt with the lead-up of Gen. Sam Houston’s forces against Mexico’s Santa Anna at the Alamo, Goliad, and eventually San Jacinto, where Texas gained its independence from Mexico. Among the personalities featured were Erastus (Deaf) Smith who is credited with destroying Vince’s Bridge at San Jacinto, which provided no retreat for Santa Anna’s troops. Another key figure in the victory was The Yellow Rose of Texas, a young woman named Emily who was one of Santa Anna’s slaves. As Marchman put it, “It seems that Emily was closeted in the tent with General Santa Anna at the time the cry was made: ‘The Enemy! They Come! They Come!’ It is said that ‘Emily detained Santa Anna so long that order could not be restored.
“Coming out of his tent, Santa Anna saw his men falling around him. He grabbed a bright blue jumper and slithered away through the tall grass in an effort to escape the vengeance of the raunchy ravenous Texans.
“Given a horse, Santa Anna galloped away toward Vince’s Bayou. As he reached the bayou, his large black horse bogged down in the marsh. His efforts to reach General Filisola at the Brazos was not to be. The Napoleon of the West was forced to crawl on his belly through the tall, wet grass to his Waterloo the rest of the night.”
Marchman went on to write, based on extensive research, that Emily “lived to tell her story to her tent mate. The story Emily told inspired the never-to-be-forgotten ballad known as ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’”
Marchman’s detailed recreations of Texas Independence were well read and highly touted.
Marchman, who was a member of the Cowboy Church in Stephenville, is survived by his children, Houston Marchman of Spicewood, Molly Marchman of Bryan, and Joe Marchman, Jr. of Las Vegas, Nev.; and several grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Jim Marchman.
Sustainable Social Justice – Changing Our World
“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
~ Sun Tzu
For over a century war has been made on us, not with weapons of military might, but economic war intended to utterly control us and steal everything we have. Not knowing, we were manipulated, divided, and began to fight each other.
Individuals hiding behind corporate shields are responsible for this, for the mortgage crisis, for the deaths of Veterans left homeless after serving their country. It will not end until those responsible are held accountable.
Our actions must solve many problems simultaneously. We have in our hands the power to hasten our removal from dependence on oil and ensure justice is done for the many who have suffered and been victimized.
The road to peace, community, prosperity, and freedom is sustainability. We must extract ourselves from the grid of greed and rebuild our world. Beginning with Social Justice projects we can build locally to demonstrate to our fellow Americans why this works for them, personally.
At one time we will show our neighbors, friends, and associates the benefits of sustainability and the difference we can make in the lives of those abandoned to the streets.
The fact is, most people decide what to do based on what they are facing personally. By showing them how they can reduce their cost of living while living better we will have motivated them to adopt sustainable technologies. But they have to see and experience it themselves.
We can no longer afford to ignore those in need. Sustainable housing and effective treatment for PTSD is the best and least expensive way to put these victims of corporate greed back on their feet.
Utah decided in 2005 it was cheaper to provide housing than to pay the expenses caused by their homeless population. Today, they home first. Then they provide services to help the homeless put their lives back together. Other states and municipalities are following their example. But we can do better. Conventional buildings fail to take people off the grid, demonstrating the benefits of sustainable construction. All of us need to get off this grid.
Sustainability lowers recurring costs. It gives us back time we are now spending making money just to pay those looming monthly expenses. For too long sustainability has been geared for those ‘who can afford it.’ This misperception must be corrected.
The most expensive part of a building is the material used for construction. Netzero material which is hydrophobic, fire-proof, resistant to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and more is waiting to be used in America, as it is now used in other parts of the world.
Visit the Geopolymer Institute, founded in 1979. The material used, various kinds of clay, such as kaolinite, have been used in Oriental medicine for thousands of years. New processing breakthroughs using nanotechnology techniques have made the resulting material harder and even longer lasting.
“Oh, but it is expensive,” you think. Wrong. It is far cheaper than the faux green materials presently in use and includes no petroleum products whatsoever.
The same formula we will be using is also suitable for repairing the bridges, highways, dams, and other infrastructure now deteriorating across America. We need to ensure it becomes the new standard for construction.
First, we home. Then, we heal.
At the same time local organizing for Veterans will begin, using treatments which really work to extinguish the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Today these treatments, different forms of Neurofeedback, are being used to treat drug and alcohol addiction as well. Addictions, as it turned out, are very often self medication used to cope with chronic anxiety.
Dr. Janet McCulloch, a psychiatrist practicing in Kingston, Canada began using Neurofeedback to treat Veterans and became persuaded of its practicality and thrift. She says, “…with neurofeedback we can help more people more quickly and with less expense. That makes sense to me.”
Starting with a sustainable project for homeless Vets we will show Americans a very different future. Along with the Vets being homed and healed they will find solutions to their most pressing problems.
These are powerful messages, changing what those in our own communities think is possible Hope can be reawakened in people who have given up as our actions will convey this powerful message, aiding all of us to heal.
As they recover, Vets will learn new skills opening doors to jobs and enterprises in Green Commerce.
Every person who recovers is another man or woman who will have made a transition into the future we want for all of us.
How do we get the funding, you may wonder. We demand taxpayers be allowed to direct their tax contribution to a local trust, started and run by the taxpayers, to provide a Veterans Village for their town. Would you contribute the taxes you have already paid? In a NY minute.
Bridge To Wellbeing?
According to journalist Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Koch supported this new initiative as a way to counter an increasingly negative public image while attempting to reframe public discussions of the “free market” ideology he has so long espoused. Although the program may seem like a minor curiosity with so much attention focused on presidential politics, it is significant because its central concern – wellbeing – represents a nexus of issues affecting almost every aspect of American life today. From the declining lifespans of white, middle-aged Americans (particularly those without a high school education) to record levels of suicide (up by 24% from 1999 to 2014), from the lead-tainted waters of Flint, Michigan, to the opioid epidemic now afflicting over two million Americans, you’ll find it hard to read a newspaper today without seeing some reference to a serious issue affecting the physical and emotional health of our citizens. And the troubling fact is that each of these issues is inextricably linked to a web of related problems.
For example, the increased death rates for middle-aged white Americans (ages 45-54 years) was first discovered last year by the Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who found that the increase in mortality from 1999 to 2013 (22% for people with a high school education or less) had much to do with increasing levels of distress, chronic pain, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide. The contamination of Flint’s water system, meanwhile, has also been a painful reminder to many observers that over half a million American children ages one to five have excessive levels of lead in their blood. This poisoning is traceable to lead paint in older homes, to soil tracked into the homes, and to water sources – and it disproportionately affects children in poor communities and communities of color.
Free-Market Individualism
For many years, Charles Koch and his brother David have vilified the idea of collective responsibility for the kinds of health-related problems described above, and the Bridge to Wellbeing program is no different in its approach. If you visit the Bridge website, you’ll find a section entitled “Policies Affecting You,” and the brief policy statements appearing there address a wide range of issues, from “Health Care and Entitlements” to “Energy and Environment” and “Technology.” In all the statements, an ideology of free-market individualism predominates. You can see it in assertions that government spending on food stamps has “grown out of control in recent years;” or that minimum wage legislation has been “hurting the unemployed and the very same young and low-skilled workers it is intended to help;” or that the use of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 to protect wetlands is an abuse by federal regulators who have employed the act to “relentlessly expand their reach over both land and water use.”
This ideology supports the economic self-interest of a family with immense holdings in oil, gas, coal, chemicals, and lumber, but it has little to do with meaningful efforts to advance human wellbeing. Though the “Bridge” workshops may have merit in their own right, the program as a whole evades the fact that people’s physical and emotional health requires strong social supports. No number of workshops on budgeting or healthy eating will clean up the waters of Flint or address the systemic racism and environmental injustice that led to their contamination in the first place. No helpful classes on couponing will address the rent and mental health crises in my home county of Los Angeles, where 47,000 people are now living on the streets, with the number rising each year.
For many years, Charles Koch and his brother have been major players in orchestrating the growing influence of free market, or neoliberal, ideology over American government at all levels, and it is no surprise to see the ideology dominating Republican presidential politics over the past year. Yet the challenges to our wellbeing will not go away no matter who is elected this November, and the illusory nature of Mr. Koch’s bridge reminds us of what is at stake.
We need only connect the dots to see that Mr. Koch’s structure is a bridge to nowhere. The only true bridge to human wellbeing is a just society.
Andrew Moss, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an emeritus professor at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he taught a course, “War and Peace in Literature,” for 10 years.