Digital stories, digital distortions

Camera phones change how we interact with the world, Steven Barrie-Anthony writes in the LA Times.

It's difficult to imagine Robert Frost, say, stopping in the woods on a snowy evening, giving his harness bells a shake with one hand while holding a camera phone with the other, and still taking in enough of the experience to conjure it later in verse. Another poet could write from Frost's photo record, although whose woods those were he might not know...

This is something I've thought about a lot, though I don't have a camera phone -- and can't imagine having one unless they improve a lot because I am too much of a snob about image quality.

For years I didn't choose to use a camera, except rarely. I wanted to be sure that I lived my experiences fully rather than turning them into pictures.

I've always known how to capture photos that would enable me to tell a story. When we worked in South Africa for anti-apartheid newspapers, knowing that we'd have to try to explain back home, I snapped images with a slide show in mind. I came away with a usable story.

My first digital camera changed my relation to the world. Because I did not have to develop a lot of bad pictures in order to find a few good ones, photography became my art form, a delight in its own right. A better camera has made me a photographing fanatic.

At this time, I'm not interested in video -- I don't know how to tell stories in that medium. I'm not sure I want to. Maybe soon that reluctance will seem dated -- a little like Frost creating a poem out of a remembered experience.

This blog seems on its way to becoming as much a venue for my picture stories as for my thoughts. I'm fine with that.

After May Day: the movement spurs anxieties

My previous post on the current immigrant insurgency, on the new civil rights movement, was written from a perspective formed by being in the streets and enjoying the wonderful energy of proud people rising up for dignity and justice. It is through such experiences that I have learned what I little know about the possibility of the beloved human community.

But of course, most people weren't there in the streets and might not want to be there. What might the immigrant uprising mean to them?

Periodic panicsFirst some history, to put present anxieties in context. The story of U.S. immigration "policy" is one of enthusiastic starts, punctuated by fits of fear. Those already here have repeatedly become afraid that newcomers would swamp their culture and threaten their livelihoods. In the west, in the late 19th century, the fear was labeled "the yellow peril"; Chinese immigrants were excluded by act of Congress in 1882. But white immigrants, from southern and eastern Europe just kept on coming -- by 1910, the foreign born were fully 14.8 percent of the population (they were only 10.4 percent in 2000.) In 1924, seeking to stem the tide, immigration law set quotas for the allowable number of immigrants by country, favoring whites and northern Europeans.

With the beginning of the Cold War, the McCarran Walter Act of 1952 added anti-communist provisions to the geographical exclusions; no godless revolutionaries were to be allowed. In 1965 the U.S. partially abolished the national origin quotas that had aimed to keep the country white and also began to facilitate family reunification (the opportunity for immigrants to bring close family members to join them.) This legal change particularly enabled Asian immigration. By 1986, the country had attracted 3 million undocumented migrants mostly from south of the border. A new law called for sanctions on employers who hired them but also offered amnesty to those already here.

The employer sanctions were not enforced; employers kept on hiring and migrants kept on coming. And so today, some U.S. citizens, some of those of us already here, including a minority of violent racists, demand a wall to close off the Mexican border and criminalization of undocumented persons already here. These provisions are embodied in Congressman Sensenbrenner's HR4437. This current panic sparked the current immigrant movement.

Race and racism haunt the new landMeanwhile, not surprisingly, many African Americans wonder whether the result of this immigrant movement will be to further erase their contributions to this country. Some African Americans are directly in competition with the newcomers for low wage jobs and don't like that. But even more important to African American unease is fear that this latest wave of newcomers will simply adopt the unjust racial system of their new country. Andre Banks spelled this out in an article for the Applied Research Center:

There is little question that the current immigration debate, though coded and contrived otherwise, is entirely about race. Yet, the framing made popular by immigrants and their advocates is so hostile to Black people and our American experience that it seems impossible for us [African Americans] to stake a claim with this movement....

The narrative of the immigrant as the symbol of hard work that leads to opportunity can mean nothing but alienation for Black people precisely because we know this myth is false. Without our labor -- not immigrant labor, but slave labor -- in the fields and on the march there would be no market brimming with wealth and economic opportunity, nor a tradition of civil and political rights readily available for appropriation and exploitation....

New immigrants of color, unlike their European predecessors, should recognize that in passively accepting anti-Black racism in exchange for integration into U.S. culture and economy, they might issue a warrant for the future seizure of their own tenuous rights.

Mexicans, Salvadorans and Dominicans are not Irish, Italian and German. Racism, in its subtle sweep, touches every community of color. While it is true that Black people often end up at the bottom, other people of color, despite the comfort of an idealized immigrant narration, are nowhere near the top.

Many African Americans simply cannot identify with the immigrant narrative being promoted by the new movement. They didn't come here to better themselves and succeed through hard work. Their ancestors were dragged here in chains against their will and the fruit of their hard labor has been appropriated by generations of whites.

Banks reminds his readers that despite still being burdened by the U.S. racial hierarchy, majorities of African Americans have historically supported the justice struggles of other groups. The Rev. Jesse Jackson writes to encourage such support. He stresses historical kinship, urging solidarity among potential allies.

Immigrants of previous generations, including African Americans, should see the new undocumented workers as allies, not threats. They share with African Americans a history of repression, of being subjected to back-breaking, soul-deadening work -- or to no work at all.

They also share a common heritage. Less than 10 percent of enslaved Africans ended up in the United States. The vast majority were shipped to Latin America and the West Indies. People of color are brothers and sisters under and of the skin, whether we are called undocumented "Latino" immigrants or "African Americans."

Four Northern Californian civil rights veterans, María Blanco, Eva Paterson, Hector Preciado and Van Jones, have attempted to name explicitly the source of much unease between communities of color:

As for the new civil rights movement, perhaps much of the discomfort created by this phrase is due to the fact that there is still much unfinished business in the "old" civil rights movement. The immigrant rights movement has to be sensitive to that reality.... Latino immigrants who today march for dignity know that they are part of the great tradition of the freedom marches, launched and led by African Americans. ...

The naysayers will always be there. So will those who want to divide us. What we have before us is an opportunity to reinvigorate our mutual work with the energy captured by the spirited expression that rang out across the nation on May 1 -- sí se puede!

The land was never emptyBefore the whites and the African Americans, native peoples lived in this place. Now there are folks who, if not exterminated, really have been erased! Meteor Blades has offered some perspectives on the current moment incorporating a perspective from those earlier residents:

• ...Let's dump the word immigration. It's acquired a formalistic, rule-driven tinge that obscures what's really going on, which is, simply, migration, the latest in many waves of migrations, this one being a continuous tsunami since Columbus said, Hi there, we come in peace.

• ...Previous migration policies have substituted ideology, ethnocentrism, religious bias and a twisted economic self-interest for reason, justice and fairness, victimizing human beings who often were already victims.

• ...Globalization that allows the free movement of goods, services, capital and finances around the planet while forcing labor to stay on its side of the fence and ignoring the ecological consequences of reckless economic "development" is a recipe for disaster. Outsourcing and migration can't be unentangled. Bioregions pay no attention to political borders....

Ideally -- I know, what a scary word -- migration policies ought to focus on directing North America toward becoming an ecologically sound model of sustainable economics in which the borders will, decade by decade, lose their importance, and "globalization" will not mean exploitive homogenization nor be a synonym for corruption and greed.

Now there's an outsider perspective on it all. Si se puede! Because we must.

After May Day: A new civil rights movement?

After nearly a week, I may be ready share some semi-coherent thoughts about the exhilarating immigrant marches last Monday. I do believe we are seeing something that does not fit neatly into our existing political categories. Because it is new, and because it is not mine, I am a little hesitant to attempt analysis -- but here goes...

A surprise developmentThe size, broad scope, and determination shown in the marches clearly took this country by surprise. Where'd all these people come from? Of course, they've been with us for a long time (the average undocumented worker has been the country five years.) But we simply don't look at them. I'm reminded of visiting family in Palm Desert, California. They live in a gated-community, an oasis of manicured green, surrounded by cactus, rock, and brown desert. All day, silent shapes tend and water the luxuriant plantings, unacknowledged by the golf cart driving residents. Bet those workers took a day off on Monday to assert themselves as human beings. We, the comfortable white middle class and certainly the opinion-forming media, are more like my oblivious retired relatives than we usually care to know.

And there are vast numbers of these people. Estimates say 12 million U.S. residents are now undocumented. Fully thirty-three percent of U.S. population growth in 2004 came from immigration according to the National Geographic quiz some of us have been playing with. When such a large group suddenly makes itself visible, it is hard not to take notice.


Real life, not protest theaterThe marches felt different from most of our experience in other ways. The folks in them have already demonstrated their grit by simply getting here. It is not easy to leave home and come here to work at menial jobs. We are sucking the adventurous and the enterprising out of the Latin countries to the south, as well as less obviously from much of the rest of the world.

Furthermore undocumented immigrants are truly poor people; when they risk even the little that they have in order to assert their dignity and humanity, their protest carries a moral weight quite different from the set piece acts of "civil disobedience" that have characterized much middle class agitation for the last 30 years. For an undocumented worker, the possible consequences of political protest are literally incalculable; fortunately there have not been many reports of retaliation against participants in the May Day marches.


Undocumented immigrants are workers Well, duh... But think about it for a minute: how often in most of our lifetimes have people who thought of themselves as workers led a protest movement? We've seen movements organized around race, around gender, around aspirations for peace -- but seldom by and for workers. Sure, there was lots of ethnic, Latino, Mexicano, pride in the marches, but as well and often more so, these folks see themselves as proud workers. In fact, to a considerable extent, they are the U.S. "working class" as that term once was commonly if imprecisely understood: they are the people whose work gets them dirty, whose work subjects them to daily physical effort.

Their self-understanding as workers was clear in how the day's events were planned. They called the protests for May Day, celebrated as International Workers Day in most of the world. They urged from the beginning they would walk out for the day and boycott as well; professional immigrant advocates wanted to tone down the protests. However people who see themselves as workers understand that what the society values them for is their labor and so it is by withdrawing their labor that they assert their dignity.

The hand painted signs at the rallies over and over again expressed outrage that Sensenbrenner, Tancredo, the Republican House of Representatives, or anyone would call them "criminals." They know, proudly, that their labor creates much of the country's wealth. "Si se puede; yes, we can!"

Undocumented immigrants appeal to idealsFor most of us, this is a time of political cynicism. The politicians are rotten and our system is failing. Immigrants know political cynicism; many of them come from countries that can make even less claim to practicing justice and equity than George W. Bush's United States. But nonetheless, their movement aims to speak to this country's ideals. Many signs and speeches demand that the United States demonstrate its best characteristics, not its worst. They insist over and over: "You are a nation of immigrants; don't you remember your ancestors came here poor and hungry?" "How can you treat us as less than human?" "Don't you understand we are really just people, like you?" They wave the U.S. flag hopefully.


A bumpy road aheadIf the emergence of the immigrants is indeed the new civil rights movement, like the last one it is not going to make gains without struggle. It is easy to see some obstacles ahead. I'll list a few:

• Lofty goals: as David Bacon and Nativo Lopez point out in an important article on the marches, "people are ready and willing to fight for the whole enchilada." Winning it all, amnesty for all the undocumented, may be more than can be achieved in the short term. Can the movement find strategies and tactics to carry through an ongoing political process marked by repeated fights?

• Divisions by country of origin: in some places, immigrants from different countries worked together well on May Day; Chicago seems to have been a successful example of cooperation. But in others, especially where there are huge Spanish speaking, mostly Mexican-origin, populations, Latino nationalism could overwhelm immigrant unity.

• Divisions by immigration status: many of the "reform" schemes now in Congress would create a multiplicity of legal statuses based on time in the country, ability to document work, ability to pay fines, etc. If some version of these passes, will the group on the legalization track abandon the remaining, and still arriving, undocumented population? Experience says no, because in real life the new arrivals will have family ties to the "legals," but divisive pressures will grow.

• Leaders: anyone who saw these marches has to believe that the leadership exists in the immigrant communities to accomplish huge tasks. They've done it. But that functioning leadership is not, mostly, in the professional immigrant advocacy organizations, especially those in DC and especially those in the Democratic Party. Before the immigrants took to the streets, most of those in "respectable leadership" were open to various "reform" compromises coming out of Congress that would create a "guest worker" status that amounts to slave labor and "legalization" for only a minority of the undocumented. The leaders from the streets need to get into the mix with the professionals, if not completely displace them.

• Pulling up the ladder behind them: When does an immigrant stop being an immigrant? Historically, people have come to the United States, suffered as part of an exploited underclass of workers, gradually gained economic stability, won education and assimilation for their children, and then looked down on the next set of immigrants. Or, more succinctly, the objective for most immigrants has been to leave an immigrant identity behind and become "regular Americans." Can a civil rights movement be based in a population whose individual members are always striving to escape the group? Globalization and the disparities in wealth between north and south suggest that the incoming flow is not likely to decrease regardless of what kind of wall the U.S. builds on its borders. But can a movement be sustained with a changing cast of core participants? I guess we'll see.

Damu Smith, 1952-2006

Damu Smith, the founder of Black Voices for Peace and executive director of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, died May 5 of colon cancer in Washington, DC. He was 54.

Smith's website tells the story of his activist life. Radicalized while still a high school student by observing the Black liberation struggle in Cairo, Illinois, he assumed the name "Damu" ("blood" in Swahili) and moved to Washington where he worked in the anti-apartheid movement, against legal injustices in the U.S., and for peace and a freeze on nuclear weapons.

When Smith was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2005, he became determined to encourage others to get frequent colon cancer tests. "I'm going to be the poster child for twice-a-year screenings." African Americans experience an earlier onset of the disease and higher incidence and mortality rates than whites.

I only met Smith once, at a conference in 2000 where I took the picture above.

But like Smith, in the early 1970s, I saw the segregated Pyramid Courts housing project in Cairo -- marveled at the bullet holes that dotted walls and roofs there and in St. Columba's Catholic Church where the Black United Front held its meetings. When I reported from Cairo in April 1973, I wrote "there is not much of a pie to win a piece of in Cairo, and those who own what there is struggle fiercely to keep from giving it up." Three Blacks had been killed in the simmering local struggle for equality; 25 Black businesses, 43 homes and 25 cars had been torched. Cairo's story destroys any comfortable illusion that Black civil rights were won without blood and anguish.

The town, located where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet, has apparently never recovered from those dreadful times. According to a contemporary website created by Joe Angert, a St. Louis Community College professor:

Cairo, Illinois is the strangest city on the river. It feels like you are visiting a motion picture set from the 1950s and all the actors, save a few strays, have cleared the streets to hide from some impending doom. ...

It really feels abandoned. The population is roughly 3000, which on face value seems like a healthy number, but the city was built to sustain a population five times larger. The buildings are still there, large stone banks, churches, and government buildings; grand in design, but with their promise unfulfilled. They look sad standing there abandoned....

Rather than hire blacks the white store owners one after another just closed shop and left. Cairo is the city that died from racism.

Damu Smith lived a life creatively devoted stopping the dying and increasing freedom for all peoples. Such lives are to be celebrated and emulated if we dare.

You can bet on it!

Tomorrow the Episcopal Church in the San Francisco Bay Area (officially the Diocese of California) will elect a new bishop. Delegates from the various parish churches and the members of the clergy, separately, will vote, probably repeatedly, until one of the seven candidates gets a majority from both sets of electors. The election is the end of a yearlong process that climaxed with the candidates being grilled by about 2000 members of the denomination in six open meetings in one week. To become bishop of this diocese, you have to survive ordeal by popular interrogation. All the candidates seem to have held up pretty well.

Outside the diocese, there is intense interest in whether we'll select one of the three candidates who are open, partnered gay priests. In the worldwide Anglican Church and in pockets in the U.S., such a choice would be a scandal. But I have to say that in the small, mostly gay, Episcopal parish where I am a member, the sexual orientation of the candidates is barely an issue. Oh sure, we wouldn't mind at all if our church further affirmed our equality by selecting a gay bishop. But mostly we just want a good bishop, someone who can lead a fractious, diverse, and inclusive community. The focus on sexual orientation feels voyeuristic, a little prurient.

Election junkies can follow tomorrow's balloting live at the Diocesan website.

UPDATE: MAY 6, 2006: Paddypower.com will have to pay out some on this one. The Right Rev. Mark Andrus has been elected Bishop of California on the third ballot.

Where in the world are we?

Have fun. Make yourself miserable. Take the geography quiz that the National Geographic just gave to 510 U.S. young adults between 18 and 24.

I got 2 wrong, one because I thought too much about my answer, one because I have no idea where CSI is filmed. Maybe you'll do better.

Start here.

One cheer and a boo for juries

Zacarias Moussaoui & Hamid Hayat (KCRA illustration)

Today the Zacarias Moussaoui jury decided not to kill him. The verdict seems pretty remarkable, given that they had already found, on the basis of torture-derived "evidence" further tainted by prosecutorial misconduct, that this nutcase and aspiring martyr had some responsibility for 9/11. Having accepted the bizarre notion that a jailed incompetent could have averted the attacks, it seemed impossible that they would simply jail him for life. After all, these people had been subjected to the Flight 93 cockpit tape recording and the testimony of bereaved New Yorkers.

I feared the jury would decide that offing Moussaoui would give "closure" to the relatives, as if grief could be assuaged by revenge. But apparently not. Good for that jury for rising to an impossible task. Jury service sometimes evokes extraordinary capacities for serious thought and responsible discernment in the most ordinary citizens.

Unhappily, another jury in Sacramento, California seems not to have risen to such discernment. According to the LA Times, they convicted 23-year-old Hamid Hayat of Lodi of providing material support to terrorists, on the basis of Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Tice-Raskin's closing argument:

"Hamid Hayat had a jihadi heart and a jihadi mind."

That was the clincher for the jury, which last week found him guilty of one count of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to federal agents. He now faces up to 39 years in prison.

The proof of Hayat's views were a teenage scrapbook, a slip of paper inscribed with a warrior's prayer in Arabic, books about jihadi martyrs, and Hayat's own boastful comments secretly recorded by a man he thought was his best friend but who turned out to be a paid FBI informant....

In interviews, several jurors said Hayat's confession and evidence of what jury foreman Joe Cote, a 64-year-old retired salesman from Folsom, Calif., called "un-Americanism" convinced them that he posed a danger.

Hayat "confessed" under FBI interrogation, after much prompting, saying that he had been to a terrorist camp in Pakistan. This "evidence" might seem more convincing if his father had not also "confessed" under interrogation that his son had attended a terrorist camp -- at a completely different location where "the training, including firearms practice, took place in an enormous, deep basement where trainees masked like 'Ninja turtles' practiced pole-vaults and executions with scimitars." Unfortunately for Hamid Hayat, his jury never heard this version as his father was tried separately under a completely different theory about the location of the putative camp. The father's jury was unable to agree on a verdict.

Okay -- I wasn't there at this trial, I didn't hear it all -- but this case sure sounds like a prosecution for the thought crime of stupidly fantasizing about being an Islamic warrior. Dumb, yes -- but criminal? Not in my book. The evidence that this guy did anything but harbor silly ideas seems awfully thin. One of the Hamid Hayat case jurors now is claiming she was bullied into agreeing to the guilty verdict. Lawyers will argue over whether her remorse has any legal implications.

The nanny took the day off

If you were there in one of the huge immigrant marches on Monday (and if you weren't you missed a joyous day), you might have observed that there were many, many children among the throngs. A moment's reflection makes one reason obvious.




Nannies don't have babysitters when they march. And proud Latinas and Latinos brought the whole family.


So much to see!






Some children clearly found it all a little overwhelming.




Others were simply pooped.

But I wonder, in fifteen years will they remember they marched for justice with their families? Will they work to make this a more child friendly culture? Perhaps.
Some images taken April 10, most from May 1, 2006; all San Francisco, CA.

A Famous Victory:Boys and their toys

Three years ago, Commander Codpiece declared "Mission Accomplished."

A 19th century English children's poet described an elderly farmer's attempt to explain the antics of such men to his grandchildren:

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found:
He came to ask what he had found
That was so large and smooth and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh—
"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,
For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plough
The ploughshare turns them out.
For many thousand men," said he,
"Were slain in that great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."
...
"With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then
And newborn baby died:
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won,
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.
...
"And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win."
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

Oddly, this quaint rhyme was part of every student's education at the acme of the British Empire. What is our equivalent?

May Day immigrant march, San Francisco

The San Francisco Chronicle calls the crowds of marchers on San Francisco's Market Street this morning "thousands." For decades I've walked in peace marches and gay pride parades on that street and I can testify, this was as closely packed, as enthusiastic, and possibly as large of some of the largest marches I've ever seen there.

Thoughts later -- for now just pictures.


Marchers poured into downtown San Francisco all morning.


Soon the crowd was packed together.





There was great pride and excitement.

HR 4437 and the LGBT community

Youth Eastside Services runs a support groups for immigrant gay, lesbian and bisexual teens.

By now most people know that the "immigration reform" bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 4437, would call for building a 700 mile wall along the boarder with Mexico and would criminalize all undocumented persons found in this country.

In addition to these provisions, the bill is full of more obscure tweaks to immigration, refugee and asylum procedures, all of which will make it harder for newcomers to stay in compliance with the law, as well as often separating families and creating arbitrary inequities. Not surprisingly given the right-wing Republican origins of the bill, many of these regulations not only give force to a racist fear of the browning of the U.S., but also will work to hurt the opportunities available to gay and lesbian would-be immigrants.

In consequence, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force denounces the Sensenbrenner bill as

"mean-spirited election-year pandering to the ‘send them home’ crowd and scapegoating of yet another group in our country perceived to be unpopular and powerless."

Gay fears about HR 4437 fall into several major categories (information from an FAQ by Immigration Equality):

• Asylum and refugee status. Under present law, in some circumstances, LGBT persons are eligible for asylum in the U.S. if they would experience persecution in their country of origin. The new law creates a lot more hurdles for asylum seekers and thereby increases the practical likelihood that LGBT people will have their claims denied by low level immigration officers, often without any chance of appeal.

• Non-recognition of gay partnerships. Because LGBT partnerships are not recognized by U.S. law, citizen partners cannot sponsor their non-citizen spouses for legal residency. In fact, under HR 4437, citizen partners might technically fall under the new class of persons "harboring aliens," becoming criminals for assisting their undocumented partners who would also be declared felons.

• Arbitrary, moralistic exclusions. HR 4437 states that immigrants must be of "good moral character" as determined by an immigration judge. The group Immigration Equality notes "throughout the history of U.S. immigration policy, gay and lesbian immigrants have been controlled within and excluded from U.S. immigration policy through moral character determinations. Gay and lesbian immigrants have been labeled sexual deviants, persons of psychopathic inferiority, possessing a mental defect, and charged with many other moral derisions because they were considered undesirable."

No wonder many organized gay groups oppose this law. Oh sure, there are probably a few white, male gay bar owners who think a harsh immigration reform will help them control any uppity bus boys. But most of the gay community gets that any law that makes some people less equal than others is sure to be used against LGBT people.

Gay legal immigrants and gay people of color especially recognize that HR 4437 is bad news. Gay Asian and Pacific Islander Men of New York spearheaded a protest letter that pointed out that already "many Muslim, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans have been improperly racially profiled and have not been afforded constitutional due process protections."

Marta Donayre, a U.S. citizen of Panamanian origin, who is also a lesbian, has shared on her blog how the "immigration issue" can leave her feeling she has nowhere to stand, but also has reminded her who is there with her.

As an LGBTQ immigrant, I always face having to explain to others the fact that I am a human being. To the immigrant community I am the unwanted dyke. To the LGBTQ community, I am the unwanted foreigner… that is, unless I have an American partner. Only then do I kinda count. ...

Which brings me back to the issue of "the law." A few years ago, Leslie and I broke the law in the State of Virginia. We stayed at a Virginia hotel while on a business trip to Washington D.C. At the time, it was against the law to engage in sexual relations with a person of the same sex in that state. We broke "the law" by becoming intimate with each other in the privacy of our hotel room.

In the eyes of many conservatives, Leslie and I still break "the law" simply because we exist. This "law" of course is their moral or so-called "natural law." Our struggle for basic equality, then is tagged as being a "special right" because we are not deserving due to our actions.

I am ashamed to admit that it took me a little while to understand that the same logic applies to undocumented immigrants. I too used to think of them as non-deserving "law breakers." ...

Just like someone arbitrarily made a law banning sex with partners of the same sex, someone made a law banning people from seeking the American Dream through the creation of a border. ... Oppression of LGBTQ people is caused by people who think they are not deserving. Oppression of poor people is caused by people who think they are not deserving. Laws are passed to ensure that LGBTQ people stay in their place (the closet). Laws are passed to ensure that poor people stay in their place (the other side of the border and starve to death).

Go read the whole post. Thanks to Out for Democracy for pointing to Marta's argument.

Stirrings in the 'hood

An early morning walk along Mission St. in San Francisco this morning left no doubt that excitement is rising about "El Gran Paro," next Monday's boycott, strike, and protests against proposed "immigration reform" legislation that would criminalize undocumented people. The printed poster above lays out the day's program of rallies and marches.


Many businesses have already posted signs explaining why they'll be closed. Very likely owners and workers alike will be on the streets.


"This establishment supports the rights of immigrants and will be closed on May 1st, 2006."


Some businesses wrote their own signs.


This one is in the window of a jewelry store.


An enterprising (and excellent) taqueria added its own advertising to a call for the marches. When the movement inserts itself into business as usual, it begins to take on the characteristics of a true civil rights movement.


This shopkeeper is selling a special t-shirt for the occasion. "We're united -- we're staying, together."

Monday's boycott and protests look to be large, militant and possibly ground-breaking, at least in this immigrant neighborhood.

Acquitted

She is not going to be moved. Oakland, CA; April 17, 2006

Congratulations to the 18 Grannies for Peace acquitted of blocking a military recruiting office in New York City.

"I was sure we were sunk," said Lillian Rydell, 86, a defendant who testified during the trial that she went to "the school of hard knocks," instead of college.

"I love everybody," she said. The defendants called themselves "grannies" because they are all old enough to be grandmothers, even if some of them are not, and because in their view, grandmothers are a core American value, as patriotic as mom and apple pie....

When it was over, the grannies seemed ready to do it again. "The decision today says the First Amendment protects you to protest peacefully," Mr. Siegel [the grandmothers' attorney] said, addressing his clients outside the courthouse after the verdict. "So — go do it!"

And the grannies cheered.

I bet they'll all be out at the march in New York tomorrow.

"Foreign policy" rant

Bumping around the blogosphere the other day, I found myself at a place called Democracy Arsenal reading a post called 10 Foreign Policy Questions Progressives Ought to Be Thinking About How to Answer. The author is Suzanne Nossel, the blog founder, whose biography seems to be that of a credible Democratic policy intellectual. Sadly, I was reminded why, if we ever get rid of the current Neolithic regime, we'll then have to struggle with the Neanderthals who will populate the halls of power under a run of the mill Democrat.

Here are Nossel's "foreign policy" questions (in boldface type) with my comments:

1. Should the US Military Be Enlarged? What kind of mind puts that question first among "foreign policy questions"? There's a bad case of cart before horse here. It would seem a far more plausible first question would be "what do we need a U.S. military for?" Having answered that, (and I am not saying we don't need one) we could sensibly discuss Nossel's question.

2. Is the Fight Against Terror the #1 priority or simply a top priority? Again Nossel avoids the real question: just what is this necessary effort 9/11 has forced on us? We don't want our country and the world paralyzed by terrorism. The current regime has misnamed this effort "a war." Terrorism will continue to be the weapon of the weak. Preventing it is a law enforcement problem. Raising it to the status of a "war," amounts to letting terrorists define how our society lives. That's surrender, not a solution.

3. What is our position on free trade? What is this "free trade"? From what we have seen via NAFTA and the WTO, it amounts to untrammeled freedom for those who have to exploit those who have not. The world doesn't need any more "free trade." Technological progress has connected us all; now let's figure out how to use our new connections to increase the quality of lives all over the world. Now there's a project.

4. What are the primary lessons of Iraq for American foreign policy? Don't invade countries that present no threat? Pre-emptive wars may bite your butt, unexpectedly? Elect a president who values human lives other than his own? Words fail me.

6. What will we do to revive global nuclear non-proliferation? We could start by abiding by the terms of the non-proliferation treaty we signed and work to reduce our own nuclear arsenal. As long as we are scofflaws, we can't very well expect others to take the treaty seriously. And if we go in for pre-emptive wars, no wonder nations that feel threatened want nukes.

7. How will we deal with global development and poverty? How about we make Bono a special adviser to the Secretary of State and pay our U.N. assessment? Dealing with global development and poverty is something all the countries of the world have to do together.

8. What are our big new ideas? We didn't have any memorable ones in 2004 and cannot afford a similar void again. I don't know -- if people with the outlook of Ms. Nossel are developing big ideas, I suspect we are better off without any. Though I can easily come up with a suggestion that doesn't seem to be on Nossel's radar: use the riches of this country to help the nations of the world substitute sustainable economies for a system of greedy, cancerous growth.

9. What More Needs to Be Done to Straighten Out the Gathering and Use of Intelligence? This one brings to mind Gandhi on what he thought of western civilization: he suggested "it would be a good idea." Intelligence would be a good idea, and obviously I don't exactly mean the products of our spooks. A government functioning to promote the general welfare and ensure tranquility (that's from the Constitution in case it seems familiar) needs to know what threats face it and what is going on. And it will find ways to know, with the enthusiastic cooperation of most of its citizens. Our problems with "intelligence" arise from the unrealism of our government.

10. What needs to be done to shore up American superpowerdom? Get over it. U.S. superpower was the product of a series of historical, geographical, and economic accidents, combined with momentary good management (mostly under FDR.) We live in a different, differently threatening, world. THE policy question of the 21st century is how to create a more stable, multi-polar world that offers substantial equity to all without rendering the planet uninhabitable. When security wonks start working on that one, they'll earn their keep. Until then, they are just jerking off.

Immigrants organize amid excitement and fear

Members of the organization Mujeres Unidas y Activas listen to speakers.

Excitement, tinged with fear, is growing in immigrant communities as people prepare for the boycott, general strike, and rallies that have been called for Monday, May 1 to protest any "immigration reform" that criminalizes the undocumented. San Francisco Bay Area immigrant groups held a press conference in Oakland's Fruitvale Village today to counteract rumors that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had been patrolling the neighborhoods in white vans, probably aiming to intimidate people planning to join the protests.


Mariana Bustamante of the ACLU-Immigrant Rights Project explained to the crowd in Spanish and English what what rights people have if stopped by the migra. She emphasized especially that the ACLU has materials about what schools are legally allowed to do if students walk out to protest.

But the following speakers emphasized that, in truth, immigrants would not be protected by the law, but by the commitment and audacity of their political movement.


Maria Reyes of Mujeres Unidas y Activas challenged the crowd colorfully to find their courage: drawing on Revelations 3:16, she reminded them that God "spits out" the lukewarm. According to Reyes, immigrants must bravely show their numbers and power through the strike and rallies next Monday.

The want-to-be bishops and the immigrants

The prize, Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

Last month I wrote optimistically that the eruption of immigrant protest against the terrible HR4437, the migrant criminalization bill, might signal a "new civil rights movement." Last night's session at which the seven candidates seeking election as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California met with about 350 of their potential sheep left me all the more convinced that something powerful has been sparked by the specter of an unjust "immigration reform."

First, I should explain something about this bishop election process. Episcopalians would be the first to admit the denomination has a strange and wonderful polity, a hybrid of popular democracy and authority. We believe we need bishops to serve as foci of unity -- God's church has to be bigger than just our little local congregation. On the other, having come into being as an early and rebellious split from the monarchical Church of England, we evolved a process of choosing those bishops through exhaustive consultation with members and clergy followed by election by congregational delegates. Then a person elected bishop has to be approved either by the other existing bishops or by the General Convention where bishops, clergy and lay people meet every three years to govern the denomination.

For the first time in 25 years, the Diocese of California (the immediate San Francisco Bay Area -- more history embedded in those boundaries) is selecting a new bishop; the previous one is retiring. Several months ago the candidates, winnowed down through exhaustive meeting, greeting, writing, talking and more talking, were announced. And the world got interested because three of the seven are gay, a couple of men and a lesbian. In fact, only two of the seven are conventional bishop types: straight white men. Two are women; another is African American; two have extensive experience with the Anglican churches of Africa, some of which think the U.S. body is heretical for its inclusion of lesbians and gays; one is an immigrant himself. This is an interesting bunch of people. The media flogs the gay angle, but all of the nominees seem interesting, somewhat unconventional people. And for none of them is the gay issue paramount.

This week the want-to-be bishops are being subjected to ordeal by polite interrogation and courteous conversation. For five days, open meetings in various areas of the diocese are providing opportunities for any interested clergy and laity to question the candidates.

THE question
You know you are in the midst of a vigorous civic movement when the movement's imperatives break into apparently unrelated "business as usual." And last night, the immigrant movement broke into the ever-so-carefully-choreographed bishop search process. Gloria del Castillo, a priest in the San Francisco Mission District, demanded that each candidate tell us where the Episcopal Church ought to stand on immigration issues. Moderators were a little taken aback, but quickly got with the program, feeling strong approval from the assembled Episcopalians.

So the candidates did tell us. I'm happy to say that every one of them insisted that the church's stance must begin with extending welcome to the stranger. And most of them went on to express in various ways that the church's mission had to include justice for those who do the work. There were nuances. One who is embedded in official Washington mentioned "border security" which rang wrongly in this state, though he certainly seemed to be on the side of migrants. The one who is an immigrant himself (political refugee from apartheid South Africa) shared his terror when the I.N.S. once declared him "out of status" and threatened deportation. He told us that his lawyer reassured him that, being white, he'd be able to work it out -- and this was true, but he knew well that such an option would not have been so available to an immigrant of a darker race. Two candidates said simply that the church's place was in the streets with the people and, if need be, in jail.



This is not anyone's grandparents' Episcopal Church and the immigrant civil rights struggle is reaching right into the most process-oriented fastnesses of church life. That's how these things should work.

"All eighteen of them want to testify"

Do you think they are dangerous?

"I feel we are in a good position. I haven't heard anything that has made me concerned," said Marie Runyon, 91, the oldest of the defendants....

"I did it because of that miserable, illegal war. That son-of-a-b---- never should have started it," Runyon said, referring to President Bush. "I would say it to his face."

In honor of grandmothers on trial in New York for protesting the Iraq war, here are some more pictures of San Francisco Bay Area Grandmothers against the War rallying outside the Oakland Federal building, Monday April 17.

I suppose we have to do this...

Sungroper solar car team with their satellite dish and the world's most remote internet site. Photographer: David Hancock. © SkyScans.

The internet (and its blog subset) has democratized information exchange to an extent that any of us who once reeled out leaflets and published alternative papers could have fantasized about.

Not surprisingly, the corporate vendors of information want to rein in the proles on the loose out there -- or at least find a better way to make money on the internet.

They are proposing, with Congressional help, to introduce a tiered system of net use that will guarantee that the mediocrity of cable television is replicated -- and we'll be nudged over into a "public access" slow lane.

Go learn more and take action here. And if you are feeling creative and want to do more, check this contest out.

In praise of seemingly futile antiwar vigils

The U.S. antiwar movement is and has been, ineffectual. I write that as someone who helped found War Times/Tiempo de Guerras in 2002 and worked distributing the newspaper through 2004. I write that full of respect for all the many folks who have worked long and hard to cajole, encourage, and rally whatever sanity survives in a United States panic stricken about terrorism. I write that while still encouraging everyone who can to turn out for the April 29 mobilization in New York City. Ineffectual or not, we still have a job to do and even a majority on our side whose voices have not been heeded by our rulers.

But today I want to celebrate the little mobilizations -- the tiny little weekly vigils that have created a steady, continuing antiwar presence in cities across the country. The movement has waxed and waned, but some folks have simply stood their ground, week after week, at intersections, in front of post offices, outside recruiting offices, carrying the message that "peace is the right way; peace is possible."

Helena Cobban recently described how years of taking part in such a vigil gave her hope:

It's been an interesting experience, standing there throughout the years, seeing the seasons turn....

I would say that throughout 2006 so far, the amount of anti-war honking has increased in an almost linear way, week by week.

On several occasions throughout the past couple of years, my friend and co-vigiller Heather has said to me, "Helena, I can't believe we're still here. Don't tell me we'll still be here this time next year!" And I've always said to her, "Heather, expect to be here for the very long haul." Heather wasn't there yesterday. But as I peered into every car that passed trying to establish eye contact and see who all these people were who were honking for us, I suddenly thought, "Hey, maybe we won't have to be here this time next year. ..."

I don't know if Helena is right. She'd be the first to say she doesn't know either. The Bushies' saber rattling toward Iran suggests she may be horribly wrong.

But I think she catches what these persistent little demonstrations do for the peace movement: they provide a focus for our need for hope in our work for peace. Since 2001, the U.S. peace movement has been in a bind: it is easy and appropriate to name the United States as an international villain, a rogue elephant. But with who or what can the peace movement claim to stand? Certainly not with the current official enemy state, Iran. Not with the fundamentalist-ruled client governments we've imposed on Iraq and Afghanistan. Not with Muqtada al-Sadr or Mahmood Ahmadinejad, or even most of the Iraqi "resistance." Maybe some peace activists can stand with the emerging populisms in Latin America, but those countries are far from where the U.S. is currently throwing its military might around.

The persistent little vigils are an attempt to locate that vital "something to be for" in our own communities, as vigillers together with each other and as parts of the larger web of life that characterizes our towns and cities. Regularity creates familiarity and, gradually, disarms some hostility. Mere tenacity draws attention to alternative visions. The vigil becomes a part of the landscape, not only of the vigillers, but also for the whole community. This is not dramatic, but it keeps the possibility of peace on the agenda. That is a lot in these difficult times.

For a pretty extensive list of local vigils (93), see the United for Peace and Justice events calendar.

Friday bird blogging:Crissy Field, San Francisco

After months of rain, Northern California is beginning to dry out. So is this cormorant.


The marsh is a little delicate. It requires a lot of human intervention to keep it a marsh. I remember when it was a vacant lot, sometimes used for parking. As I walk by, I think about global warming -- this won't be a marsh in 50 years if climate change predictions are correct. It will be underwater.


This guy just needs to keep his feet on the bottom as he stalks by.


Perhaps she needs land to nest? I should learn more about herons.