New Orleans

The next half-hour of messing with this was interesting.  First, there were not a huge number of callers, which at least proves that some Fox News viewers have some good sense or a modicum of manners.  Secondly, most callers hung up as soon as I picked up the phone on the old principle I suppose that if a man answers, hang up!  I think they were taken aback to have gotten lucky and had me on the phone.  One engaged me a bit and wanted to make sure I was “Wade S. Rathke, the ACORN thug who was organizing the Occupy movement.”  I told him my middle name was Wade and that he had his “S” was in the wrong place, and I hung up.  The calls were from Allentown, PA, and central Jersey, and that neck of the woods.  Fox News and these losers probably don’t realize that you can immediately dial back after a call and get the number of the caller on modern phones, so we could collect their numbers to turn into the police.

It was funny to me that they used the Fair Grinds number, rather than calling my office at ACORN International or Local 100 United Labor Unions or Social Policy magazine, all of which would have normally given them a better shot at talking to me.  Do the Fox News crazies not only think – preposterously – that I’m somehow “organizing the Occupy movement,” but also working as a barista at our great new Fair Grinds Coffeehouse?  Even funnier is that we are still in the death throes of trying to get Cox and Verizon to port the cellphone numbers that were used since Katrina at the coffeehouse over to a land line we installed two weeks ago, so bully-boy callers would have gone right to voice mail over there.

Frankly, it’s not cool to see that Fox News is back up to these kinds of shenanigans even with Glenn Beck long lost and gone.  This is the kind of thing that brings out the whack jobs as we all saw in the Oakland incident and gunfight about a year ago with a deranged dude looking to wreck mayhem on the Tides Foundation because of its connections with me, progressives, and others.   On Facebook a number of my friends’ advice was to lawyer up, but as much as I appreciated the sentiment, we have freedom of speech here, and once you have morphed into being a “public figure” because of the work you do, there’s not much that lawyers can do but send you a bill.  As for calling the police in New Orleans, read the papers, Google New Orleans police, and you will understand why I would feel safer NOT calling, thank you!  I’m glad I got a shotgun for my birthday and am in the process of getting myself a new dog for the yard since Cheyenne passed away, but these things only mark the boundary line of the property.

The real boundaries have to be marked by a civility of discourse and dissent, which allows us to vigorously debate our differences including organizing aggressively and protesting loudly, but still respects basic democratic principles and fundamental societal norms that do not deliberately attempt to silence and intimidate.  It won’t work with me, but, frankly, it should be tried with anyone.

New Orleans

Speaking of calls, flipping the channels before passing out last night, I saw the Media Matters guy talking head with an interviewer.  He first caught my ears with a phrase about the “innocent staffers at the Tides Foundation” being “targeted for assassination,” and knowing so many of them, I could easily visualize them reaching for their cell phones to call Mom back home and explain why this was really a good job! He was threatening to call Sarah Palin, if she didn’t respond to their request for her to denounce Glenn Beck and all of the right wing hate speech.  Yeah, right!  Grizzly mom sets the scene for slaughter in speech after speech.  This call won’t be answered, unfortunately.

Julian Assange of Wikileaks likes to speak for his program but he’s not getting much Media 101 advice from his volunteer team, and this may be why his German spokesperson got in a huff and resigned.  He seems to have somehow believed that he could walk off the set on news interviews when he doesn’t like the questions and did so on the other day on CNN.  Even with Mr. Softball Larry King and Daniel Ellsberg they had a minute where they thought he had buzzed off.  He seems to be offended that folks are going to ask him about the rape and molestation accusations in Sweden.  Well, hello, Julian?  Until it’s resolved, of course they’re going to ask, and you just answer, and then move on, don’t be an ass about it and think somehow that this is something diva antics can handle.  Come on, this is bush league.  Man up!

On the rabid right because an election is nigh upon us, there’s a spate of ACORN’s BACK articles on the whack-and-blog front proving once again that the right is now so atavistic that it has become necromantic.   Please friends and neighbors, keep away from cemeteries until after November 2^nd.  ACORN is dead as a doornail and no amount of blowhard air is going to resuscitate it.  I got a couple of emails yesterday and forwarded links where someone was trying to conflate poor Project Vote’s meager efforts this round and argue Project Vote and ACORN were one and the same so let’s go to town.  I wouldn’t want to confuse anyone with the facts, but Project Vote is simply not the same as ACORN.  The facts are simple.  If ACORN were still alive and well, there would be a different calculus right now on the eve of the mid-term elections.  The outcome might not be that much different, but the contest would be closer and fairer if lower income and working people were registered and going out to vote in the numbers we have seen in the past.

Which also makes me think about Toronto, one of the shining progressive city lights of North America and has me head scratching to figure out the Mayor’s election this week?  How is it possible that a hard right conservative could win by over a 100,000 votes?   There’s no job in Mudville today.

So off to Phoenix!

New Orleans

When I flew into San Francisco a couple of months I got there just as a crazy was in the news having been arrested in a fire fight with the cops as he was headed to do damage to the Tides Foundation, ACLU and others.  He’s now conceded he was revved up by Beck and the Fox News fanatics.  I didn’t enjoy seeing my name in those articles either, but what can you do, move under a rock?  Nada, me!  Not because I’m such a cowboy anymore (I swear!), but the work has to be done, and it’s the risk we’ve always lived with….

Well, my friend, Drummond Pike, Tides Founder and CEO, has had enough of this shit and though generally much, much more mellow than me, has reared back and lofted spit right in the eye of not Beck, the puppet, but Rupert Murdoch, the grand master of Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and more.  Drummond wrote an excellent letter that’s getting good reviews asking Fox to stop the hate speech before someone else is hurt or killed, and going one better and demanding that Fox advertisers back away from this insanity before it’s too late.   Working with Media Matters and others who are veterans of the Beck advertisers’ wars, he’s clear that the collective underpinning of Fox advertising is subsidizing the Beck harangues, because advertisers have abandoned him like a toxic spill.

Drummond is giving them 30 days to back off.  Or else!

Enough is enough.  Drummond is right, and I’m wrong.  We probably shouldn’t ignore this craziness, but instead should push back until we hurt Beck and Murdoch where it hurts them:  in the pocket book.

Take it from me, Brother Glenn, that’s revolutionary capitalism!

Update: You can read Drummond Pike’s letter to Fox News’ advertisers here: http://blog.tides.org/2010/10/15/dear-fox-advertiser/

Ho Chi Minh City

We have a strong delegation this year, as usual, with representatives from SEIU, BCGEU, United Labor Unions, Gameliel, ACORN Canada, Tides, Social Policy, and ACORN International.  Two of the most interesting meetings on the  first formal day of the Forum were with top representatives of the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Federation, headed by their vice-chair, and with the head of DoLISA, the Department of Laborers, Invalids and Social Affairs.

The hard problem in one-party regimes, like Vietnam, where the space between government and governing party is narrow, and where labor is part of the ideological foundation of the government and unions are an operating part of the ruling partnership through one single labor federation is parsing how much autonomy of action and independence of thought and initiative unions really have in such an alignment.  Even with the Cold War long over and the George Meany and Lane Kirkland wing long out of power at the AFL-CIO this is still a contentious issue with some of our friends still arguing relationships should be avoided with such unions, and others arguing their size and stature, and frankly in my view their sincerity and authenticity, mean it is necessary to engage them  deeply.  Kent Wong, a much valued colleague from the UCLA Labor Center, made the passionate case to me of the importance of the Vietnamese labor federations and full engagement from his many trips to this country.

Our early hours with Truong Lam Danh, vice president of the HCM City Confederation of Labor, and his staff were fascinating.  He described an array of programs under their hand for their 880,000 members, and couldn’t have been more accommodating of our questions.   For a minute though we could see the steel, when I asked how the federation would respond to a situation like the wild cat strikes in China:  would they embrace the workers and their cause or feel compelled essentially to shutdown the strike.  His answers were snappish here.  First he claimed to have no knowledge of any such problem among Chinese workers and insisted that this was the first he had heard of such situations.  Unlikely.  Secondly, he was brusque in indicating that the local union representative in such a situation would be replaced as ineffective and not satisfactory to the workers.  The mood then changed as suddenly with Danh asking more questions, more open, and more flexible.  We had hit a nerve perhaps, and then he was able to return to the interests of the dialogue.  These where obviously questions much on his mind as well.

It’s not hard to see the tension.  Outbreaks from workers would indicate impotence by the union.  The government is resting a lot of its economic program on foreign investment and labor unrest would be an issue.  There have surely been debates and instructions from every level.

Our labor friends insisted that membership was voluntary, and at about 25 cents per month dues, we suspected that they were right when talking about the vast majority of informal workers (my guess is 80% of the workforce in HCM City on a back-of-the-envelope), but though not compulsory they said where represented, the legal requirements are such that unions need to be recognized within 6 months of operations.  Later at the DoLISA meeting when we got down to brass tacks here there were admissions that foreign multi-nationals were giving them fits.  Vice-President Danh also was less than satisfied to hear how impotent our unions were when companies went bankrupt and left workers holding the bag, so these are issues we share.

There’s a lot more we have to learn to be able to say, but the questions are moving us in interesting directions so far.

San Francisco

The story furnished by ProPublica writers Michael Grabell and Chris Flavelle nailed the issue that almost half of the states in the US are going to walk away from the desperately needed money in the fund, because they are not willing – or able – to come up with their 20% share of this 4 to 1 federal to state match.   This is money that goes directly to citizen wealth and survival and can be used as direct cash transfers, aid on expanding welfare caseloads, rent payments to forestall evictions, and even creating temporary jobs for the unemployed.  The reporters highlight the plans and problems in a number of states like California, New York, and Tennessee.  They also redlined Louisiana, which is already notorious for not taking stimulus money to help the unemployed, and now indicates that its budget crunch means that despite the fact that 20% of our citizens live in poverty, it doesn’t have the money to help them get out of poverty.

What the heck?!?

In the Alice in Wonderland upside down world in which we live and work, the Administration is going around to the states trying to convince them to find someone else to put up the match.  New York State convinced George Soros, who has more money than god, to pony up for them, so now the government seems to think that’s the model.  According to the reporters, they think Wal-Mart or Target might be good sources for example for school clothing.  I have to go look out the window and see if this is in fact the day that pigs are going to fly!

Why are we not able to say to the states do this because citizen wealth makes your people richer and more secure, rather than advising the states in how to practice some weird form of grantsmanship with counties, cities, parishes, and corporations?  If we are going to get that weird, why don’t we rebrand it as ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, calculate how much the state will get back in sales and other taxes for their expenditures since the money will be spent right at home in the blink of an eye, and finally have some economic development that actually works for people rather than for developers and fast talkers?

San Francisco

The JBL’s, as we have fondly called them for more than a decade, were named for Jane Bagley Lehman, one of our dearly departed shining lights from the Tides Foundation’s early board.  Every year they recognize someone whose public advocacy from the local level has impact on national policy.  Salvador Reza, leader of the fight against Sheriff Arpaio and the outrages of the Homeland Security 287(g) program, Artemio Arreola, the political director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and one of the sparkplugs of immigration reform, and the widely known leader in this movement, Angelica Salas, from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) were the awardees.

The Momentum Conference specializes in presentations.  The designs are strong and moving.  The speeches are concise and timed to the second.  The graphics and video are hip and grabbing.  The momentum is fast paced with a strong up beat.

Artemio, Salvador, and Angelica all struck different notes after they were introduced by Russell Long one of our committee collective.  Yes, it was partially the welcomed accents and grammatical flourishes that add life to the language, but it was also the passion, sloppy and strident, as it burst over the two minute limits in each acceptance speech.  These were not slick appeals to the intellect delivered with poise and wit, but hammer strokes to the heart that spoke from pain and urgency about life and death.  These were calls for help for a cause that is struggling to hold the national light, but is every present in the raids in Phoenix, the worker centers of Los Angeles, and the hometown associations of Little Mexico in Chicago.

Salvador told me later he was surprised so many people he spoke to at the conference knew about Sheriff Joe and had heard about the problems in Phoenix.  This is the reality of someone fighting day to day on home turf.  It matters little to him whether this has been the subject of editorials in the New York Times, because the Times do not change his problem with the Arizona Republic.  When he looks out at the Momentum crowd, he doesn’t see his people, so he doesn’t assume support, and in fact clearly it surprises him.  He doesn’t these people in Phoenix or hears their voices.

Artemio had spoken about how he was going to use the money, $7500, which came with the award.   Suddenly, he was a philanthropist speaking to philanthropists.  Part of it was going to the hometown association in the Mexican state where he was from, part of it was going to help three families in Chicago struggling to survive as they faced exportation, and part of it was going to a new project that ICIRR was trying to start to add to the voices.  Didn’t he know that it is hard to track accountability in granting outside the US?  Didn’t he know that money is “wasted” when given to individuals?  Didn’t he know you get “more bang for your bucks” when you support established organizations and not new ideas?  Didn’t he know that $7500 was chum change?

Hell, no!  He was betting it all to win, place, and show!

The JBL’s were followed by a “fishbowl” discussion that was excellently moderated by Alexis McGill Johnson and featured the calmly collected and incisive remarks of Congresswoman Donna Edwards from Maryland’s 4^th District and the surprisingly frank and engaging Ben Jealous, a young man on the go who is now trying to remake the NAACP on its 100^th anniversary.  All of it was fascinating and timely, and they did a great job.

Unfortunately, they had to follow the passion of the immigrant rights warriors making these great leaders of our times seem stilted and artificial next to the heartfelt pleas of Salvador, Artemio, and Angelica to the Momentum participants for help and action right now, this minute, and no maybes.