This November, Democracy Is on the Ballot

We all know people who are furious at Joe Biden because he has not reined in Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and because Biden has not stopped arms shipments to Israel, and because Biden has continued to insist on the “special” relationship between the US and Israel. People who are deeply angry about the continuing devastation of Gaza can and do make credible arguments to support their criticisms, including their indictment of Israel for war crimes. A good portion of those people, those voters, say that they cannot morally justify voting for Biden.

 

I can make many of the same arguments about how American policy toward Israel has failed to serve the national aspirations and humanitarian interests of the Palestinian people. I have felt exactly that way for at least the last four decades. And I can name all the presidents who have led the administrations that have done so much for Israel and so little for Palestine. Nixon. Carter. Reagan. George Bush. Clinton. George W. Bush. Obama. And now, Biden.

 

But I should add here that I never saw any previous president struggle with the moral implications of arming Israel. Biden does. Or at the very least, he struggles with the political consequences of his policies.

 

In an election year, which critical voting block does he satisfy? Center-right Jewish voters? Arab-Americans? Progressive youth? Biden’s apparent wish to satisfy everyone may damage his reelection campaign, but after four decades of presidents who never behaved as if they had any doubt about unequivocally supporting Israel, it comes as something of a relief to see Biden equivocate.

 

To be honest, I understand that the tiny bit of cheer I feel in response to Biden’s small displays of ambivalence won’t endear me to pro-Palestinian activists who decry Israel’s genocidal attack on Palestine and have arrived at the conclusion that Israel is an apartheid state, a colonial settler regime. But, I must cop to something here. I have been negotiating with my conscience for years, voting for Carter, for Clinton, for Obama, for Biden, not to mention Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry, and all the while millions of Palestinians have been shot, beaten, raped, dispossessed driven into exile, and robbed of their careers, professions and land.

 

In 1992, Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, emerged as the Democratic nominee for President. I had voted for Jerry Brown, I think, in the primary, but in the general election, I voted for Clinton. I did so aware that during the primary season, Clinton had briefly suspended his campaign so that he could performatively return to Arkansas to preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a man so intellectually compromised that he reportedly wanted to save the dessert from his last meal to eat after his execution was over. Clinton’s theatrical move was meant to send the message that, unlike other Democrats who were soft on crime, he would be tough.

 

I voted for Clinton despite knowing about how his had campaign exploited Rector’s execution and ignored the tragedy of Rector’s life. Once installed in the Oval Office, Bill (and Hilary) weaponized so-called “super predators” for political effect, and presided over the fastest growth of the federal prison population in history. The fact that I didn’t see that coming may not be further evidence of the erosion of my moral character, but it likely raises legitimate doubts about my political chops.

We all also know people who do not feel that the benefits of an economy that has strengthened substantially under Biden have reached them. People who have been hit hard by inflation. People who can't buy a home. People driving older, balkier vehicles who can't afford to buy a better one. People who can't find affordable daycare. Many of them don't see why who they vote for (or, even, if they vote, at all) would make any difference to the quality of their lives.

And there are still others who are being pushed out of their neighborhoods because of rising rents; people who can't afford the elements of a healthy diet because they live in food deserts; people who use up valuable family time and can't run necessary errands because they commute to work on congested roads, or because they don't have decent access to quality public transit; people for whom access to quality healthcare is a dream; people who don't have access to reproductive healthcare or to gender-affirming medical treatment. Some of them will vote for Biden, but many might not vote, at all.

We hear Democratic campaign officials tell us that the best response to Trump and MAGA, the best way to prevent a Trump victory, is to focus extensively on what Biden has accomplished. Okay, I hear that. His presidency has been marked by many positive achievements, including substantial investment in infrastructure expansion in all 50 states, more affordable (or free) access to high speed internet in rural communities, increased federal investments in green energy sources and next generation technologies, reduced healthcare and drug costs for seniors, expansion of benefits and services to veterans who have suffered from severe toxic exposures, expanded student debt relief for more than 40 million borrowers, increased tax collections from wealthy tax evaders, and more. Set your web browser to look for a list of what Biden has accomplished. It's quite long and, almost certainly, will benefit and has benefited working people and families more than any administration has since the New Deal.

But here's the rub, I don't think that all those messages affirming Biden's accomplishments are going to persuade substantial percentages of the people who fall into the groups specifically outlined in the first three paragraphs above. Too many of them are likely to feel that those messages are describing improvements in other people's lives, but not their own.

I think the only thing that's going to motivate past Biden voters or potential Biden voters who are right now angry or demoralized is to go down the list of groups of people whose lives will get worse, if Trump wins. Part of what I am arguing here is that the Trump who might win in November, and the people who will have played a pivotal role in electing him and will run the country after the election, are much worse than the goons and clowns who ran Trump's presidency from 2016-2020.

Trump himself has made clear that he will be coming after everybody whom he considers a political enemy. And that is a very long list.

 

You're angry about what's happening to Palestinians now? Under Trump, it will get much worse. After all, it was Trump who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, breaking decades of explicit American policy that refused to make such a move; a move that sent a clear signal to Netanyahu and the Israel right: "We're okay with you doing things that previous presidents have always opposed."

 

Concluding that the worst is already happening to Palestinians, some folks might disagree with my assertion there is a meaningful difference between Biden and Trump; after all, if what is happening now is not genocide, all the momentum points to a genocidal conclusion. And, yes, the ongoing strangulation of the West Bank will continue, but any number of further escalations could result in complete ruin and death for Palestinians living there.

 

Under Trump, there will be no opening for a reversal of policy. And, into the bargain, during another Trump presidency, advocacy for BDS will almost certainly be criminalized, and pro-Palestinian activists might find themselves the target of federal prosecutions for a variety of felony charges, including conspiracy. At the very least, under Biden, activists are more likely to find effective political action.

Trump admires Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban, the guy who celebrates white heterosexuals and considers virtually every deviation from whiteness and heterosexuality to be a sin (and a crime). Just this past May, the American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held a two-day conference in Budapest and invited Orban, who maintains dictatorial control in his own country, to be the keynote speaker.

 

Orban was explicit and effusive in his support for Trump, whom he describes as the politically persecuted victim of American liberals. And, shortly after the CPAC conference in Hungary, Orban and Vladimir Putin met in a highly publicized two-man summit of their own. Both leaders have arrested and tortured, perhaps assassinated, political opponents. They have jailed gay men and lesbians. Criminalizing homosexuality outright is not apparently on Trump’s agenda, but his base would enthusiastically support state bans on gay marriage and already approves of state efforts to ban gender-affirming medical care.

 

Who else will come under sustained attack from Trump, who has already talked about building large new prison camps? Who will be indefinitely detained there? The most vulnerable parts of the LGBTQ+ community? Undocumented immigrants? Doctors and nurses who provide reproductive healthcare or gender-affirming treatment?

 

Trump talks about mobilizing the national guard to attack “criminals” in big cities with a measurable probability that military units will arrive first in the big blue cities of the east and west coasts. Or would Trump’s posse show up first in Chicago, which is frequently the focus of his fiery attacks?

 

Defense attorneys who represent racial minorities and the poor should also assume that their clients will face increased jeopardy. If the Trumpian past is prologue, we can safely assume that new federal judges and prosecutors appointed by Trump will be equally casual about justice in the future. And don’t forget about local, MAGA-embracing judges and prosecutors who will be further emboldened by a Trump victory.

 

Dreamers will be primary targets of a restored Trump administration. Student loan forgiveness will be a vanishing possibility, but harsher collection activities are a certainty. Progressive activists will find themselves the targets of intensified local and federal police investigations not seen in this country since Cointelpro. The fossil fuel industry will be deregulated, and drilling and mining will escalate on public lands and in environmentally fragile geographies.

 

In an April 26^th, New York Times article, writer Charles Homans quotes from a Trump speech delivered at a CPAC conference in March of 2023. “'In 2016,' Trump said, 'I declared I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.'”

 

The only force that stands opposed to the devastation that a Trump administration will perpetrate on the country and on our democracy will be voters who prioritize democratic norms. If we fail at protecting our democracy, there may not be another chance to stop the accelerating erosion of democratic norms. No one can sit out this election and assume that they will get another chance in subsequent elections. This November, democracy is on the ballot.

Covidicah

and

The Message of the Miracle of the Mayonnaise Jar

It was the time of Covid, in the year 2020. The land was quiet. Too quiet for some and, yet, too loud for others. The landscapes without people were eerily beautiful, but also apocalyptically depopulated.

For several decades before Covid, the country’s leadership was, shall we say, below average. And even the presidents who showed some real ability to lead were unable to unite us all and often proceeded timidly, when they needed to be brave. But the particular president serving in office at the time of Covid was even unable to surpass the low bar set by his predecessors.

He was a buffoon some said. A fat head, said others. More serious minded folks,called him a white supremacist, or a misogynist, or both. Some who were less serious, or fatalistic about the chances of the country surviving Covid, made fun. His hands, they said, loudly and repeatedly, were very small—baby hands. And he had a little, tiny dick, they would say, though history is mostly agnostic about the size of his penis.

So, okay, then. Enough about that. I just didn’t feel like this would be good, full, truthy story, if I didn’t mention the diverse speculations about the president’s tackle. Little tackle. Tacklette. Whatever.

We can say that then, as now, there were other centers of power, and some of them had more influence than others. There was one center of power that was like a fox ranch, or something like it. The foxes on that ranch were big supporters of the otherwise helpless—did I say, helpless?—I mean, hapless president. The foxes on the ranch were big supporters of the hapless president. Some of the foxes were sleek and blond and talked nonsense, but you wouldn’t have expected foxes to be fountains of wisdom, would you?

Regardless, it does appear that fox babble was a big source of ideas for the hapless president. That was never going to turn out all right and, let me tell you, history shows that under the president’s leadership, shit did hit the fan, the air, the water, everything.

To make matters worse, there was a constitutional assembly, called the House of Elitists (or something—history is vague on the name), which was led by another woodland animal; the morose, turtle-faced Mitch, who had a deep and strategic objection to democratic process and a fondness for incompetent judges. Turtle-faced Mitch, it is reported, ended up in the soup.

It was definitely a no-good, very bad time. In our city, the zip codes that suffered the worst violence, also recorded the most deaths from the virus. The same zip codes also had the largest air-polluting railyards, the highest number of industrial air-polluters, the most kids suffering from asthma, and the fewest number of people with health insurance. The whole country hit the deep do-do lottery jackpot.

Local and regional governments didn’t invest much in public trans, creating vast profit opportunities for private trans. The same ideological indifference to the idea that we could all succeed together that characterized policies that crippled public health and public trans plagued public education. The opportunities for individuals to profit off of the kinds of needs that we now enshrine in our code of human rights (our Code of Human Rights) made a hash of public education. We were throwing away lives and achievements and whole communities of skills and talents with which we could have built (and, eventually, would build) the Beloved Community.

As if all of this was not bad enough, the earth itself was heating up—I mean like in giant, biblical degrees. And the policy response to this—well, let’s say it wasn’t science-based.

People hoarded, which is to say, they bought extra amounts of things they didn’t need. Especially in the early phase of the pandemic. This was no surprise. In an environment when many people didn’t have work, and many jobs were dangerous, and the good things in life seemed so unachievable, people were scared.

They were afraid to get sick and suffer and, maybe, die. So they took care of themselves by buying more than they needed of things that were available and seemed affordable. Now, we know, of course, that they didn’t need so much stuff. And they bought some of that stuff in quantities that were sufficient to ensure that their families wouldn’t run out of whatever they hoarded for generations.

That’s why we own so many pencils. Somebody, your great-grandfather, maybe, hoarded pencils. They were cheap, I’m sure; available, I’m certain; and he liked pencils, I’m guessing; so, our family is never, ever going to run out of pencils.

That’s what happened down the block with Ms. Alice’s family, I think. Someone thought that having a lot of plastic forks around would be a comfort—I know, go figure—so now she owns thousands of plastic forks. That’s why she’s always going, “Here. Have some plastic forks.”

Some people even hoarded toilet paper, which they used for wiping their butts. A lot, I guess. That bit of hoarding makes a little more sense because, as we know, everybody poops.

Unfortunately, the toilet paper hoarding apparently caused widespread inconvenience, or emotional distress, maybe. Eventually, people realized that there was enough for everybody and started sharing their toilet paper. That’s when people started saying that, “Solidarity is the path to and the purpose of the surplus,” which eventually became the third and, I think, most important meaning of our greeting, “Salaam.”

At any rate, people started mobilizing. That’s what happens when people start realizing that change is in the air, and that they have the power to shape that change. They mobilized to kick the scary and notorious Orangish Man out of the People’s House.

And though we seem to have lost interest in the exact identity of the Orangish Man, we do know that they voted him out of office. And after he was out of the way, they started voting pretty much nonstop for things they did want. They voted for universal health care. And for decent housing for all. And for good, green jobs.

They voted and voted and voted. They voted money out of voting. Boy, did they vote. They voted good public schools until public schools were where everyone wanted to go to school. That project took a long time. A lot of voting.

Eventually, they were all, hell, let’s just vote socialism and be done with it. But here’s the thing. You’re never done with it. Democracy is not perfectible. Notwithstanding the attitude of the old-school, uber-powerful, lifetime-appointed judges favored by the Orangish Man and Turtle-faced Mitch, democracy changes as the people will it to change.

And how do they express their will? They vote and vote and vote. They even voted that forever after we, all of us, must vote to heal the least of us, heal the body politic, heal the air and water, heal the earth, our mother, heal our mother who was here before Covid and has been here ever since and will always be here and will always love us. We vote to love our mother back.

So that’s what this holiday is really about, to remind us to vote to love the earth back. That’s why at this holiday celebration, around this community table, we tell about the Covid miracle of the mayonnaise jar that held only enough mayonnaise for a single turkey sandwich, but miraculously lasted to make enough turkey sandwiches with fresh lettuce and mayo to feed every hungry person that lived here before the Beloved Community and would live on to be a part of that new understanding of ourselves.

So, there’s the Covid Miracle of the Mayonnaise. And the Message of the Covid Miracle of the Mayonnaise is this: We heal what we can and deepen our understanding of that which we cannot heal. And we pledge to each other that down the road we will try to heal that which we cannot heal now.

And now we close this Covid night with the recitation of the Four Covidicah statements:

 “Solidarity is the path to and the purpose of the surplus.

“The social surplus belongs to the people.

“The anti-social surplus was the way of things before Covid.

“The surplus is the path to and the purpose of solidarity.”

Amen

Job one for white progressives: Engage other white folks about racism

A recent study exploring the effect of race-based political messages on white subjects showed that a certain subset of whites, "liberals with higher levels of racial resentment," were particularly responsive to both racially explicit and implicit attacks on government social programs. The story, headlined "Why Some White Liberals Will Probably Vote For Donald Trump," ran on the Huffington Post website earlier this month,

Reporter Arthur Delaney noted that the study's authors, sociologists Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer,
"offered a few theories about why [racially coded] welfare rhetoric would move white liberals more than conservatives. One is simply that conservatives are so familiar with welfare-bashing from Republican officeholders that they can't be swayed any further," he wrote.

"Another is that liberals may be uniquely vulnerable to this rhetoric because they are afraid to talk about racial inequality. Watts and Willer noted that 'strong norms of colorblindness in liberal political culture mean negative outcomes among black Americans as a group are rarely discussed.'"

Clearly, it would be rash to reach any number of conclusions based on a  single academic study, which itself cannot be fairly assessed without knowledge of the kind of details that a news report cannot easily include or evaluate. Still, another statement in the article provides a jumping off point for considering where white progressives should focus their activism. "...strong norms of colorblindness in liberal political culture mean [that] negative outcomes among black Americans as a group are rarely discussed," Delaney wrote, quoting Watts and Willer.

That suggests to me that white folks who consider themselves allies of African Americans have a particular responsibility to engage other whites who may have "higher levels of racial resentment" in discussions of the history, the social and cultural impact, and the continuing significance of 400 years of racism in the United States.

This is necessary for a number of reasons. In 2016, Donald Trump won 46 electoral votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that had twice previously been won by Barack Obama. Trump won those three states by less than 90,000 total votes, giving him 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232. There are all sorts of ways to parse that outcome, including the notion that far lower 2016 turnouts of African American voters in Philadelphia, Detroit, Flint and Milwaukee compared to the two previous Obama campaigns may by themselves account for Hillary Clinton's defeat.

But the combination of white Obama voters who defected to Trump, or who voted Green or Libertarian, or who simply sat out the election because their distaste for Clinton obscured their grasp of the damage a Trump victory would, could, and did do, very likely were also enough to swing the three critical states away from Clinton. Looking ahead to the presidential election in 2020, it seems reasonable to conclude that increasing African American turnout and effectively mobilizing estranged white liberals are key to denying Trump a second-term.

In a country that is increasingly polarized and seems almost ungovernable, addressing the general white refusal to understand the full impact of slavery, of the collapse of reconstruction, of Jim Crow, night riders, lynch mobs, mass incarceration, disinvestment and 400 years of economic exploitation is a central task, now and into the future. Whatever one believes to be the most urgent policy questions facing our country, our government and ourselves, it is clear that our collective political dysfunction stands in the way of effective government action on any number of priorities, including climate change, economic inequality, public education, the right to organize, mass incarceration, abortion rights and so much else.

I would argue that racism and white privilege are the very root of that dysfunction. If that is so, and, if for that particularly critical subset of white liberals who can be moved by racist dogwhistles avoiding discussion of race issues is both bad habit and unfortunate priority, than white progressives who are willing to promote discussions of race with other white folks can play a critical role in the effort to restore functionality to our political life.

African Americans cannot play that role with whites. Nor should they. As a practical matter, African Americans already deal with white racism 24/7. They are isolated by it, defined by it, under attack by it, undermined by it and stereotyped by it. Nevertheless, productivity, inspiration and genius are part of the heritage and the contemporary experience of African Americans individually and in community. Eliminating white obstacles to the dissemination of African American social and cultural influence, and the enhanced quality of life that would follow, ought to provide further motivation for white progressives.

We know, or can guess, how much better life could be in the United States if the obstacles to full creative participation in our culture were eliminated for all. Racism alone has probably wasted more work, more talent, more genius than any other single factor. Had we found a way to continue the work of reconstruction after the Civil War, to restore stolen wealth, to create a world characterized by equal justice and equal opportunity, our current political challenges would almost certainly feel far less urgent. That is the world we could come to live in, but getting there may depend very much on the efforts of white progressives to lead in opening the discussion of racism and white supremacy within our own communities.

This will be hard and will take persistence, human kindness, and an unrelenting focus on the world still to win. But we must keep our eyes on that prize.

Miss Washington, but love Chicago,

deplore the Donald and, oh, three cheers for Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union

Our recent move from Washington, DC to Chicago is still in its transitional phase. We left very good friends behind in DC and we'll miss them all. Our challenge in Chicago will include developing a network of close friends as diverse and sustaining as the group of friends we left behind.

But I am optimistic about the possibilities. Our friends in Washington were often quite accomplished people, and some of them were native to the DC area, but in Chicago even the transplants from elsewhere seem to grow very deep roots here. I don't know what to make of that difference just yet, but the potential for movement-building seems more real here than it is in Washington. Yes, Chicago is a very segregated city, but the demographic diversity is astounding. There simply is no racial majority. If you want to make change here, coalition is the only way to go.

It is reliably colder in Chicago than in Washington and that does take some getting used to, but the solution is layers, lots of them--and not hunkering down. One has to live outdoors with vigor here or settle for hiding from the weather.

Another noteworthy difference is how big the sky seems in Chicago and how far away the horizon appears to be. That's a good thing. A great thing, really. At the lakefront one's eyes simply bask in the glory of unobstructed views. Yes, Chicago is flat and that's not so good, but the payback in being able to see the skyline, to watch the lake rage in the cold wind, to scan open vistas, like the green midway running through the University of Chicago, is a nice tradeoff. The eyes can't help exulting.

I have to say that back in DC, the Washington Post used to piss me off more often than not. The frequent failures to call out official spokespeople for their meaningless drivel, to call the powerful out for their nonsense, could often drive me to rants that Marrianne must have found tiresome. But the Chicago Tribune seems at least an order of magnitude more hapless than the Post. The Trib has some stalwart opinion writers, like Eric Zorn, Rex Hupke, Mary Shmich and Clarence Page, who still favor evidence-based journalism, but they are book-ended by right-wingers who make Jennifer Rubin and George Will look like moderates.

Of course, here and everywhere Donald Trump's election victory seems to have upended reality. Steven Chapman, a regular columnist for the Trib, has always been too right-wing for my taste. I used to marvel at how predictably he would find fault with Bill Clinton and applaud George W. Bush. Admittedly, Clinton was a person with numerous faults, whose instinct to parse political positions, appease critics and develop compromises that pleased no one is, or should be, legendary. Chapman's inclination to distrust Clinton, to believe that he was a liberal wolf in a moderate sheep's skin, made sense, but his willingness to refrain from strong criticism of Bush while he launched ridiculously expensive wars and failed in fundamental leadership ways, like rebuilding New Orleans, seemed to be a perfect example of abandoning conservative principles in favor of rooting for the home team.

But here comes Trump, who has turned out to be so extreme that he has created opportunities for compromised conservative thinkers to get past partisanship and return to principle. Chapman's column in Wednesday's Trib ("Trump the Weakling and his latest surrender") thoroughly indicts Trump for numerous offenses, all of which fall under the category of buckling in the face of resistance. "Backing down is not a departure from [Trump's] usual style. It is his usual style. Trump is not a guy who can be counted on to stand his ground. Often, he crumbles under the slightest pressure."

Trump, Chapman noted, responded to a federal court order blocking his first travel ban with, "see you in court, the security of our nation is at stake." But instead of going to court in a presidential effort to protect the "security of our nation," Trump, seeking to avoid another judicial rebuke, modified the travel ban. We'll see how that goes.

But Chapman wasn't finished. He noted that Trump defiantly took a call from the president of Taiwan, ignoring the long-standing one-China policy that has guided U.S. policy for more than 40 years. But he backed down and reaffirmed the one-China policy when Chinese premier Xi Jinping refused to speak to Trump "until he agreed to eat his words."

Trump, Chapman added, didn't even bring up the idea that Mexico would pay for a border wall when he visited with Mexican president Pena Nieto, but "only when he was safely back across the Rio Grande did Trump dare to repeat that our neighbor will foot the bill."

There's more, and if one is looking for an enjoyable moment with a right-wing columnist who is essentially calling Trump out for cowardice, just follow the link above. In any case, I'm not saying that I suddenly have warm feelings about Steven Chapman, but I am encouraged to see that for some conservatives, partisanship really does not compromise every principle.

Nor do I think that Chapman is the first right-winger to find a way to resist the siren call of partisanship at any cost. The Post's Jennifer Rubin, for years an inveterate critic of Barack Obama and constant flatterer of Paul Ryan, has begun routinely denouncing Trump's behavior and policy nonsense for at least the last six months. Check out Jonah Goldberg in the National Review, also.

"By now you may have noticed the difficulty many conservatives have defending everything President Trump does and says. I’m not just referring to the big policy moves, most of which conservatives can support fairly easily (so far). I mean the whole whiplash-inducing spectacle: the unfiltered, impulsive tweeting, bizarre interview non sequiturs, glib insults and distractions.

"If you honestly have no idea what I’m talking about, you may need to be de-programmed from a personality cult," Goldberg wrote in a piece for USA Today ("The Right can't defend Trump's behavior"). Of course, one reflects, these things are entirely clear to virtually all of us--except that they are not. A recent Suffolk poll finds that Trump is unpopular with the majority of Americans, but still somehow more popular than Hillary Clinton, who actually hasn't done anything to offend any of us for months now. I will therefore take the piece by Goldberg, the editor of the National Review, and others he has written that are also deeply critical of Trump and Republicans who cannot seem to separate themselves from Trump politically, as a good sign.

After all, every democracy not suffering from complete gridlock needs conservatives and liberals who can hear each other think. I'm not saying a few columns prove anything one way or the other, but I am encouraged by conservatives who are writing "I'm not with him."

Anyway, back to good-bad things about Chicago. I am definitely going to go to more performances/art exhibits/concerts/slams/whatevers here than I ever went to in DC. Washington certainly had a vital grassroots culture of its own, but the high-end, high-culture stuff often seemed to dominate. But everybody and her cousin seems to have some street-slam culture thing going in Chicago and I aim to be close by when some of that stuff goes off. I will concede, though, that I've only briefly sampled thus far and am only talking (or writing) about good intentions. We shall see.

Not surprisingly, serious urban problems and an apparent inability to solve them are among the things Washington and Chicago share. They also both suffer under a federal government that shows no signs of a willingness or ability to help. Given its druthers, the Trump administration will do its best to further damage public education, an agenda that will harm black and brown America first, but ultimately take down white America, too.

Of course, Trump, himself, volunteered to intervene to make Chicago's gun violence problem worse than it already is. But given his obviously short attention span, it appears likely that the city will avoid being wounded by that particular stray bullet. Not that there aren't plenty of others around who can't help barking both fruitlessly and endlessly at the sound of gunfire.

"It is time for a radical response. Time to stop talking and start doing. Time to take steps to clear the air of gunshots so our lofty plans for more police and more jobs can seed and grow rather than wither from the spray of automatic weapon fire," wrote former prosecutor Donna Moore in a March 8 column in the Trib (Stop the indifference: Bring in the National Guard).

Arf. Arf. Arf.

"...the city should ask that [the National Guard] be deployed, along with local police, to the South and West sides, not to militarize them," Moore recommended, "but to restore public safety and save lives."

Moore's single argument that her plan will work rests on an example of "one blessed weekend in November 2016," when "Chicago police, Cook County sheriffs, state police and federal agents saturated the three most dangerous police districts in the city...The strategy worked. The killing ceased. That weekend there was exactly one shooting--one--in the area under patrol."

This is nonsense. Dare we ask what causes such high levels of violence in the first place? How does a show of force address the underlying causes of violence in Chicago (and elsewhere, for that matter)? Moore cites a weekend of intensive policing during which only one shooting occurred. Are we to believe that focussing on a specific-area did not have adverse effects outside those limited boundaries? What were the patterns and frequencies of violence and crime before and after the weekend under examination? How is it possible to patrol streets, alleyways and parks with uniformed, heavily armed personnel without militarizing the area? What would be the downside consequences to the communities under lockdown and to the city, in general?

Arf. Arf. Arf.

Because the Trib routinely favors harsher punishments and longer prison sentences for the perpetrators of violence, the paper's willingness to accommodate opinion pieces that advocate counter-productive tactics like increased armed occupations of poor and minority neighborhoods comes as no surprise. Nevertheless, more thoughtful perspective pieces do run in the paper from time to time. One such piece, written by Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis ("Invest in schools, teachers to reduce violence"), ran in the paper on March 7.

Lewis's piece, a sustained and effective argument that advocates spending on social service interventions that reduce the traumatic effects of ongoing violence in neighborhoods, and in the process, addressing the causes of subsequent traumas, merits reprinting in its entirety here. But the link above will take interested readers to the full piece. In the meantime, here's an extended quote:

"While we are not typically thought of as first responders to violence, teachers and school staff are often the first responders to the trauma that violence brings, especially when it happens to the very students entrusted to our care," Lewis wrote.

"At Henderson Elementary School in West Englewood, teachers helped students write notes to Kanari [Gentry-Bowers], their classmate, before she died in the hospital. Since November, seven Henderson students or former students have been killed or injured by gun violence.

"Every shooting of a child brings confusion, sorrow and fear for their classmates. Left untreated, these emotions cast a dark cloud, affecting young people's ability to learn and focus — and, in the worst scenarios, leading them down the path to violence.

"That's why CTU members held out for crucial violence-prevention provisions in our most recent contract. Our new contract expands counseling and supports staffing community schools with clinicians, restorative justice practitioners and wraparound services to help break the cycle of violence.

"At the time, Mayor Emanuel claimed that there was no money to pay for these demands. And even after signing the contract, the mayor has continued to starve our schools, with help from [Illinois governor] Rauner. Carson Elementary School, down the street from Henderson, will lose more than $200,000 in the millions of cuts just announced.

"We live in one of the richest cities, in one of the richest states, in the richest nation in the world. Elected officials who line up to mourn the latest shooting while claiming that 'there is no money' to pay for prevention, or that the wealthy already 'pay too much,' are really saying that they care too little.

"Enough with the talk.

"CTU members were willing to strike to ensure that all Chicago's children get the resources that they deserve. We've forced the mayor to put our tax dollars toward young people, instead of into developer slush funds.

"But if Takuya [Holmes], Kanari and Lavontay [White Jr.] are to be more than just names on an endless list, then we will need to do much more.

"We must eradicate the conditions that create violence. That means policy change and resources: fully funded schools and thousands of new jobs that pay a fair wage.

"The members of the Chicago Teachers Union show up for our students when the cameras are off. We need our public officials to do the same."

Can I add Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union as two more of the really great things about Chicago?