The Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Activist passion sometimes subverts peace and justice

More than thirty years ago, Richard Cleaver, a colleague at the American Friends Service Committee, led me to the realization that as a peace and justice advocate, I ought to have an elevated concern for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ever since, I have maintained a focus of sorts on the issue.

After twenty years of some sort of activism on the issue, Henry, an old Ann Arbor friend--also Jewish, like me--signed on with a heightened concern of his own. After Sept. 11, it became his soul focus and, over a period of time, he and I began to develop diverging perspectives on the issue, on root causes, on strategic considerations, on tactical steps. Five years later, we had a pretty complete falling out. It has been about ten years since we last talked. 

A couple of months back, a journalist working on a story about Jewish activism on behalf of justice for Palestinians contacted me about Henry. He was trying to flesh out a story about Jewish activists facing considerable pushback from their own communities.

For part of our discussion, I went off the record. I think now that I did so because I still hadn't worked out an understanding of my conflict with Henry that satisfied me. But going off the record was a mistake. It was safe, I guess, because I wasn't sure exactly what I thought. But it was lazy, too, because it was my way of putting off careful reflection about why I had fallen out with Henry and the important lessons that could be learned from the experience.

But now, in the form of a letter to the journalist whose piece ran in al-Jazeera at the end of January, I've tried to get a handle on the whole episode. At any rate, the letter below captures what I'm thinking now.


Dear Dien,

Thanks for sending the link to your January article, "US Jews struggle in the fight for Palestinian rights." Nice piece.

I especially like the part that focuses on Rabbi Brant Rosen, whose support for Palestinian self-determination cost him his job as the leader of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill. Rosen's experiences as a political activist and his continuing efforts to share his justice commitment with his Jewish co-religionists makes his experience a perfect example of the conflict between  Jewish belief and mainstream Jewish support for the state of Israel.

In one of our recent e-mail exchanges, I mentioned that I did have a bit of an argument to pick with the article, in particular the way in which my relationship with Henry Herskovitz is portrayed. Simply put, Henry and I did not fall out with each other because I, as a Jew, was somehow offended by his pro-Palestinian beliefs. In regard to an article about the way the Jewish community sometimes penalizes Jewish dissent, this is a crucial point, I think.

Unfortunately, I have been slow to follow up with an explanation for my objections. That, I have concluded, is because my problems with the article are really based in my own failure to explain my perspective on Henry properly. I have also repeatedly postponed writing my own full version of Henry's evolution as a pro-Palestinian activist and my perspective on his journey.

In our exchanges, I did not provide you with sufficient detail about how Henry and I grew apart politically. And, worse, I insisted that we discuss certain points off the record that should have been part of the story. Perhaps, if I had spoken entirely on the record, I might have had an improved grasp of exactly what I thought and needed to say.

Given the limits that I created, I have to acknowledge that you told our story as thoroughly as you could. I give you props for respecting those limits.

But when it comes to the question of Palestinian human rights and the way some elements of the mainstream Jewish community police the boundaries of "acceptable" political perspectives, it has become obvious to me that everything I have to say about Henry and his advocacy for justice for the Palestinian people should be on the record. So, here, without restrictions, but as briefly as I can put it, is the version I wish I had shared with you.

Henry came to political activism after he retired from his nearly career-long employment as a research and development engineer at a brand-name manufacturing firm. We had become close friends years earlier in Ann Arbor in the late '60s. But though I was politically active against the Vietnam War, and continued to focus on social justice issues for the next 40 years, our intimacy was primarily based on our shared social life. We hung out together, we played in municipal softball and basketball leagues together, we partied together, travelled together, and I sometimes lectured him (at unbearable length, I'm sure) about why he needed to come off the sidelines and join the fight for social change. But during most of our friendship, though he seemed to be largely sympathetic to left perspectives on the country and the world, Henry was apolitical.

Then, in a few short years after his retirement, and with the Bush threat to launch a war against Iraq in 2002, Henry suddenly found himself a vocal advocate for peace. With his hands-on, engineer's soul, he decided that he needed to visit Iraq and see what the people and the place looked like to him. So, he went. By himself. Less than a year before the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

I don't remember how long Henry was there, or know where he went in Iraq, but he talked to Iraqis in Baghdad and elsewhere about the threatened war and about how they perceived America and Americans. He discovered that they were happy to meet him and welcomed him as a visitor to their country.

Some were freely critical of Saddam Hussein, but quick to point out how a decade of U.S. sanctions against Iraq had done little to hurt Saddam, but much to harm Iraqi civilians. A number of Iraqis told Henry that U.S. policy toward Iraq was most certainly a cause of the anger that fueled the 9/11 attacks, but many also noted that another important cause was Arab and Muslim anger over U.S. support for the Israeli state and the occupation of Palestinian territory.

In point of fact, the message that Henry heard repeatedly--that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a significant cause of anger at the U.S. and the West--inspired Henry to take another trip; to go to Israel and the West Bank in order to better understand why the Palestinian-Israeli conflict loomed so large in the geo-politics of the Middle East and the world.

Henry visited a number of different Palestinian towns in the West Bank, enjoyed a great deal of Palestinian hospitality, and had several frank conversations with Palestinian political activists. Again, he discovered that the people who he talked to seemed unaffected by the fact that he was Jewish, except for their insistence that as an American Jew, he might have an opportunity to influence other American Jews to rethink their apparently absolute support for Israel and Zionism. During his visit, he listened to Palestinians who argued that if the American Jewish community was less generous towards Israel, and more critical in its support, the Israeli state would be more likely to seek a peaceful and productive resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Henry returned from that trip intent on discussing the conflict between Zionism and Palestinian self-determination with other Jews in Ann Arbor. Though he had always identified as a Jew, he had never been particularly religiously observant. In fact, Henry was one of those Jews (not uncommon) who show up at temple only during high holidays like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. Regardless, his emotional connection to his identity as a Jew was crucial to him, and he was certain that there would be no significant resistance to his effort to open discussion of the conflict within the Jewish congregations on which he initially focussed.

He quickly discovered that he was naively optimistic. At Beth Israel, the congregation that he eventually targeted with a continuing public protest, Henry made an initial approach to the rabbi. Their first private conversation was cordial, and included the rabbi's observation that his concern with and dissent from mainstream Jewish support for Israel and Zionism was well within the boundaries of tolerable opinion. But by the time of their second conversation, it was obvious that the rabbi would refuse to schedule a forum at Beth Israel.

Henry made further efforts to engage a broader portion of Ann Arbor's Jewish population. He went to Hillel, the leading University of Michigan organization for Jewish students, to see if he could rent space for a public forum. His early contacts with Hillel were positive, I think, but as the moment for commitment approached, Hillel representatives became uncooperative. Henry's other efforts to reach out were similarly stymied. He came to believe (rightfully so, I think) that some people within the mainstream Jewish community were letting it be known that the community should neither engage Henry or allow him a forum.

We talked a lot in those days about what was happening, and about our shared certainty that ending the silence within the Jewish community about the illegal Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people and the illegal occupation of their land could lead to a more vigorous American Jewish opposition to Israeli policy. Though I had always believed that Zionist organizations, and many leading Jewish figures, as well, actively and effectively narrowed the possibilities for dissent within the Jewish community (see my blog post "Adventures with Zionists," for instance), Henry was experiencing the phenomenon for the first time, and in excruciating detail.

But the resistance served only to inspire him to seek other ways to make his point. It was then that he conceived the idea of beginning a silent vigil outside Beth Israel congregation's Saturday morning services. Henry showed up wearing a suit at that first vigil, a kippah (skullcap) on his head, holding a sign that read, simply, "End the Silence." On his car windshield, parked nearby, another sign said something like "End the Israeli Occupation of Palestine."

That first Saturday, Beth Israel congregants responded in a variety of ways. Some were incensed. It was the Jewish sabbath, they reasoned, and Beth Israel a house of worship that ought to be off-limits for political protest.

Other congregants, who shared at least a portion of Henry's political perspective, acknowledged his presence and, in some instances, spoke with him. Though Henry was careful to stay on the public right-of-way, one congregant turning into the synagogue driveway went out of his way to drive as close as he could to where Henry stood. It would be only the first of dozens of angry gestures and implicit, or explicit, threats aimed at him over time. Such extreme hostility was an over-the-top response to the moderation of his early protests, and likely contributed to how adamant and hardline Henry became subsequently.

Regardless, Henry kept showing up on Saturday morning and the vigil grew. Among the first to join him were other Jews who believed as he did that the Jewish community was generally closed to discussion of the most perplexing ethical issue the community faced. Area peace activists, who felt that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a major cause of a number of political conflicts in the Middle East, also joined the vigil; some of them becoming regulars.

Meanwhile, within Beth Israel, itself, some members argued that Henry should be allowed to convene a forum on the issue within the temple. Others agreed that the issue needed to be widely discussed. But most of the congregation remained strongly supportive of Israel. Some accused Henry of being an anti-semite or, at the very least, an enemy of Israel.

Though disputes grew within the congregation, a new unity also began developing around the idea that the divisions in the congregation were largely Henry's fault and that the protest at Beth Israel was inappropriate. Some argued the Henry's protests should be declared illegal on the grounds, however dubious constitutionally, that it was a violation of the congregation's religious freedom. Even some of those who were critical of Israeli policy began to call on him to stand down.

But that was the last thing Henry was willing to do. The vigil and the signs condemning Israeli policies and Israel, itself, began spreading beyond the side street entrance to Beth Israel and on to the side walk bordering the four-lane road that ran along the property in front of the temple.

As the attitude of Beth Israel congregants became almost exclusively hostile or coldly indifferent, people driving by began to honk in apparent support of the growing and increasingly visible protest, which at some point had become an official activity of the new political group, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends (JWPF), formed by Henry and his most enthusiastic supporters.

Though I was living in Chicago for much of this time, I had lived in Ann Arbor for more than 20 years and my daughter still lived there. This made me a regular visitor to the city and allowed Henry and I ample opportunity to discuss his activism and political strategy.

As a former member of the Ann Arbor City Council, I had a sort of limited celebrity in the area that Henry wanted to exploit to better promote the vigil. Though the characterization of me as a "celebrity vigiler" made me mildly uncomfortable, solidarity with Henry and the announced perspective of the vigil--to foster open discussion within the Jewish community--encouraged me to show up when I was in town. But when I did so, I was always careful to hold a sign like "End the Silence" or "End the Occupation;" phrases that I believed were simple, clear and not obstacles to further discussion between people with differing viewpoints.

But the protest signs, like "End Israeli apartheid," or "Boycott Israel," became more openly critical, often stridently so. The orientation of the protest away from the temple and towards passers-by became points of contention between Henry and I. We would often disagree about whether or not it made good tactical sense to rely on slogans that suggested that Israel was an apartheid state, or that Israeli policy was the first steps toward a Palestinian holocaust, or that Israel had no right to exist.

I believed that the truth was more nuanced than the slogans suggested, arguing in a subsequent piece on my blog (Painful Truth: Israeli Apartheid") that "if anything defines the difference between the South African and Israeli apartheid states, it is that the South African version named itself. Israeli apartheid is the apartheid that dare not speak its name. It is understandable that large numbers of American Jews cannot concede this truth, Richard Cohen among them. Israel was created at a moment of celebration and hope for Jews around the world. Freshly scarred by the Holocaust, and still fearful that history might repeat itself, [the vast majority of] Jews were inclined not to notice that their [joyful achievement] might be the occasion for the suffering of others."

Though it took me many years to get to that sort of a full articulation of my own position on the question of Israeli apartheid--a position much influenced by Henry--I maintained that phrases like "End Israeli Apartheid" were an obstacle to open discussion, that they provoked stiff opposition, and polarized the discussion. That result, I observed repeatedly, would lead to a vigil that never ended and, ultimately, render it ineffective.

Indeed, by that point, when I would ask Henry what his endgame was, what it would take to end the protest, he would respond that it would end when the congregation voted to join the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement. Henry was fully aware, of course, that the congregation would never take such a position. I expressed strong objection to a strategy that publicly advocated dialogue, but privately had no real commitment to further engaging Beth Israel congregants, the ostensible audience for the vigil.

In response, Henry argued that the vigil's effectiveness could be measured by the fact that some drivers going passed would honk, raise fists and flash peace signs in obvious support. Henry began, then, to formulate the notion that it was actually American Christians, opposed to Israeli policy toward Palestinians, but silent because they were afraid of being branded as anti-semites, who could play an even more pivotal role in changing U.S. policy toward that favored the Jewish state at the expense of justice for Palestinians. That, he concluded, meant that maintaining the vigil at Beth Israel served the larger goal of justice for Palestinians, even if the idea that the vigil was a sincere attempt to open discussion within the Jewish community became nothing more than a pretense. Such insincerity, I contended, meant that Henry's strategy was flawed and that he could not be an effective advocate for justice for Palestinians on that basis.

In a 2009 blog post (American Jews and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"), I followed up on this disagreement with Henry:

"It is a further irony that the polarization in Ann Arbor has come to resemble the deadlock in Palestine. But both situations seem a symptom of a larger problem in the politics of the US. Our inability to move toward reasonable and just outcomes in virtually all policy areas, health care, climate change, quality public education, market regulation, reliable public transit and reduced dependence on fossil fuels to name just a few, seems endemic. And ultimately traceable to the politically expedient marriage of religious fundamentalism and corporate interests. When oil companies, weapons manufacturers, Big Pharma, insurance interests, hospital corporations and the Southern Baptist Convention find themselves working together against broader social interests, we are all in trouble."

Ultimately, those disagreements with Henry marked a turning point in our relationship. But we remained in contact, and continued to spend time together when I visited Ann Arbor. I should note that our growing disagreements did not keep me from appreciating both the intensity of Henry's commitment and how extensively educated he had become about the history and politics of the conflict. Though I had always been an advocate of the two-state solution to the conflict, his position persuaded me to look harder at the realities, the facts-on-the-ground, of Palestinian disenfranchisement.

By then, it was clear to me that after 40 years of occupation (and the continuing forcible takings of occupied Palestinian territory) that a Palestinian state created on Israeli terms would not be viable, but I had not backed off of support for the two-state solution. Discussions with Henry eventually convinced me that it made no sense for me to continue to support a non-solution masquerading as the way to resolve the conflict; the creation of a Palestinian state, with borders enforced by Israel and with limited access to water and other resources, would only cement the injustices that Palestinians had suffered since the creation of the Jewish state.

These conclusions moved me to advocate an eventual, single, secular state that would be the home of Arabs and Israelis, Muslims, Jews and Christians. But even then, it was impossible for me to go forward with Henry.

To me the path to a single state had to begin with a two-state solution with equal access to resources, like water, and with borders guaranteed by an international force, not by Israel. This would not be a process with much to assure the eventual outcome, but to Henry it was a simple sell-out.

Though I had sometimes been characterized as a "self-hating, Israel-threatening" Jew (a web-based "S.H.I.T. list" had once named both Henry and I as enemies of Israel on that basis), Henry's feeling that I was a sell-out wasn't new, either.

At a Detroit teach-in on the conflict, I had been on a panel with filmmaker Michael Moore, whom I had known from his days as an activist and publisher in Michigan. Based on my experiences and discussions in Israel and the West Bank at the time of the first Palestinian Intifada, I advocated an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and a repurposing of those funds toward joint Palestinian-Israeli development projects, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza. But Moore blasted me directly for suggesting that there was a gradual way to wind down the conflict, characterizing my position as "constructive engagement," a phrase that Ronald Reagan had first used to describe his policy toward South Africa, which emphasized working with the white South African government to "phase out" apartheid. Coming from Moore, the suggestion that my proposals were simple appeasement resonated with the audience (and to some extent, with me) as a stinging indictment.

But criticisms like Henry's and Michael's notwithstanding, the stipulation that I supported a single state in the area was a position that I believed had to be nuanced by a concern for both the process and the speed by which the goal was reached. Though I maintained that the privileged position of Jews in Israel must also change, and that Israel had to become a truly democratic, not a theocratic state, this could never happen without an open and continuing discussion among Jews in both the U.S. and Israel. Adopting such a position without acknowledging how threatening the idea was to both Israeli and American Jews would make it impossible to move further, I believed.

Yes, my perspective had and has a distinct air of unreality, but then so does every other proposed solution to the conflict that began brewing more than one hundred years ago during the days of the British Mandate in Palestine and almost a half-century before the Nazi holocaust. The idea that Israel can continue to exist indefinitely as a Jewish garrison state in the Middle East (without the eventual elimination of the Palestinian people as a national group) ought to be regarded as at least as fantastical as my notion that an Israeli state can cease to be a theocratic state and that Jews would have a secure future in a democratic Palestinian-Israeli state that evolved over time.

As Henry began seeking ways to work around American Jewish resistance to his message, he came across Norman Finkelstein's controversial book, The Holocaust Industry, in which Finkelstein makes a distinction between the historical event that he refers to as the Nazi Holocaust, and the subsequent use that Israel and major Zionist organizations made of "The Holocaust." Finkelstein contends that major Jewish figures in the United States and the organizations they led used the tragedy to obtain settlements on behalf of Holocaust survivors with Switzerland and other European countries, while actually enriching their own organizations and positioning themselves to more powerfully influence U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The book is a well-documented and persuasive read, written by the son of Holocaust survivors. But as Henry began to see how powerful the Nazi holocaust was as a tool in defending and advancing Israeli interests, he began to question historical accounts of how and, particularly whether the Nazis had proceeded with genocidal intent. To me, Henry's entire discourse on the issue reflected how he had become emotionally captured--at a high cost to his ability to proceed strategically--by the idea of fighting all comers on behalf of justice for Palestinians.

Because Henry had the sense not to embrace Holocaust revisionism publicly, I had always believed that it was not up to me to "out" him and would only talk off the record about that to you. But I take that step now because I have reached the conclusion that a journey that began with the honest belief that American Jews could have an awakening to the injustices suffered by Palestinians beginning with the creation of the Jewish state morphed into a devotion to the Palestinian cause that no longer required him to believe what he was publicly proclaiming.

I believe that effective dissent requires dissenters to proceed ethically precisely because lies and misrepresentation are frequently the tools of those who defend the status quo. As Henry became increasingly focused on tactical effectiveness, he lost perspective on the social justice goals of the struggle he had engaged. To me such a disconnect between devotion to principal and tactical success (measured, for instance, by Henry's belief that he would be "...even less popular the next time you talk to me...") made him willing to embrace any position that undermined support for the Jewish state. Thus, his embrace of "Holocaust revisionism."

My point in sharing that information off the record was to further drive home my argument that Henry faced virulent opposition from the Jewish community not because he was a dissenter, but because he attacked the community and made it a prop in his Kabuki play of political activism; unlike, say, Brant Rosen, who had lost his job within the Jewish community precisely because of his advocacy for Palestinian self-determination.

Unfortunately, my decision to do so left you in a position where you had to choose between telling a story based on on-the-record sources, about a Jewish activist who has taken plenty of flak from the Jewish community, or not telling the story merely because I maintained that the secrets I wouldn't allow you to share should be sufficient reason to leave Henry's story out of your piece. My bad, I know, and I apologize.

I take the central point of your article to be that activist American Jews who think that true justice is best served by vigorous opposition to Israeli policy toward Palestine and Palestinians (and American support for that policy) often face significant challenges from fellow Jews, in some cases becoming pariahs in their own communities. Of course, this is often the fate of dissenters. To persist in the face of that opposition frequently requires a sort of heroism that deserves our respect. But, as I have noted, I do not consider myself (or the withering of our friendship) as an obstacle that I created and that Henry had to overcome. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if I was an enabler, encouraging Henry as he went through a transformation so rapidly that balanced response to setbacks became increasingly difficult.

Henry's commitment to justice for Palestinians and his persistence in that effort may be heroic, but I would contend that his political immaturity exacerbated confrontations, escalated conflict, polarized discussions, and defeated the goal of productive debate. If, in the face of such a debacle of action/reaction, Henry's persistence required courage and inspires admiration, so be it. But that seems to me to have led to a situation where the fate of the Palestinian people is no longer the central question.

In that respect, Henry's decision to go to virtual war as a way to create justice for Palestinians reminds me of the fatal decision by a small percentage of anti-war activists to choose violence as a strategy to end the Vietnam War and to defeat the foreign adventures of the American war machine. Groups that resorted to violence at the time also linked their fight to the domestic repression of African Americans and other minority groups.

The perception that only violence, a left revolution, could overthrow a corrupt American government serving the interests of the wealthy, was shared by a significant part of the anti-war movement at the time. But only a tiny minority of them ended up advocating "armed revolution."

The decision by that tiny minority to resort to domestic terror, helped instigate a repressive counterattack by the authorities at activists of all sorts, including non-violent activists. Certainly, there were other factors at work in provoking the counterattack. Black nationalists, militant workers within and outside of unions, feminists and counterculture organizers were, indeed, threatening corporate control of the economy, and work and social life.

But I have to say that the decisions people made then, to abandon dialogue and advocate confrontational strategies at the expense of smaller victories that could be won and could be the foundation for further victories, seemed ego-driven to me. They had ceased to be about the goals of progressive social change and became about the delusions of people who considered themselves to be working-class heroes.

Henry calls the end of our friendship "the 'most painful break-up' as a result of his activism."  I can't agree. My contention is that Henry allowed his own role as a political activist to become a cause in and of itself, an obsession, a delusion, that long ago lost its connection to justice for Palestinians. The end of our friendship was simply collateral damage.

Best,
Jeff

Gun Control According To Harvey Wasserman

Or Harvey Gives Us Hope


I used to believe that the left ought to make a loud and constant racket about banning automatic weapons, banning concealed-carry and limiting gun rights, in general. As a member of the Ann Arbor City Council in the '80s, I even sponsored an ordinance that would ban all hand guns from the city. The ordinance created great consternation statewide and commanded the attention of all manner of gun owners, hunters and self-styled militia-types from around the country. Several statewide organizations mobilized members and supporters to participate in lobbying campaigns against the ordinance and attend Council hearings in Ann Arbor.

I got one (pink) postcard from an anonymous source to the effect of "we have our sights on you, Comrade Epton." Several others left similar messages on my home answering machine or corresponded to the same effect.

I didn't return such phone calls, but in instances where people included their own address, I took the opportunity to disagree in writing. I also spoke to several groups, including opposition ones. Despite frequent and furious hostility, the general tone of the discussion was reasonably civilized and frequent focused on larger questions about violence in America and its causes. Many participants seemed to feel that there were larger philosophical questions about justice at stake. The ordinance lost--the Ann Arbor City Council was not so liberal as people imagined and at least one member of the council voted against the ordinance because it would "disarm" African-Americans.

But the discussion of gun control seems to have moved much further to the right since then, and has made writing about gun violence not worth the agony of an increasingly confrontational political environment. Into the bargain, the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision appears to greatly enhance the lobbying strength of the National Rifle Association and other anti-gun control groups.

Ultimately, the simple assertion that the 2nd Amendment confers broad rights to own and carry guns of all descriptions seems to occupy the middle ground in the current debate about gun control, successfully stifling initiatives to reestablish significant limits on handguns and automatic weapons. But here comes Harvey Wasserman making the argument that the 2nd Amendment demands gun control. If the left wants to reengage the question, Wasserman's simple formulation is the place to start.

Obama's State of the Union

Can the left live with it?

President Obama's speech last night was definitely not a leftist call to arms. But in the wake of a stinging electoral defeat for Democrats in November, it was, by and large, the speech Obama needed to give; and a speech well within his strike zone. One might have expected progressives to condemn Obama's caution, his willingness to concede space to Republicans with commitments to freeze discretionary spending, take on tort reform and and control Medicare spending, but attacks from the left, so far, are muted and seasoned with approval for some of the things he did say.

Nation writer John Nichols adopted a balanced tone in assessing the State of the Union speech. While noting Obama's declared intention to soften some regulations, continue supporting free-trade agreements, in general, and accommodate other Republican interests, Nichols also applauded Obama's forthright defense of Social Security and government investment in infrastructure.

"Obama has more political capital than he did in the weeks after the election .And he used it to defend Social Security -- rather then embrace calls for slashing benefits or experimenting with privatization – and to renew commitments to classic infrastructure investments in roads, bridges and transit, as well as 21st century projects such as high-speed rail and the development of national wireless networks," Nichols wrote.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), noted that Obama's call for further controlling healthcare costs should be perceived as a way to defend, not attack Medicare. "In reference to Medicare and Medicaid, President Obama stuck to the facts and pointed out that the problem is the broken U.S. health care system, not inefficiencies in these programs. He noted the progress made in controlling health care costs in the Affordable Care Act, but acknowledged the need to go much further in containing costs," Baker said in a written statement released by CEPR today.

The statement also credits Obama with resisting "...the immense pressure from the financial industry and other opponents of Social Security and Medicare by refusing to call for large cuts in these programs in his State of the Union Address. Given the power of these groups, this would have been the easiest path for him to take. However, he instead insisted on the need to protect Social Security and to ensure that future generations of workers can also depend on it."

But Baker was clear about the speech's shortcomings: "The most disappointing aspect of the speech is that it largely skipped over the current economic crisis. This may reflect a view that there is little that Congress will agree to do to at this point. But it still is unconscionable to accept the idea that 25 million workers will go unemployed or under-employed, with millions more losing their home, because of the economic mismanagement by the country’s leaders."

He also took exception to Obama's continuing support for free trade, arguing that an over-valued dollar is the fundamental cause of the continuing U.S. trade deficits, "the largest imbalance in the economy today."

Robert Scheer's critique of the speech must rank among the best expressions of left-wing frustration with Obama's centrism. Scheer's post today on The Smirking Chimp dismisses the speech as "platitudinous hogwash." Obama ignored "... the depth of our economic pain and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible—understandably so, since they so prominently populate the highest reaches of his administration," Scheer wrote. "The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole."

Scheer's points are well-taken and only occasionally hyperbolic (the government spent $1 trillion on the Wall Street bailout, not "trillions"). Indeed, there are certainly more bankers and brokers in the Obama administration than there ought to be, but it won't be the presence of Wall Street big shots in the administration that will undermine any moves Obama makes to increase investment in infrastructure and high tech. Nor will they force Obama to compromise his defense of Social Security and Medicaid.

Republican opposition, of course, will be the first cause compromising Obama's ability to move forward with domestic infrastructure investments, with further action to control health care costs, with effective follow-up on Sec. of Defense Robert Gates proposed cuts in the military budget and other initiatives progressives wish to see. But a left that cannot refrain from unnuanced and relentlessly hostile critiques of Obama's performance and agenda could pose a further problem.

Right now most observers on the left seem willing to give Obama the benefit if the doubt. That comes as a little bit of a surprise, given the widespread perception that Obama and Congressional Democrats didn't go far enough with health care or squeeze out a bigger stimulus bill. But the odds are that the left was as chastened by the November election results as was Obama. If so, would it be too much to ask that a progressive follow-up include electing a few more progressives to Congress and organizing to take back a few Congressional districts from the Tea Party?

So Lincoln Won, Now What?

Has progressive zeal gone awry?

Yes, Blanche Lincoln, the Democratic senator from Arkansas, opposed the public option and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), but that sort of thing from an Arkansas senator shouldn't come as a big surprise. Bill Clinton, our emeritus president, also from Arkansas, did worse. He pushed through a welfare reform that further impoverished millions of families, single mothers and their children, in particular. Clinton also made the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and other pro-business trade agreements, the law of the land. But somehow, most progressives went along, sourly perhaps, but voted for him for reelection, anyhow. The alternative in the era of Newt Gingerich was much worse.

But Lincoln got no such break from labor unions, the Daily Kos and moveon.org. Unions spent more than $10 million in an effort to defeat Lincoln and elect Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in the Democratic primary. From the start it was clear that Halter was no liberal. He simply allowed himself to be framed as a politician to the left of Lincoln. Only true believers practiced in self-deception could pretend that Halter would be an improvement.

Arguably, a better health care bill might have passed if Lincoln had been a supporter of the public option. But had she voted for the public option, she would have faced a true right-wing opponent, more formidable than Halter. And who is willing to claim that Lincoln was the principal obstacle? How about Joe Lieberman, who progressives haven't been able to get rid of either, even though he comes from Connecticut, where it ought to be far easier to elect a liberal? But progressives haven't been able to manage that trick, and even supported Ned Lamont, a multi-millionaire businessman with a thin record of opposition to the Iraq War and no other credentials, in a futile and disheartening effort to dislodge Lieberman in 2008.

"Political movements tend to unravel gradually, but on Tuesday [progressives] seemed to be imploding in real time," wrote the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, an off-again, on-again liberal himself, in "Liberals gather, and yell." A bit hyperbolic, given that Milbank was merely observing a "gathering of progressive activists organized by the Campaign for America's Future," rather than, say, tens of thousands assembled in some amphitheatre at a critical moment for change. But Milbank was writing about the angry demonstrations that continually disrupted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech at the event. Hopefully, the rudeness was therapeutic and activists aren't also considering Pelosi a problem that leftists need to tackle electorally.

Milbank quotes Robert Borosage, organizer of the event, outlining the disappointments stacked up since Barack Obama's election:

"Progressives have grown ever more dissatisfied, and for good reason...Our hopes or illusions were shattered:escalation in Afghanistan, retreat on Guantanamo, no movement on workers rights or comprehensive immigration reform, dithering on 'don't ask, don't tell,' reverses on choice, delay on climate change and new energy."

Borosage isn't sniping from the sidelines. He co-founded the Campaign for America's Future and is a prolific writer and commentator. A piece he wrote for the Huffington Post prior to Obama's 2008 victory, "A New Progressive Era?" provides a helpful comparison between the political reality facing Franklin D. Roosevelt at the time of his 1932 reelection and political reality as it looked to a smart leftist in the fall of 2008.

But how things looked in 2008 seems a far cry from how things are in 2010. There is probably not a single Republican senator who needs to protect himself or herself from a political attack from moderates within their own party. Substantial minority though they are, the rules of the Senate work absolutely in their favor, and vulnerable Republican incumbents face bigger problems from Tea Party activists and the extreme right than they do from Democrats. And for more than a year, since the passage of the stimulus bill in early 2009, Senate Republicans have recognized that recession and widespread economic distress have created a volatile and emotional electorate just as likely to take out their anger on incumbent Democrats as on Republicans. It is this development, and the decision by Republicans to rejigger themselves as the "party of no," that has led to dashing our progressive "hopes or illusions." The hopeless, reactionary mood that characterizes a considerable part of the electorate is part of the wall against which progressive illusions have been shattered.

But why would anyone wish otherwise? Illusions, after all, do not provide a sound base on which to begin building strategy? It was far easier for the Republican minority to develop an effective legislative stance in the chaos created by the worst recession since 1929 than it was for Democrats. Borosage's Huffington Post piece makes clear that, even under ideal conditions, there never was going to be unity among Democrats: "For Obama, the greatest obstacles to pursuing progressive reform are likely to come from his party's conservative Blue Dogs and Wall Street DLC New Democrats." Perhaps, he should also have taken pains to point out that Obama, himself, is no progressive, only a breath of fresh air; a smart leader willing to do the right thing in cooperation with a cohesive progressive movement able to focus effective political power, if such a movement actually existed.

It is still less than two years since Obama's election victory. It is barely 18 months since Obama took office with the country headed toward double digit unemployment. Arguably, the labor movement has less political power to focus now than it had a mere 10 years ago, just before Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and president Andy Stern led several other unions out of the AFL-CIO, in an ill-fated attempt to reverse labor's decline. The fact that AFSCME and SEIU could scrape together $10 million to oppose Blanche Lincoln in the Arkansas primary tells us very little about what the labor movement is capable of doing or what it ought to do next. But it looks somewhat like a tactical indulgence, spending money and lashing out becoming a sort of consolation for strategic failure.

Labor, and all progressives, ought to take a closer look at the political realities of this moment. No, we are not out of Iraq, but we are going to be. We are escalating in Afghanistan, but I see no sign that we are really hunkering down for an even longer war there. A higher likelihood is that we will leave both Iraq and Afghanistan over the next two to three years because we cannot afford to be there any longer. Yes, that point begs the question of whether or not we could ever afford to be either place. Worse, we will be leaving chaos behind in both countries, the forseeable result of a warlike, confrontational and theatrical foreign policy, but a policy that the Obama administration did not create. More problematically for progressive Democrats is that a specific plan does not exist for reengaging parts of the world which have been long neglected or exploited by U.S. policies.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, perhaps, the biggest foreign policy challenge of all to progressives. Israel has no secure future as an occupying power. But many Jewish progressives believe firmly that Israel should be supported as a Jewish state within pre-1967 borders. Talk about illusions from which we all must one day awaken.

A country cannot be both a theocratic state and a democratic state. Even if it is founded by, or on behalf of, Holocaust survivors. That may help make Israel a sentimental favorite for many, but in the modern world, it is not possible to play fast and loose with the rights of other peoples, no matter the gloss put on the act. If there is to be peace, Israel must give something on many points, forcibly evacuating settlements, returning to pre-1967 borders, acknowledging right of return on some basis, if only for compensation purposes.

And the United States is Israel's principal enabler. Without U.S. foreign and military aid, Israel would be bankrupt. And its weapons industry, now an exporter to all sorts of governments with dubious human rights records, has been built and sustained by U.S. aid. The American administration that finally reduces, ideally cuts off, such aid will help Israel to recognize some part of the injustices that have been perpetrated by the Jewish state, and create a more realistic basis for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ultimately, Israel will even have to choose between being a Jewish state, privileging some, and being a democratic state. But that crisis comes later.

We are facing an environmental disaster in the Gulf that highlights the limits to which corporations can act in a broader interest. The BP oil spill will help build support for climate change legislation, but whatever does pass, it will fall far short of what we wish for. So, obviously, will Wall Street regulation. Most members of Congress, in both the House and the Senate, will fight fiercely against efforts to raise taxes on the rich, and to raise the ceiling on social security taxes to cover more of the salaries of higher-income people. But some modest form of that could happen, especially if progressives let go of dreams and focus a little more on realpolitik.

It is somewhat surprising that so soon after Obama's apparently game-changing victory in 2008, so many Democratic incumbents turn out to be facing difficult reelection campaigns in 2008. And the idea that Illinois Democrats may turn out to be too weak to hold Obama's Senate seat is a major shocker. But the Republican party does not have the stature or the policy proposals to take real advantage of the national bad mood. Any rightward shift by Republican candidates sufficient to satisfy Tea Party activists during primaries will undermine those candidates in general elections. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, looked like a goner in Nevada, until Republicans nominated the extremely right-wing Sharon Angle. The smart money now is on Reid's reelection.

But the survival of moderate Democratic incumbents in difficult races does little for progressives. It simply seems vastly superior to challenging those incumbents in Democratic primaries. It is true that a frightened and panicky electorate is hardly a good audience for complicated progressive policy campaigns. But it should be obvious that expensive campaigns aimed at punishing Democratic incumbents for apostasy are counter-productive, if not also the desperate act of a movement with few, or no, ideas.

What's left then? In "Progessive Strategy in the Obama Era," posted on the Huffington Post website, activist Deepak Bhargava argues that there are no shortcuts. The progressive challenge in a deeply divided country is to admit "that we have a long way to go to win hearts and minds" and to "put the emphasis on organizing and recruitment, and social movements."

Right now the only viable progressive movement, Bhargava says, is the immigration movement. This ignores, I think, an environmental movement that has never stopped educating and organizing on college campuses and in communities. It also glosses over the domestic and international peace mobilizations in 2002 and 2003 that delayed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The related experience of millions of young Americans who took to the streets to oppose war at that time remains important, but it must be conceded that the peace movement proved unable to capitalize on those mobilizations. It is painful to think that most Americans still do not see the logic of peace and justice arguments, and are easily persuaded that government is the problem.

I am no particular fan of organizing efforts like, say, Organizing for America, the substantially web-based effort to keep supporters engaged that grew out of the Obama campaign. But it has kept a million people engaged in political action in some form and connected to each other. This is no small accomplishment. I don't know the numbers for Robert Borosage's Campaign for America, but it, also, aspires to overcome the isolation that demobilizes progressives and to focus them on a longer-term agenda. This is key.

Unless we understand what long-term progress would look like and develop strategies and tactics that teach us patience and allow us to pursue half-a-loaf outcomes, we will founder on frustration and anger with the difficult political reality that challenges us. We will dither away millions opposing Blanche Lincoln. And we will duck the hardest issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for which Americans will not admit responsibility. And we will drown in a sea of crude oil, and languish in a stagnant, poorly regulated economy, and bemoan our individual fates.

Failing to Speak Out Against the War

Change we can believe in has not come to Iraq and Afghanistan



Of course, there never was a universal expectation that Barack Obama's election would end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq very quickly. But it seems likely that a good percentage of those who consider themselves fundamentally anti-war did expect that both wars would end sooner rather than later as Obama pursued a more realistic and internationalist foreign policy. I know I hoped for such things, but in the meantime, I've paid little attention to the details, like who's killing whom, who is dying, how much the wars are costing

Where is my anger over this dragging on of war? Perhaps part of the taming of my peace-movement ardor is that it has been so long since we had a president with an interest in some of the issues that are absolute priorities for me. Or at least a president with a commitment to discussion of policy. Are my appreciations of this guy simply self-deception?

We do have an apparent winding down of the war in Iraq. We do have a modest health care reform bill, better than most progressives are willing to admit, albeit far short of what it would take to get U.S. health care costs and life-expectancies in line with all other industrialized countries. The stimulus package that passed Congress in 2009 without Republican support blunted the effects of an economic meltdown that could have been even worse. The bill saved the jobs of hundreds of thousands of highway construction workers and state and local government employees. It extended and increased unemployment benefits, and increased government spending on green jobs. Without the bill the current unemployment rate would be markedly higher.

But the Obama administration has been plenty disappointing, as well. The war in Afghanistan is not ending, it is ramping up. And U.S. and allied forces there are likely responsible for 40 percent or more of the thousands of civilian casualties over the last two years. U.S. aid to Afghanistan seems anything but stabilizing. In 2011, the U.S. will give Afghanistan more than $11 billion for its army and police. The amount is about 80 percent of the Afghan GDP. "It's obvious that Afghanistan is not going to be able to afford [to maintain] what we are building for them," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), quoted in "Senators Call for Changes to Troubled, Costly Afghan Police Training Program."

The Obama administration has also missed chances to help working people with mortgage cramdowns, preferring to push apparently ineffective measures that subsidize banks willing to forgive a portion of mortgage principle. The administration has shown a similar willingness to avoid confrontation with or, even, accommodate powerful interests in regard to oil and coal production, credit card regulation, climate change and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

All this is very disappointing, but two considerations make me hesitate to blast an administration that I campaigned and voted for. First, it's hard to imagine a political climate more likely to give a moderate and cerebral president pause. I would have counseled a far more aggressive approach to passing health care, challenging unions to give their full support to a tax on "cadillac" health plans and blue dog Democrats to back off opposition to a public option before Ted Kennedy died. But it would be presumptuous for me to assume that strategy would have succeeded. More likely it would have killed any chance of a bill passing this year. and Kennedy would still be gone and Scott Brown would still be the senator from Massachusetts.

Second, there has been a Democratic president in only 14 of the 42 years since 1968. Jimmy Carter, who has made a far better ex-president than president, held the office for four of those 14 years, and Bill Clinton was president for 8 of them. But Carter was a graduate of the Naval Academy, a nuclear engineer and a Southerner, someone from whom I expected neither progressivism nor peace (but who was actually more progressive and more peaceful than I expected him to be).

During the 1992 Presidential primary, Clinton very publicly left the campaign trail to return to Arkansas where, as governor, he would figuratively preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded murderer, who was reputed to have asked if he could save the dessert from his last meal until after the execution. In refusing to spare the wholly incompetent Rector, Clinton manufactured proof that he could be tough enough on crime to be president. Oddly, Clinton, who failed utterly on health care reform and worked with Republicans to "reform" welfare, led the country into a war over Kosovo that turned out to be generally popular with a good portion of the Left.

But not with me. As the political writer for the Dayton Voice, I wrote a lot about who we were killing and what (and whom) we were bombing, what it all cost in absolute dollars and what we might otherwise be doing with those billions, and who (read weapons manufacturers and military contractors) was profiting. For the Left, and even for some of my colleagues at the Voice, the situation was made more ambiguous by repeated Serbian attacks on civilian populations in Kosovo. For many, saving lives trumped the usual anti-war objections and they supported the U.S. intervention. But I didn't. And I couldn't be silent.

So, now, on the question of continuing American intervention in Iraq & Afghanistan, in the face of hundreds of billions of dollars (the total for both wars is approaching $1 trillion) worth of spending in those places, on the occasion of hundreds of millions of dollars in profit for weapons manufacturers and military contractors, why am I silent?

Iraqi and Afghani civilians are still suffering tens of thousands of casualties annually. Hundreds of Americans who enlisted because they were poor or had no work or were looking for a way to help pay for college are dying in the Iraq and Afghanistan. Why do I remain silent?

What Do Progressives Want?

OK, it wasn't the health care bill we got

Marrianne's cousin Kevin sent a link to a piece by blogger Ian Welsh. In his piece, "Kos Calls For Progressive Civil War," Welsh shreds Kos. "It's time for Kos's 15 minutes to end. The man's stupidity, hubris and willingness to be used by a president who is objectively a conservative means he is now doing more damage to the Left than good." Oh, my. We are angry, aren't we.

Admittedly, Kos's call to campaign against Kucinich in a primary seems blockheaded. Whatever the Left's problems may be, a Kucinich in Congress isn't one of them. It ought to be equally clear that Obama isn't standing in the way of a resurgence on the Left, either, but Welsh thinks so: "Those who want to go after Kucinich are acting as Obama's and Rahm's heavies. acting as enforcers for a president who believes in indefinite detention without trial, who has expanded the war in Afghanistan, gutted civil rights and who wants to force every American to buy health insurance from private companies," wrote Welsh.

Maybe I'm dense, but this seems a little hyperbolic. Obama doesn't appear to believe in "indefinite detention without trial," he just seems to be unwilling to take the issue on. Such a stance may be morally weak, but it isn't equivalent to gutting civil rights, either, though Welsh may have more in mind than the way the Obama administration is dragging its feet on Guantanamo and criminal investigation of torture. Certainly there is a critical Left perspective to bring to bear on Obama's strategies regarding health care, Afghanistan and a host of other issues, but that doesn't make Obama a conservative or suggest that Obama considers Kucinich a major obstacle to his agenda, whatever it may be.

Arguably Obama's agenda is a lot clearer than the Left's. We may want universal, single-payer, and, if we were expecting to get it this year, then our failure to achieve it would be bitter, indeed. On the other hand, if our goal was simply the bill that actually passed, there'd be no need for a Left, at all. The problem lies in defining political and legislative goals for the Left that keep progressives in the discussion and push the boundaries of the possible.

Single-payer is, in that regard, an important ultimate goal for progressives and ought to be a defined part of every health care discussion. But we are not defeated just because we don't achieve it. More people will be insured as a result of this legislation. Insurance companies will have more customers, it's true, but being barred from excluding preexisting conditions will cut into profit margins, as well. And state health insurance exchanges offer potential for further government involvement in health care cost control and, even, the direct provision of health care.

Given the political climate in which this was all fought out, a global economic collapse, a vastly expanded federal debt and hysteria on the right, it's hard to see how a better bill could have been passed. Passing the bill last summer, instead of this spring, would have been better, of course, but it didn't happen. Progressives and labor unions might have been able to accomplish it, if there had been a greater willingness to tax "cadillac" health care plans, but too many people couldn't see a way to do that and protect union members, too. In the upshot, a weaker plan passed nine-months later when progressive members of Congress finally decided not to oppose the bill on that basis. Regardless, this bill was always going to be the step before the next bill, which will take more unity on the Left and among Democrats than either Kos or Welsh appear willing to acknowledge.

Tom Geoghegan's Which Side Are You On?

A book about labor and justice

I just finished reading Which Side Are You On?, published originally in 1991. Written by a labor lawyer in Chicago, Tom Geoghegan, a man who knows too much--about how badly the union movement has been screwed by government and bolixed up by its own leadership and left to die a lingering death by the rest of us--knows too much for his own moral comfort. But Geoghegan's honest and important book should earn him a break from his angst about failing the cause.

Who knows, it has been 20 years since the book came out, maybe he has let some of the guilt and pain go. But last I heard, he was still a labor lawyer in Chicago, still wishing and hoping for the legal case that would break the pattern of rulings against workers organizing to form a union, however improbable such a case would be.

It's hard to say exactly when Geoghegan himself came to the conclusion that such hopes were nowhere near realistic, but sometime during his career, after losing cases that he felt the courts were morally obligated to decide in favor of his clients, he came to the conclusion that labor's decline was directly traceable to the passage "in 1947, over the veto of Harry Truman" of Taft-Hartley, the law that "outlawed mass picketing, secondary strikes of neutral employers, sit-downs; in short, everything that [John L. Lewis and the Mineworkers] did in the 1930s."

Geoghegan writes that it was years before the damage from Taft-Hartley was obvious; the labor movement would grow quickly for ten more years, and even after the industrial unions began losing ground, rapidly growing public employee unions would hide the fact of decline. Geoghegan's not whining here, but he's not the only one to point out that the history of American labor would be a different history if not for Taft-Hartley.

"The CIO, in 1946, was planning a big organizing drive in the South...this drive, Operation Dixie, was pulled back at the last moment to avoid alienating Southern Democrats. and the Republicans, meanwhile [with majorities in both houses of Congress], went on to pass Taft-Hartley, to stop just this kind of mass organizing. If the CIO had organized the South, American history would have been different, because labor would have been a truly national force, and not a regional one, trapped in the Northeast and Midwest."

I'd like to quote so much from the book I'd end up reprinting most of it here, but Geoghegan is also a wonderful writer. Anyone who merely read my excerpted version would be missing the real thing, an intimate view of workers and their families struggling with and for their unions, and of their leaderships, the good, the bad and the ugly, from an informed observer who chose labor's side a long time ago, but knows himself to be an outsider.

I wrote a letter to the Washington Post a while ago, extolling charter schools and asserting that the best practices of charter schools and public school reform efforts needed to be regarded as complementary activities aimed at the shared goal of rebuilding quality public education. In response, a friend, another Chicago lawyer, wrote me arguing that the charter schools were actually part of a systematic attack on the union movement. We exchanged several e-mails on the subject, but she remained convinced that I was inadvertently stooging for a right-wing attack on labor and I came to the conclusion that she saw charter schools as a for-profit conspiracy to privatize education. Had we continued our discussion, I'm pretty sure that we would have found common ground, but I am more certain that our whole discussion would have been broadened substantially had we first read Which Side Are You On?.

Broadened theoretically, at least. After all, nothing in Which Side suggests a practical course of action, especially 20 years later and immediately after the sustained and tortured fight to pass health care reform. Perhaps not so ironically, it is the current day coalition of Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats, not unlike the coalition that passed Taft-Hartley over Truman's veto 60 years ago, that made prompt passage of a better health care bill impossible. Sixty years ago, before Taft-Hartley, unions organized by card check--getting the signatures of a minimum of 30 percent of workers at a plant in order to form a bargaining unit that the employer had to recognize. Today AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions have prioritized the Employee Free Choice Act, which would once again allow for card check, instead of the NLRB regulated elections that employers have learned how to win with regularity simply by firing leaders on the shop floor and intimidating workers.

Lots of questions arise. In many ways progressives are lost without a viable union movement. A few years ago, writing in In These Times and attempting to bridge a perceived gap between labor and other progressives, I wrote this: "Corporate America and the Republican Party have forged a partnership that ... decrees the contours of our economic and cultural life. If progressives ever want to counter this corporate hegemony, they must learn from the past and embrace the strength and potential of the union movement (from "Labor's Future Is Ours," In These Times, January 21, 2005).

It's difficult for me to say now that I still believe firmly in what I wrote in In These Times just five years ago. A better health care bill could have been passed and sooner, if labor leaders had not opposed a provision taxing "Cadillac" health care plans last summer. It would have been a better bill that would have taken a bigger step toward universal, single-payer health care. But after reading Geoghegan's book describing the deck stacked against the union movement for half a century, it seems silly to blame labor for something all of us, unions, the Democratic party, progressives, a vast coalition of non-profits, couldn't accomplish.

But what then are we to do if we can't blame labor or save it? The answers, of course, are complicated. We should certainly support the Employee Free Choice Act, even if it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. There is a long list of other things to tackle, including the demilitarization of our economy and foreign policy, underwater mortgages, financial regulatory reform, the restoration of urban public education, action on climate change, and more. All of this would help, were we able to accomplish it. But labor's decline has made progressives much weaker. Perhaps, we've lost clarity about what matters most. Tom Geoghegan's book, written 20 years ago, is still profoundly relevant.

"Lately, I've been writing this book. I've been writing it on weekends and in the mornings before I go to work, and now that I've reached the end of it, I hate to let it go. Because in writing it, I come closer to solidarity with ... well, not the workers, but other people ... than I do in the day-to-day living of my life.

"Here's a depressing thought. Maybe in a book, and only in a book, is solidarity 'forever.'

"But there's a great danger in writing a book. I can already see what's happening. I keep some steelworker waiting on a corner, walking up and down. What kind of solidarity is that?

"That's where the aesthetic view of politics leads. That's why it's dangerous.

"That's why when you shut the door and begin to write, someone should ask you, right then,

"Which side are you on?"

Media News That Fails Us

Collaborators in the news room

In 1967, I informed my draft board that I considered both the draft, in general, and student deferments from the draft, in particular, to be immoral and that I wished to be reclassified from 2S to 1A. Ignoring my larger moral argument, the board sent me a new card with a new classification making me immediately eligible to be drafted. I then notified them that I intended to burn my card in public at an appointed time and place. Though they did not show up for the event, they did draft me shortly thereafter, whereupon I departed for Canada, the location of further adventures only tangentially related to the focus of this post.

Since those halcyon days of antiwar protest, I have fervently believed that reducing military spending and ending militarism ought to be critically important to activists regardless of their issue focus. Since the news media, historically, has been the handmaiden of American military interventions, it follows that journalism, journalistic practice and media ought to be another point of strategic concern for all issues activists. A case in point is the major media's abject failure to investigate the full story of the Bush administration's duplicity in making the case for the invasion of Iraq and to tell that story early and often, with the result that the Iraq War has gone on for a tortuously long time at a cost of nearly $1 trillion.

Writer Sebastian Jones has produced a well-researched piece, "The Lobbying-Media Complex" that adds to the indictment of cable and network news media. The story, running in The Nation, gets right to the point in its first three paragraphs, detailing how ex-Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and retired general Barry McCaffrey appeared recently on news shows as experts on energy and the Afghanistan war, respectively, without the relevant disclosures that the two men have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from energy companies and military contractors.

To end his piece, Jones quotes Arizona State University journalism professor Aaron Brown's observations following 2008 election coverage, which featured endless line-ups and roundtables of analysts sharing little of real value: "We live in a time when there are no shortages of opinions and an incredible deficit of facts."

The point needs augmenting, I think. Having and sharing opinions, after all, seems part of human DNA, but the constitutionally protected function of news media is to uncover and share relevant information that good citizenship requires. Otherwise media is nothing but a toady for the rich and powerful, collaborating with their policy goals.

How the Right, and the Rest of Us, Can Shrink Big Government

Musings of a Snow Shoveler

It was so quiet on DC streets yesterday, you could hear yourself thinking. The streets weren't completely impassable, but only a tiny number of vehicles drove by; the great majority of cars were stuck in snowdrifts and garages. High mounds of snow narrowed the roadways, absorbing much of the noise made by the mainly emergency vehicles and snowplows that did pass by. There were no trains running on the four lines of railroad track about a block away, and the blowers and fans that heat and cool the air for the hospital buildings nearby were, for once, inaudible. Humans were out and about, shoveling and talking and, somehow, the otherwise sound-deadening qualities of the snow facilitated the easy travel of conversational voices.

A neighbor two doors away shoveled vigorously east, so I shoveled vigorously west. We met halfway, a proud moment in the ongoing process of reclaiming the public right-of-way. Like the meeting of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways, it was a moment deserving of celebration, so, though we've lived on the same block for three years, Scott and I introduced ourselves to each other for the first time in history. Sadly, the neighbor to our east has failed to shovel his sidewalk, so the full corner-to-corner pathway remains incomplete.

But before the historic meet up with Scott, I couldn't help reflecting that the economic output in the very big East Coast neighborhood, ranging from as far south as, say, North Carolina, north to New York state and west to Pittsburgh had dropped dramatically. In fact, probably the single most productive activity in the whole megalopolis was moving snow around, a lot of it volunteer activity. My own snow moving output for the weekend, about six hours worth at a conservative $25/hour (snowplow drivers contribute much more) ought to add about $150 to the Gross National Product.

This thought got me to the further notion that if people who are most particularly incensed by big government really wanted to advance their cause, they could go out and do an hour's worth of volunteer activity every week on behalf of someone less well off, sicker or older than they are. Cutting grass, building a wheelchair ramp, making dinner, picking up medicine on behalf of someone who would not be able to do those things themselves, might, in fact, leave them undone would add huge sums to the GNP. Moreover, doing them would be preventative. They would improve quality of life for the beneficiaries, increasing health and well-being, and reduce the cost of future government intervention.

Say, for argument's sake, that 10 million people, otherwise consumed by political frustration about Big Brother, did engage in this sort of volunteerism for an hour a week and 50 weeks a year. At a conservative labor value of $20/hr., these activities would add about $10 billion to GNP. If 10 million more progressives, wishing to encourage such volunteerism and desiring to share directly in the community-building process were to match the effort, we could add another $10 billion to GNP and dial down ambient political heat in favor of light. If the same 20 million were to also give away their spare change to the homeless twice a week, we could inject another $2 billion annually into local economies. If all of this were to happen on a yearly basis, the total would equal a modest stimulus package, and it wouldn't take 60 votes in the Senate to make it happen.