I saw him as I pulled up to the gas pump and knew exactly what was coming. You know the guy — the one that will ask to clean your windows. I did as I usually do, as I’d bet most of us do. When he approached, I said I was sorry, without really listening to what he said, and when on with pumping my gas.
Like anyone who grew up in a city, I’ve had to learn how do deal with ‘those people’ my whole life. I remember one day when I was very young seeing someone begging on the side of the road, or maybe it was in the median. I became inconsolable, crying and demanding my mom explain to me why we couldn’t help him, or maybe it was her. I remember my mother recounting to me a story, also with tears in her eyes, about a Thanksgiving Day years before. She’d seen a family on the street in the rain, and offered to invite them home to eat with us. The mother declined, telling mine that Thanksgiving was the day they get the most money from passers-by. I remember feeling something like futility, but at least I stopped crying.
I went into the gas station to grab my favorite tea, but got Snapple instead since mine wasn’t there. For some reason I felt I couldn’t ignore the window washer as per usual, so I gave him some money on the way back to my car. Then, which I’d never done before, I asked him his name. He said his name is Greg. I said something like ‘take care of yourself’ and as I started to walk away he asked me mine, and offered to shake my hand. “Sorry,” said Greg. “My hand’s a bit swollen — I took a tumble on my bike earlier.” I told him my name, shook his hand — very carefully — wished him well, and got back in my car to drive home.
I want to live in a world where no one has to beg on the street, because we take care of each other. Why is that radical?
I feel used. Obama rode the queer community to victory in 2008, threw us under the bus no sooner than his inauguration, and now he’s trying to use us to win back his old boyfriend, the liberal progressive left, that he cheated on with Rahm Emanuel and an orgy of Wall Street billionaires.
The disingenuous drivel about evolving views makes me want to punt a floppy dildo into his face. I feel like this should be a moment for celebration, but Obama has managed to cheapen it by obfuscation, delays, and now empty platitudes.
I suppose what we do have to celebrate is that the queer struggle has reached a point where the President was forced to respond, even as all the former Confederate states have passed constitutional bans on gay marriage. And in retrospect, this is how all progressive victories have happened. Johnson had to be dragged into supporting civil rights. FDR signed the New Deal legislation — by his own admission — to save the profit system from a socialist revolt. For fuck’s sake, NIXON birthed the goddamned EPA!
I think after a long night of celebratory drinking and dancing to “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay”, tomorrow we need to turn up the heat and demand from the president, and his corporate shill of a party, not just marriage equality, but also protection from housing and employment discrimination, access to basic health care to meet the special needs of transgender people, the right for children to be protected from constant harassment and abuse for being or being perceived as queer, and the right of all people to be free from exploitation and oppression. This is not Obama’s movement — it’s ours.
As people took to the streets on Tuesday to celebrate International Workers Day, few were expecting a moral victory to emerge in the struggle for marriage equality. Shortly before the trial was slated to begin for the Equality 9 protesters, San Diego Superior Court Judge Joan Weber dismissed the entire jury, ruling that the prosecution had deliberately dismissed the only two openly gay jurors, for no other reason than their sexual orientation. Should the prosecution choose to pursue the trial, they’ll have to start over with a new jury pool on September 18.
The Equality 9 were arrested while sitting in at the county clerk’s office on August 19th, 2010. Over a hundred people came in support of same-sex couples who had made appointments for that day to acquire marriage licenses, after Proposition 8 had been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge earlier that month. When the clerk denied the same-sex couples their rights, they and their allies decided to sit in. County sheriffs came in riot gear, broke up the protest and arrested the nine who refused to disperse. A year and a half later, the Equality 9 are still a thorn in the City Prosecutor Jan Goldsmith’s side. Reeling from this latest self-inflicted blow, Goldsmith released a statement Wednesday, ironically forced into defending the prosecution’s tactics. The document states that the dismissal of the final juror was based on his having participated in gay rights protests in the past and not his sexual orientation, as if simply participating in a legal protest was an acceptable reason to dismiss a juror.
Judge Weber’s description of the prosecution’s conduct as “shocking,” and the following account from one of the Equality 9, reveal that the prosecution was clearly operating with prejudice, and was thoroughly startled when they were called on it. After the last gay juror was dismissed, the defense made a “Wheeler/Batson” motion, forcing the prosecution to produce a reason for the dismissal. The judge called counsel into chambers, where she asked the prosecuting attorney for an explanation. All he came up with was that the juror had previously been on two juries that both reached acquittal. The judge understandably considered that a hollow excuse, and it was only on Wednesday that Assistant City Attorney Dan Rawlins started talking about the the juror’s participation in a gay pride or AIDS march (which could hardly be called a protest) years ago. The judge wouldn’t accept this newly-fabricated reason, and appeared visibly angry.
The City Attorney’s office has also been under pressure to drop the charges for simply wasting time and taxpayer dollars. The judge said that she had “never had so many jurors express concern about why a prosecutor’s office would move forward and spend time and money on a case of this nature.” And in a previous hearing she warned that “this prosecution will cost the taxpayers of this community thousands and thousands of dollars.” Goldsmith has been trying to lay the blame on the Equality 9 themselves, arguing that three of the nine had accepted plea deals and that the remaining six could save the city money by accepting their generous plea offer. But if the city really believes they have done something wrong and that they can win in court (with an unbiased jury), why offer the plea? More importantly, why should innocent people make it easier for the government to prosecute them?
Michelle Alexander explains in a recent New York Times article that 90% of all criminal charges in the U.S. injustice system result in a plea deal. This is because the system is set up for conviction, not justice. The accused are regularly brought in on trumped up charges and denied counsel. People predictably cave when faced with harsh mandatory sentences for charges the prosecutors know they could never win if they went to trial. Jan Goldsmith is clearly not used to defendants standing up to him, if only by demanding their right to trial and by having competent counsel.
This is a prime example of how all struggles are connected. The virulently racist War on Drugs has created a prison industrial complex and broken criminal justice system that affects all people standing up against oppression. The militarization of local police in the name of drug enforcement has laid the foundation for violent suppression of protesters — from the fight against globalization to the anti-war movement, and now to Occupy. As one of the Equality 9 was being arrested the day of the protest, another reminded police in riot gear that it was police who arrested women registering to vote, and it was the law that enforced slavery and segregation. When Proposition 8 passed in November of 2008, same sex marriages ended that day. No delay. No stay. Yet when the law was declared unconstitutional, a stay was issued immediately. The police and the law are always on the side of the bigots until the oppressed and their allies fight back, and those in power know it. Jan Goldsmith even admits in his apologist manifesto: “We don’t want to make these cases into something bigger than they are…” He knows that if he drops the charges or loses in trial, it may spark a struggle bigger than this broken system can withstand. That is what the Equality 9 trial is really about.
If you want to fight back, want to know why all our struggles are connected, or would just like to learn more about my politics, check out the International Socialist Organization at socialistworker.org
Right now people are in the streets and are taking action to ensure Raul Carranza does not lose his nursing hours, which is happening today. Raul has Muscular Dystrophy and cannot move his limbs, breath, or speak on his own. It’s obvious to anyone that Raul needs 24 hour care. It was even obvious to a judge that ruled he qualifies for “acute” level care.
Why is Raul Carranza not in the acute level of care? This is the question of the day for Governor Jerry Brown, please take a moment and ask his office how this is possible. Here is Governor Brown’s phone number: Phone: (916) 445-2841. Ask the governor to pardon Raul and to kill the cuts — especially the cuts to IHSS/Medi-Cal.
Please tweet (use hashtag #KillTheCuts), Facebook post, email, and use other social media networks to ask others to call the governor’s office.
Please also take a moment of your time and be apart of outreaching to the media. Call any media contacts you know but also call the following local news outlets and let them know this action is taking place. Please tell them to cover the sit-in happening at the state building in Downtown San Diego, 1350 Front Street. Tell them Raul’s story.
Read about Raul’s story, make sure to sign the petition on his website, and spread the links in this bundle on any social media (for Twitter, use hashtag #KillTheCuts):
Call Jerry Brown and demand Raul’s hours be restored: (916) 445-2841
Flood the governor’s fax machine: (916) 558-3160 (he’s currently proposing another half a billion dollars in cuts to Medi-Cal)
Follow Raul on Twitter and retweet as events unfold: @raulfights
Talk to your friends and family who are hit by cuts to Medi-Cal and IHSS, and fight back like Raul. Everyone deserves to the opportunity to live up to their full human potential.
Raul Carranza is in a fight for his life. At 22 years old, he is able to speak only slightly and move a couple fingers on one hand. He’s permanently on a ventilator and requires 24 hour nursing care to maintain his airway. But it’s not muscular dystrophy that’s threatening Raul’s life — it’s budget cuts.
Medi-Cal, the California state program that administers federal Medicaid dollars, provided the 24-hour nursing care he needed until his 21st birthday. Then the bottom fell out. “Medi-Cal cut my funding nearly in half,” he explained to a crowd gathered outside the Chula Vista Medi-Cal office last Friday to protest the cuts. “This wasn’t done because I got better or because I did something wrong, but for the simple fact that I turned 21. It’s a policy of theirs that adult patients get less money than pediatric patients.” He went on to explain that since taking up the fight full time, he has had recurring nightmares in which he cries out for his nurse, but his voice is gone and no one comes to help him. Yet this nightmare may become reality on April 16th, when his private insurance has run beyond its yearly cap and his available hours are reduced from 24 to the 11 Medi-Cal will pay for.
Pablo Carranza also spoke, and explained that he’s approaching his 21st birthday, which will place him in the same predicament as his brother, since he too requires 24-hour care. About the Medi-Cal administrators, Pablo has little to praise. “They hide behind the curtain so that they won’t have to see the pain that they are responsible for.”
80 people attended the rally and protest, several of whom are Medi-Cal or IHSS (In-Home Supportive Services) recipients. The event was organized with Raul by the Occupy San Diego Labor Solidarity Committee, a group made up largely of rank and file union members and labor activists. Gregg Robinson, Political Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers, connected the plight of disabled benefits recipients to the larger failure of the system to care for those in need by drawing an analogy to the Titanic, a disaster in which two thirds of the First Class passengers survived, while three quarters of the other passengers and the crew perished. “Let’s take a look at what’s going on up there in First Class,” he suggested, and went on to explain that the richest 85 people in California have assets totaling more than $200 billion, while the governor (a Democrat) is proposing $500 million in cuts to Medi-Cal, on top of the cuts already made.
Following a short but spirited march from the park adjacent to the building, led by the Medi-Cal and IHSS recipients, the group performed a mic check at the entrance, reading a list of demands. After the ranking official dismissively announced that she would forward Raul’s letter and scurried inside, Raul and his mother entered the building to demand a response from the director of the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and the governor. Shortly thereafter, Michael Condon, a veteran who has been paralyzed from the neck down for over 40 years and was wearing a “We Support Raul” shirt, was blocked by private security while trying to enter the building with his caregiver. For several minutes, other members of the public were let in while Mr. Condon was refused access, prompting the crowd to chant “Let him in!” and “No Justice, No Peace!” When the security guards were unable to provide a reason why he was not allowed in, they finally granted Mr. Condon entry to the office. While he and Raul were inside, protesters proceeded to call every phone number connected with the office of the director of DHCS to demand a response.
In the end, Raul and Mr. Condon exited the building having received confirmation that the list of demands was faxed to both the director of DHCS and the governor. Raul had wished to remain indefinitely to force the issue, but the battery on his chair was running low. After Raul thanked the remaining protesters for supporting the cause and vowed to continue the fight, a friend of his, also a muscular dystrophy sufferer in a wheelchair, asked to speak. He said simply, “Justice for Raul is justice for all.”
Many who live here are under the false assumption that Southern California is a paradise of post-racism. The history of the East County of San Diego and the militarized border with Mexico demonstrate otherwise.
In 2010, a black man was attacked outside his home by a white teenager, bashed over the head with a skateboard. The boy’s father, a known member of a local white supremacist group called Peckerwood, had been convicted in 1999, along with four other young white men, of attacking and shattering the spine of a black Marine, paralyzing him from the neck down — injuries from which he later died. Of the hate group (half of whom have criminal convictions) the mayor commented, “I have to say, and I’m not just saying this to cover my tail, they’ve treated me with respect. They are an organization that, like anyone, has a few bad apples.”
But East County doesn’t hate only black people. Tom Metzger, a rabid white supremacist, was an open member of and leader in the Knights of the KKK in 1980 when he ran for Congress, in what was then California’s 43rd District, which covered most of San Diego County outside the beaches and Downtown. He shocked everyone by winning a three way Democratic primary. Naturally, the Democrats denounced him and actively supported the Republican challenger, who won with 84% of the vote — It should have been 100%. Metzger, as an open white supremacist, got 46,361 votes. He and Grand Wizard David Duke had, the year before, created the ‘Klan Border Watch’ to prove just how much they hated Mexicans.
Before the militarization of the border wall, about 1 to 2 people died crossing the border each year. Since the raising of the wall, that number has skyrocketed, the desperate workers forced to attempt the crossing in the mountains east of San Diego, or the harsh deserts of Imperial County, where they die of exhaustion, thirst, or exposure. A recent report published by the ACLU suggests that over 5,000 people have died attempting to cross the border since Operation Gatekeeper. Humanitarian groups sometimes set up water stations in the desert, and a charming group called the Campo Minutemen makes a habit of slashing the bottles. One of these patriots was likely responsible for the deaths of three Mexican citizens on the south side of the border in June of 2008. He boasted in a blog, “When planning this activity, it was decided that the shootings would take place on the Mexican side of the border… since law enforcement in that nation is so ill-equipped, the chance of getting caught is zero.”
In May, 1990, three white men decided over some beers to go “shoot some aliens”. One shot and killed a 12 year old Mexican boy trying to cross the border. He served 2 years for involuntary manslaughter.
Mike Davis recounts in his book, Magical Urbanism, the murder of Irieno Soto Aguilar:
In 1999, the hapless 34-year-old laborer was accosted by three skinhead types in the eastern San Diego County suburb of Lakeside (not far from the Santana High School shootings of 2001). Shouting racist slurs, they brutally beat Soto and threw him unconscious into a concrete storm drain. Later two of the attackers returned to the scene, where they ‘heard Soto groaning and moaning.” According to the Union-Tribune, they “set upon him again, rifled through a tattered backpack and then hurled bricks at the prone man. Finally, in a gruesome coup-de-grace, Soto was killed when a 43-pound boulder was dropped on his head.”
The school shooting that Davis mentions at Santana High School, which happened my senior year in the same district, was not a coincidence (there was a shooting the same year at neighboring Granite Hills High School, thankfully with no deaths). A documentary aired in 2002 on the local PBS affiliate made the connection. A middle school drug & violence prevention counselor explains, “the same sources that would lead to a shooting on campus – that anger, that sense of isolation, that disconnect from resources – leads to kids getting involved in the white supremacy movement.” This kind of unimaginable hate is bred in environments of extreme deprivation and desperation. People simply don’t join white supremacy groups, or any other gang for that matter, if they have their basic needs met — but our society as it is currently structured cannot meet the basic needs of everyone, despite having the material wealth and technology to do so.
This post was updated 04/05/2013
If you want to fight back, want to know why all our struggles are connected, or would just like to learn more about my politics, check out the International Socialist Organization at socialistworker.org
So this post isn’t really about how French people are a failure of Capitalism. Although…
I’m kidding. This is really about some of the problems with our conception of family. I’ve learned reading Marxist theory that the standard nuclear family is not, as we’re led to believe, the natural state of relations among men and women and their children, but is necessary for the functioning of capitalism. There is a reason it’s the same people who protect and defend ruling class wealth, and who are simultaneously terrified of women having control over their reproduction and the erosion of ‘family values’, meaning teh ghays are recruiting our children.
The standard family unit, with a father who works for wages and a subservient and unpaid mother who does domestic work and raises the children, preferably using corporal punishment — that family is very efficient for the ruling class. Not only can a significant amount of labor be extorted from the adults for a bare subsistence, leaving a large surplus for the owners and shareholders, but the children are also raised in an environment where they become accustomed to trusting authority figures to decide things for them, and to not question that authority. “Because I said so” is still the standard response to a child asking why they should do or not do something. I admit that children need structure and have trouble functioning in the world without top down discipline, but I think these things are only necessary because of the dysfunctional system we are forced on pain of starvation to function in.
This passage in The Meaning of Marxism by Paul D’Amato struck me as highlighting the absurdity of many of our Western family relations.
The French Jesuit missionary LeJeune, who lived among the Montagnais-Naskapi Indians on the Labrador coast of Canada in the early 1630s, for example, complained of them: “As they have neither political organization, nor offices, nor dignities, nor any authority, for they only obey their chief through the goodwill toward him, therefore they never kill each other to acquire these honors. Also, as they are contented with a mere living, not one of them gives himself to the Devil to acquire wealth.” the Jesuits who proselytized among this society considered it healthy to beat children into submission, while the Indians considered the practice barbaric.
Consider an incident described by Eleanor Burke Leacock in her excellent book Myths of Male Dominance. A French boy struck and injured a Montagnais boy. Alarmed, the Indians demanded gifts. But the French missionaries instead prepared to punish the French child by whipping him in front of the Indians. According to the report of a Jesuit, “One of the savages stripped himself entrirely, threw his blanket over the child and cried to him that was going to do the whipping: ‘Strike me if thou wilt, but thou shalt not strike him.’ And thus the little one escaped.”
When the missionary tried to tell a Montagnais-Naskapi man the women should love only their husbands, so that men could be sure of who their children were, he responded: “Thou hast no sense. You French people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe.”
If you want to fight back, want to know why all our struggles are connected, or would just like to learn more about my politics, check out the International Socialist Organization at socialistworker.org
A PBS online article on public education pontificates: “America’s noble experiment - universal education for all citizens - is a cornerstone of our democracy.” Well, after the state of Connecticut convicted a homeless black mother this month of larceny for sending her child to a wealthy and largely white school in a neighboring district, it’s hardly surprising that our democracy is such a farce.
Tanya McDowell will face up to five years in prison at sentencing on March 27th, for the crime of doing everything within her nearly non-existent power to give her child a decent education. The story is tragically similar to that of Kelley Williams-Bolar, also black, who was sentenced to 10 years for a similar ‘crime’. The judge suspended all but ten days of her sentence, compassionately noting that she should serve at least some time, “so that others who think they might defraud the school system, perhaps, will think twice.”
But what does this have to do with capitalism? Well, without even going into the institutional racism (which is both a consequence of and a necessary part of capitalism - more on that in another post), the geographic, wealth and income based disparity in the quality of public education is everywhere in this country. The banana-republic levels of wealth and income inequality that have grown up over the last few decades, combined with the radical austerity measures in the public sector since the economic collapse (it’s been over 5 years now) have created a desperate situation for working class families and public school districts.
Parents recognize the rapid decline of schools under insane budget pressure and do whatever they can to send their kids to get a better (not to mention safer) education. In response, school districts realize there are some undocumented imm… oh sorry I got confused… they realize there are out-of-zone students and proceed to root them out. School districts in New Jersey are offering hundreds of dollars in bounties for turning in these hardened criminal students. There are even companies like liarscatchers.com that provide investigative services to districts to bust the underground education railroad. The heartbreaking image below is on the front page of verifyresidence.com, a company apparently asking for a visit from Anonymous:
Districts are expelling students at astonishing rates. 81 students were dropped late last year in a wealthy Chicago suburb. In 2010, 30 teens were given the boot in Palo Alto, CA (near Stanford University), and liberal bastion San Francisco uncovered 200 of these morally bankrupt knowledge burglars, and the sanctuary city is offering ‘amnesty’ to those that come forward and agree to go back to… well… Oakland.
And they’re asking for your help. A Google search for ‘district residency tip line’ returns a dizzying list of districts with phone numbers you can call anonymously to rat out the unwashed children smelling up the classrooms in the part of town you had the foresight to be rich enough to live in.
What’s infuriating about most of the articles about this issue is they always list the incredible ‘cost’ to districts for ‘services’ rendered to the refugee students. Well what about the cost to society for all these f@&ing education cuts? What about the cost to the kids and families who are stuck in failing schools?
This is just an example of the way the system divides us, by creating disdain among middle income working class people for lower income and poor working class people, and physically separating us so we don’t band together to fight the real enemies, the ones not willing to pay for the social infrastructure that supports their outrageous wealth, and the politicians in both parties that serve them. When we try to get around the unreasonable barriers placed in front of us, they lock us out or lock us up.
Like Tanya McDowell said in her own defense, “You shouldn’t be arrested for stealing a free education. It’s just wrong.”
Update 03/08/13: Tanya pleaded guilty and was sentenced Wednesday.
If you want to fight back, want to know why all our struggles are connected, or would just like to learn more about my politics, check out the International Socialist Organization at socialistworker.org
I went into the gas station to grab my favorite tea, but got Snapple instead since mine wasn’t there. For some reason I felt I couldn’t ignore the window washer as per usual, so I gave him some money on the way back to my car. Then, which I’d never done before, I asked him his name. He said his name is Greg. I said something like ‘take care of yourself’ and as I started to walk away he asked me mine, and offered to shake my hand. “Sorry,” said Greg. “My hand’s a bit swollen — I took a tumble on my bike earlier.” I told him my name, shook his hand — very carefully — wished him well, and got back in my car to drive home.
Judge Weber’s description of the prosecution’s conduct as “shocking,” and the following account from one of the Equality 9, reveal that the prosecution was clearly operating with prejudice, and was thoroughly startled when they were called on it. After the last gay juror was dismissed, the defense made a “Wheeler/Batson” motion, forcing the prosecution to produce a reason for the dismissal. The judge called counsel into chambers, where she asked the prosecuting attorney for an explanation. All he came up with was that the juror had previously been on two juries that both reached acquittal. The judge understandably considered that a hollow excuse, and it was only on Wednesday that Assistant City Attorney Dan Rawlins started talking about the the juror’s participation in a gay pride or AIDS march (which could hardly be called a protest) years ago. The judge wouldn’t accept this newly-fabricated reason, and appeared visibly angry. 
The City Attorney’s office has also been under pressure to drop the charges for simply wasting time and taxpayer dollars. The judge said that she had “never had so many jurors express concern about why a prosecutor’s office would move forward and spend time and money on a case of this nature.” And in a previous hearing she warned that “this prosecution will cost the taxpayers of this community thousands and thousands of dollars.” Goldsmith has been trying to lay the blame on the Equality 9 themselves, arguing that three of the nine had accepted plea deals and that the remaining six could save the city money by accepting their generous plea offer. But if the city really believes they have done something wrong and that they can win in court (with an unbiased jury), why offer the plea? More importantly, why should innocent people make it easier for the government to prosecute them? 
In 2010, 
This is just an example of the way the system divides us, by creating disdain among middle income working class people for lower income and poor working class people, and physically separating us so we don’t band together to fight the real enemies, the ones not willing to pay for the social infrastructure that supports their outrageous wealth, and the politicians in both parties that serve them. When we try to get around the unreasonable barriers placed in front of us, they lock us out or lock us up.