Bitch, Ph.D. has some relevant commentary on the "guest worker" part of this debacle. Best bit:
"Immigration, legal or not, is going to happen. Because if you are faced with a choice between feeding your child, teaching it to read, or breaking the law, you're going to break the law. Any decent parent would. The Abramoffs and the DeLays and the Bushes know this perfectly well. They bank on it to put money in their own pockets. That's what this "guest worker" program is all about, what the Marianas sweatshops are all about: figuring out ways to make desperately poor people into profitable commodities--which means keeping them desperately poor. The Abramaoff lobbying scandals, the bribery and corruption scandals that connect Abramoff to DeLay, the Texas redistricting bullshit, the forced abortions in the Marianas, and the National Guard being sent to guard the Texas/Mexico border aren't actually particularly complicated. You don't need to be an expert on fairness to immigrants, or global free trade, or protecting life, or protecting U.S. borders, or any of that high political rhetoric and its popular jingoistic simplification.
"All you need to do is pay attention to what women and kids all over the world actually need, and to who, or what, is keeping them from getting it."
Ack! Yes, the Voting Rights Act was in 1965, the Civil Rights Act in 64. What Fragano Legister said.
Don't tell my sweetie the history guy that I got the dates wrong or he *will* come home with the 1000 books his mentor offered him.
CHip,
mr: 1964? What do you figure happened then? (The most common point I've seen for the start of democracy was 1916, when senators became directly elected.)
I would guess the Voting Rights Act.
Chuck,
I know that several years ago the Minneapolis school district tried to change high school scheduling to reflect the research you mention, and they were prevented-- by parents, who needed their high school kids to be getting off school early enough to pick up and watch their younger siblings. And also by students who wanted that time after school for sports and other activities, or who worked and needed the afternoon hours.
I certainly don't want to characterize your experience, but mine has been that public schools are caught between a whole web of imperatives and directions (and unfunded mandates, but we won't go there), and the school system serves and reflects a wide variety of needs, and objectionable practice is more often a result of trying to make a Swiss Army knife out of a toothpick than any malice on the part of educators.
Having recently moved to upstate NY from Mpls, I have faxed both my new Senators, Schumer and Clinton, and my Rep (Walsh, I know nothing about him but at least now I know his name). I'm pulling for you and am happy to do whatever else I can to help.
I recognize that this is an important issue, that emotions are running high, and that people are looking for the strongest appeal possible. At the same time, though, I did want to mention that as someone who *is* on disability & Medicare, it sucks not a little to keep reading what a burden I am. Just sayin'.
As I said, just let us know how else we can help.
Several years ago, Patricia Williams wrote an article for The Nation that is relevant to this conversation.
She recounted her experiences buying a house on the East Coast (Connecticut, maybe?). She's well-off, a Professor of Law at Columbia, and was buying in a wealthy neighborhood. She was also doing the whole transaction long-distance, from NYC.
She had a loan approved, was all set to close, and then got a call from the bank saying that they had to raise the interest rate on her loan. Why?
Well, she'd checked the 'Black' box on one of the forms she filled out during the homebuying process. And the fact of a person of color moving in to the neighborhood changed the hood's rating with the bank to a slightly more transitional one, so the house was a slightly less good risk. Williams wrote about the knotty material reality that, yes, the more people of color a neighborhood has, the more property values tend to fluctuate, and that she herself, by the very fact of the color of her skin, was now looking at a slightly-less-good investment than she had been before she'd checked that box.
That is pretty much the textbook definition of institutional racism. Where is the individual who is behaving badly here? It's the 'objective' world of finance, determined by the agglomeration of many many individual decisions, packaged up into one implacable reality. The social patterns of racial discomfort are concretized into financial risk that are, after all, pretty damn important to people-- housing is a big investment.
And how will any of it get addressed if we can't talk about race? Tell people that they should take a hit on their property values? Mock them if they won't? It's **bigger** than that, way more diffuse, can't be accessed by a rhetorical 'Christian Science' approach.
Marilee, et al:
If you're still looking for Tubtrugs and don't want to plonk down 40 bucks (and the color thing isn't vital), the excellent Gardener's Supply Co carries them in 3 sizes from $14-$22:
Michael Berube weighs in with a brilliant suggestion:
First, you liberals and progressives and leftists and Communists have to stop vilifying “Christians.” It’s counterproductive and wrong. Christians are not responsible for George Bush’s election. Christians are not intolerant; Christians are not ignorant. Christians are actually filled with agape; they work among the poor and the downtrodden, they give up all hope of material gain in this world, they turn the other cheek when they are struck, and they always do unto others as they would have others do unto them.
So you liberals need to distinguish between Christians and CHRISTIANs.... Who needs a vow of poverty when you’re trying to establish a media network? Who needs agape when you’re counting down to the Apocalypse? No sir, there aren’t any of those Christians around here. Instead, we prefer to think of ourselves as
Creationists and
Homophobes for a
Righteous
Inquisition of the
Secular
Terrorists who
Infest
America
Now.
In the future, please get that straight and keep it straight. Lay off the Christians– they’re completely innocuous people. When you want to criticize the ascendant religious right, say “CHRISTIANs” or “Creationists and Homophobes” for short. We’ll know who you mean. And then we’ll come and get you.
"Your logo here" wrote the following:
The five stages of grief. Let's get this over with quickly.
Denial: We've still got those provisional ballots in Ohio to count. Absentee ballots all over the place. The electors could decide not to give their votes to Bush. It's not over yet.
Anger: FUCK YOU, America. FUCK. YOU. You like 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians because of your false war? 8000 wounded American soldiers and 1100 dead in Iraq because of imperial hubris and incompetent post-war planning not enough to quench your desire for misguided vengeance? Great, well you're gonna have a lot more blood on your hands. Don't want gay marriage? Fanfuckintastic. You got your way. A lot of good it's gonna do when you can't afford your prescription drugs, your unemployment benefits have run out, and your kid's fucking school is overcrowded. And don't think for a fucking second that "tort reform" is going to make a difference, because it won't. Global warming is real, motherfuckers, and you just sealed the deal. Balanced budget? Ha. And when the Bush Supreme Court makes abortion illegal again, and thousands of women are dying from unsafe back-alley abortions, that's on you, America. Thought the world just hated our government? Fuck that. The world hates you the people now, America, you stupid, weak, arrogant, ignorant sons of bitches. In thirty years, when people look back at what happened on November 2nd, 2004, and ask what people were thinking, all I'll have to say is, "Fuck you."
Bargaining: Please, America, think about what you've just done. We'll give you your tort reform and your partially privatized social security. We'll quit bitching about how the 2000 election was stolen. Take some school vouchers, give it another try, maybe it'll actually work this time around. More handguns for everyone. We'll lock away Michael Moore. Just please, please, please don't let Bush back in office for four more years.
Depression: Fuck. I mean, just, fuck. I can't take another four years of this. This is horrible. Disgusting. I just want to curl up in the fetal position and lie in the dark until it's over. Where's my tub of cake icing?
Acceptance: Bring it on, motherfuckers! Republicans control the House, the Senate, the White House, and Bush is gonna have three or four Supreme Court justices to appoint. Bring on the radical rightwing conservative agenda. No more blaming Clinton or the Democrats. It's on the Republicans' heads now. And on the bright side...umm...I'll get back to you on that one.
For some reason I have this sinking feeling that the October Surprise is going to take place Nov 2, and will consist of framing the Dems for some giant irregularity in some state's voting--say, Ohio's--thereby preempting any Dem legitimacy and throwing the election back to the Supreme Court again.
Extra-tinny tinfoil here.
Andy,
If I may, I think what Mike is asking back to you is: "perhaps that non-backup was a feature, not a bug."
People who write code so that election machines can steal elections untraceably are *using* computers, even in the sense you mean; they just have different goals.
Broadway Bronze-This dark and murky complex neutral is pulled from the streets of the concrete jungle.
Not the most felicitous choice of phrasing, if you consider the origins of dark and murky stuff that's really pulled from the streets of the urban jungle. Generally hoses are involved.
CHip:
I had ECT in 1994. I'd be happy to share my experience if you are interested: drop me a line.
Am I wrong, or does the "on their side" mug say "Just THAT you're on their side doesn't mean that they're on your side"?
Just checking.
I think this is a brilliant idea, and I also weigh in on the side of Bill's and Jordin's disemvowelled suggestions.
John,
I agree with you absolutely that advocacy on state and local levels is vital and more immediately effective. I am just adding that advocacy on a federal level is important too.
The paperwork from NCLB (not to mention all the ridiculous provisions) won't go away without advocacy to change it at Capitol Hill. The funding for the classroom facilities and staff necessary to address that Special Ed. paperwork load and high per-student cost won't get addressed either without work to change things at the federal level.
Educators gotta work all the angles. :)
John C. Bunnell:
The thing about saying that school is all about local governance is true...until you get to federal mandates and federal funding, which are a Big Deal. NCLB is only the latest; Special Education is another situation where people at the federal level imposed a raft of requirements and never paid for them.* The result is more pressure on the states, and the localities, to pay for and meet those requirements, which they have no choice but to do.
So, yeah, advocacy at the federal level does make sense in this school system, because federal decisions affect local options.
*-I am not bashing Special Ed here; I'm just saying it's never been even mostly funded by federal money, and that that imposes serious costs and limitations on state and local systems. The solution is of course to secure more funding at the federal level.
One more thing: I also think that we can tie both ends of the issue to the post-Victorian equation of childhood with 'innocence.' I think that it ends up fetishizing children and childhood, which probably feeds both the deep aversion to linking kids with sexuality and the impulse to abuse.
OK, really done now.
Lydia:
I think that what I’m trying to say is that the various types of abuse that people receive are different, but that ranking them as more or less horrible is unhelpful.
I agree absolutely. I am sorry in turn if I gave the impression that I was offended by what you'd said...I wrote what I did by way of adding to the conversation, and trying to flesh out, as it were, some of the things that you & CHip were saying in abstract terms by relating my experience. But as you mentioned earlier, the topic itself is so loaded that it's tough to write about without giving (or implying that you're taking) offense. So again, sorry if I came off that way.
As a society, we assume that a child who’s been sexually molested is more damaged than a child who’s been physically abused.
I have thought more about that, and I think one reason why this might be is that sex and sexuality is such a cultural minefield generally that it's probably difficult to assess what a healthy sexual norm is, much less how to get someone back on track who's been sideswiped off. And the inability to grok kids + sex probably makes any norm assessment/reorientation that much harder too, and possibly exposes any therapy to its own risk of being called inappropriate or abusive. So maybe folks assume the worst because it's culturally safest.
I don't want to hijack a thread that's clearly gone elsewhere, but you're welcome to email me if you want to discuss further. Or not. :) In any case, your posts are provocative in the good way and I want to thank you for your bravery in articulating thoughts that carry no small risk of backlash.
Lydia said: Sexual abuse has real potential as a way to screw with the victim’s head, precisely because other people view it with such horror.
CHip said: This sounds to me like cause and effect being swapped. From what I’ve read, a victim of abuse will run from the possibility of consensual sex regardless of what the partner knows of their history. The pain of their experience was immediate and present (it did not begin with -“What did you do to get yourself abused?”-); even a child so innocent as not to understand any of the pleasure that can be connected to sexuality will have a harder time dealing with pain inflicted during “You want this!” than with pain that is \supposed/ to hurt (e.g. punishment).
I say to Lydia:
For what little anecdotal evidence is worth, I am actually a pretty fair test case for your scenario. I was sexually abused by a neighbor over a period of years (age 4-6). Because the abuser was a neighbor, I didn't have any family issues clouding the abuse situation. Because my parents got extremely good advice from a counselor, when they found out they handled it very well and didn't make a big deal about it in my presence, ever. So the abuse was pretty unambiguous and the parental reaction was stellar (community reaction, less so, but much more about my family casting aspersions on a respected person than horror about a child being involved in sex).
And I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the consequences of that time will be with me forever, that it's affected my life in numerous ways, and that it really is different, I think, than emotional or physical abuse would have been (though there are of course components of both in sexual abuse). Not to say that you're saying that sexual abuse has no consequences--clearly, you're not. And since I was so young I maybe don't fit the older age you were intending to discuss. But I do want to say that for me the horror, and the damage to my head, was/is all about the experience itself, not the reactions to it.
If you haven't read Harmful to Minors, though, you might like it. It makes the same arguments you do about adolescent sexuality and society.
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|---|---|
| 2006 | 6 |
| 2005 | 2 |
| 2004 | 13 |
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