Whitelash in the White House

Posted on by Ann Withorn

Last Wednesday I was rude with a good friend, someone whom I always knew was not a Clinton supporter, nor a Democrat and is a radical critic of our electoral process. But when we spoke on the phone, I just could not listen to her say that she was “glad Hillary didn’t win, not that she supported Trump, but…..” At that point, I couldn’t listen, I cut our conversation off.

Now I feel bad about being so rigid and disrespectful. Here I what I wrote to apologize.

“I AM deeply frightened by Trump, and fearful that so many people will ignore his racist, misogynist, xenophobic demagoguery. I grew up with people like him and still have almost panic reactions to his style and message. I couldn’t talk on Wednesday, but four days after the election, I now understand why you can say that you are glad Clinton didn’t win. While I can’t quite go there, I do find myself feeling relieved that I don’t have to seem to defend her kind of white neoliberal we-know-betterism any more.

I felt much better last Wednesday night after marching around with more than a thousand young, black, brown and angry people in downtown Boston chanting “He’s not MY President”. No one was calling FOR Hillary. Just for something better.  

Now, as bad as Trump and the Republicans are, at least we can just organize against them–if they don’t arrest, silence or deport us first. We can now make clear demands and plans for more truly radical change that don’t have to be vetted by mainstream Democrats. We don’t have to seem to support the worst parts of Hillary, or even Obama, any more. That’s over”

Now, one week further on, I am now feeling both worse and better.

I feel worse because now that Trump is President-elect, the good citizenry is being admonished “not to judge him by what he said during the campaign, but to give him a chance.” Some are taking heart from his 90 minutes with Obama, or because he is talking about the parts of Obamacare he can live with. He said a few good words about Clinton, and taken the most anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant material off his website. Yet he has also appointed Steve Bannon of Breibart to be his Alt-Right Man in the White House. Others insist that his white working class supporters didn’t really agree with him, they just were in pain and trusted him as “a business man, who wouldn’t be trapped by all the political correctness.”

At best, Trump voters heard what he said, but think “he didn’t really mean it,” Pardon me, what part of voting FOR him to be President didn’t they hear? Maybe he will have to “face reality and realize he has to govern,” as one friend hopes.I try not to scream, “but Trump doesn’t want to govern, he wants to rule.” Unless checked, he will do all he can to derail hope for positive governing — for protecting, much less advancing social rights.         When Trump says, “You know what I mean,” we do, and it’s not good.

 I feel worse too because I can’t help but think about Hitler. About how he never won the popular vote. About how the German establishment thought they could control him, that he would have to come around. But he didn’t; he moved on and over them. He felt no obligations to respect traditional processes, except for the sake of temporary appearances. He gave permission to his followers to say and do whatever was disruptive, whatever was somehow justified as necessary, and never really condemned them until it served his political purposes. He moved on to build a “national community,” through his programs of “strength through joy.”

People who knew what was happening were afraid. Jews and non-Jewish socialists left if they could. Other non-Jews engaged in what they called “inner migration” trying to stay out of public life. It sort of worked for awhile, until in six years, it didn’t work at all.

I feel worse when I remember the brief hopes of post-Civil War Radical Reconstruction, hopes that so many black (and some white) people tried to realize until they were betrayed by growing Northern opposition and indifference in the face of murderous white violence. Finally their best efforts came to be scorned within most mainstream and popular history for almost a century. W.E.B.DuBois’ assessment forces itself back on us: “One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile…The unending tragedy of Reconstruction is the utter inability of the American mind to grasp its real significance, its national and world-wide implications”.

As I face the failure of Southern and other states even to adopt the simple Medicaid extension options offered by Obamacare, I must recall Dubois’ rueful observation that

 ‘The South, after the war, presented the greatest opportunity for a real national labor movement which the nation ever saw or is likely to see…Yet the labor movement, with but few exceptions, never realized the situation. It never had the intelligence or knowledge, as a whole, to see in black slavery and Reconstruction, the kernel and meaning of the labor movement in the United States. When white laborers were convinced that the degradation of Negro labor was more fundamental than the uplift of white labor, the end was in sight… Let that stand as Reconstruction’s epitaph.

Again, my Southern roots leave me looking at election-result maps and feeling again the ways that so many white people still don’t connect. The Confederacy has risen again, as my mother always believed it should.

I feel worse when my longtime co-author and forever brave comrade, Diane Dujon, cries on the phone because we have “gone back to the Fifties,” (as I note sadly “and it is the 1850’s).” She moans that she just “doesn’t know what to do.” And neither, really, do I.

It hurts when a Muslim friend reports from Pakistan:

“I checked with some of my Muslim friends in the US, they are terrified. Those with young kids are wondering how they can gather up the courage to send their children to school this morning. I haven’t spoken to my sister yet, haven’t had the heart to. She is a speech therapist in the Detroit school system and has been told by children as young as 5 that they think she is going to kill them because she wears a head scarf.”

As I watch Democracy Now and hear about all the incidences of abuse and attacks on Muslim neighborhoods and children, I wonder how to join with some kind of US Muslim protection efforts that I don’t even know how to find. I suggest to friend that we create “Women’s Watch Society” to oversee “every step he takes, every move he makes”. But it is not enough.

I do keep trying to feel better, because Donald Trump did not win the national popular vote. Most voters did not vote for him. Clinton won, in spite of herself. But she lost in our inadequate civic construct of an “electoral college,” mainly because of herself.

Now few seem to want to look backward, but rather to look forward. It’s too tiring, too much a return to acrimony. Only those who truly wanted Hillary herself seem to find comfort in looking back: What could have been done to tip enough votes back into a win? A bigger turnout? Fewer third party votes? Even more support from black and Latino people? These interesting questions seem strangely irrelevant already.

Looking forward to a Trump administration is hard, even for those who actually supported him and for Republicans who find themselves now accepting him. What does anybody on his side want that doesn’t ideologically contradict somebody else with an equally important claim on his Presidency? Most anything he proposes will actually take more public spending — more government. In the past war justified this. Maybe he will try it, but probably not right away.

I don’t really see The Donald immediately whipping up major domestic pogroms or an actual violent crusade against presumed “radical Islamic terrorists.” And I doubt that Trumpists can even cost out, much less enact, the whole set of reactionary changes to which they have already committed themselves.

It is up to leftist/progressives forces to try to deconstruct the weaknesses of Trump/Republican plans, and to keep exposing all his Alt-Right appointments. We must be prepared, whatever that means, to fight them back, specific issue by specific issue.

I hope the Trumpists fail and look as dangerous as they are. But I fear that, rather, the Big Lie will grow, and keep actual Trump supporters and wanna-be winners from noticing how much more is being robbed from all of us his phony “successful” businessman’s scam proceeds. I know that the white people (and they are almost all white, whether they deny that that matters or not) who voted for him, will pay dearly too. It is sad, but I cannot feel empathy. They know what they voted for, no pulling the wool over anybody’s eyes.

 Is it possible for things to be better for progressives? Can or should a multi-hued coalition of folks refuse to shore up a bankrupt Democratic Party, but instead seek to build a massive majority movement?  Maybe.

It is good that lots of folks are talking this way. It’s up to those of us who knew what was wrong with Hillary, and with mainstream neoliberal politics, to articulate something different. We certainly failed by letting Hillary try have “her turn” this year. Maybe we can still create a genuinely radical movement, if we don’t get stuck on who the next President will be — and white people move out of the limelight.

Veterans of ’60’s/’70’s and even ’80’s activism should now try “not to speak until spoken to” by the new base of a healthy movement. Those who will be most hurt by a triumphant Trump agenda must lead; white people should be there, we just must learn to follow with integrity.

I do believe that others will decide to ask us about what our experiences might mean for today. Good white activists whose time has come and is now passing, will be asked for our reactions, and maybe our advice, and surely for our support. We do have helpful things to say about what won’t work. But, even for this, we have to wait for the right time.

This is all ok with me. Since I hear few ideas that sound fresh or convincing from last century’s cohort, it does not seem too hard. Let’s let others ask us to react to their ideas and plans, and then give our response with respect and honor.

How about it?

 

ANN Withorn, radicalreentry.com

 

 

. .

WITHORN’S UPDATED OPEN OFFICE HOURS

Posted on by Ann Withorn

ANNOUNCING WITHORN’S UPDATED OPEN OFFICE HOURS

Another thing I miss about my office is the chance to be helpful to students, and other people who just stopped by to “talk something out” for a bit. Usually it was individual/organizational problems and strategies — how to understand and manage that difficult boss or coworker, how to think out intra- and inter-organizational dynamics and dilemmas. Sometimes it was whether to seek a new job, or which grad school to pursue, or how to get something organized.
I didn’t give advice as much as I listened to what people wanted to do, feared doing, or just needed to talk through with an empathetic, somewhat experienced person. Sometimes I suggested someone else to talk with, or named a possible resource that wasn’t obvious. I loved this role because it made me feel useful and allowed me to deepen connections with people beyond academic or political purposes.
Now I am trying to  continue to keep my virtual office door open. So please, if we have connected this way in the past, feel free to contact me via the radicalreentry@gmail.com address and/or my Facebook “messenger” account. I now check them  daily. Maybe we can just email each other, or arrange to talk on the phone, or even in person at my house or at some not too distant quiet cafe or park. If this works out, my plan is eventually to set up some kind of a virtual sign-up sheet, where I will be accessible at set times.
I’m sending this notice out to people I used to work with in such a way — former students, and colleagues, friends and neighbors mainly. But I’m sending it alongs to new connections, especially new FaceBook and Linked In friends. Usually, as before, I will just view it as part of my work, but now in my new “office.” But if anybody wants me to come talk with others, or visit their workplace/organization, I may be up for it. Let me know.

it might have to be more formal, like some kind of “consultant” role. And, it there were enough of this kind of request, I might need to charge some money, to cover the extra time and/or travel. But that would be negotiable.
Mainly I just want to be available and useful to folks. Please follow up if it makes sense, or with suggestions for how to make this work.

Thanks,
ANN

•

Trump and Whiteness November 11

Posted on by Ann Withorn

Trump and Whiteness

 

It’s been 72 hours since the Election from Hell stopped, but didn’t really end. I have the sad feeling that I am at the beginning of Faulkner’s past that did not end.. It is not even past.

I am prompted by Boston activist Harry Spence’s insightful Facebook post:

The amazing thing is that after Trump’s total defeat in the debates and the revelation of his predatory sexual behavior, support for him seemed to collapse. But in a few short weeks, he regained all of his earlier support and more, even after there was no longer any question about the kind of person he is. Three quarters of white men and over half of white women voted for him with full knowledge of all his qualities. What does that tell us?

A majority of those making less than $50,000 a year voted for Clinton. Trump’s support was strongest in the $50-250,000 population. This was not a revolt of those most victimized by globalization; it was a revolt of those who feared their status endangered—by a changing economy, by racial and gender diversity, by America’s changing place in the world. Angered and terrified by a rapidly changing world, they grabbed at the promise that they could go backward in time, and return to a time when they were certain of their relative status. “There is no rage like the rage of the privileged” and the fear of losing privileges that accrued to people due to their national, gender and racial identity overwhelmed their moral judgments of the candidate they selected.

When fear overwhelms moral judgment and constraints, we are in a dangerous time.

Yes Harry, and I thank you for saying this so well.

For me, it’s whiteness that is the most important among the people you identify: “those who feared their status endangered—by a changing economy, by racial and gender diversity, by America’s changing place in the world.”

It’s white people we have to look out for and, yes, disempower. If white men and women can’t get over themselves and accept that their America was never great, and that their White Privilege was neither real nor superior but rather is, and always was, a curse, then the only thing everyone else who disagrees can do is to move on and push white people, as such, to the margins.

The “British Empire” was powerful and arrogant and is now is a joke. White power is an anachronism, despite the Trump-induced reactionary death rattle.

There are still people living in Britain — they just don’t own and rule the waves, or the world.

There is no country to “take back,” only a better, more interesting multi-colored world to join, if it will accept us in spite of our historic crimes.

White people can admit this and join with the whole human race, or keep resisting it and keep looking more and more pathetic, like the Donald. Either way, it’s over.

As a white person I can feel immense relief.. Good riddance. I just hope it’s not too late for some of us to seek, and be granted, forgiveness for accepting the undeserved, unearned benefits of whiteness for far too long.

And we can only earn such forgiveness by fighting back against Trumpism within (but not leading) a full blown movement that is demanding a more just world.

***********************

More thoughts about the election emerged from my fevered brain as I obsessively wrote after election day. They may or may not make sense, but they were all I could manage in the fog of what felt like despair.  I don’t like despair.

November 9:

On the one hand, it is not so hard for me to process Hillary’s loss. She was an uninspiring candidate because she was so scripted and so mainstream neoliberal.  Despite being a woman, she WAS not the change we needed. Yet Hillary wasn’t evil. She could have governed, as well as Obama did, probably better, for better and for worse — despite her hawkishness and elitist We-know-betterism.”  She was qualified, sane and wasn’t defending whiteness nor xenophobia. Objectively we would all have been ok if she were elected, and still facing a struggle for more.

But, thoughts about Hillary mellowed as I became ever more aware of who Trump is and what he represents. He is not your usual capitalist, conservative Republican. He is dangerous to all of us and can’t be opposed in the usual ways.

Hillary did not lose because she is not a socialist nor an opponent of neoliberalism;  Trump won because of who is. When he says knowingly, “you know what I mean,” he is correct; he is truly a racist, misogynist, xenophobic bullying demagogue, No doubt about it. We do know what he means.

As a white Southerner,  I recognize and am frightened, up-close and personal, by the cruelty and deep reactionary forces he stands for. I don’t think any of us can know what he will do. That in itself is scary.

Even more unsettling, is that so many of my fellow citizens would actually go into a polling place and vote FOR him. David Duke supports him; his followers are the kinds of white people who have kept this country from EVER being great over its entire history. They have always been there, but seldom if ever so fully represented the whole nation. As Lincoln said, the “better angels of our nature” usually pushed such folks to the side, except in the whitest places–like the South I grew up in and in other places defined by racial entitlement and white separateness.

Sure, some white folks have real reasons to be frightened, to feel left behind, disrespected and undervalued. But they aren’t the only ones who are hurting — a social fact that they pointedly miss.

Black people have always in all circumstances been at greater risk, as have gay people, and most identifiable immigrants from anywhere. And in large part, their pain has been directly connected to the actions, structures and words of the very white people who feel so aggrieved by the personal misery that they blame on the “others” who dare to claim equality with them.

Trump claims (however falsely and manipulatively) to speak for such people. He proclaims that he alone can lead them “to take our country back.” Now he is fairly elected President with no limits of party or creed to contain him–that terrifies me. The rage and sense of righteous woundedness that the white people who chose him embody leaves me frozen

.I have seldom, if ever, been able to talk rationally with such folks, whether in my birth family, or on the bus, at social gatherings, or in the park.  Now it feels impossible.

  • At U.Mass. Boston, I could foster discussions in my role as professor, but now I’m not there;
  • With union comrades, with whom I worked in various settings, it was easier because we came together out of a sense that solidarity mattered, that class unity was primary;
  • I’m an atheist, but could sometimes find ways to connect with people in “interfaith” dialogue, out of some shared history of humanitarian religious values — “do unto others, as”, “god is love”, “judge not lest ye be judged” etc. etc.

But now I feel pretty isolated, safe only with those I know aren’t hateful, and fearful of being around anyone who could actually vote for Trump.

Nov. 10:

Last night I went to a spontaneous rally/march on Boston Common. I felt safe chanting “Trump’s not MY President” with hundreds of young “socialists” of all stripes and colors, in front of many, many cops, I didn’t know a soul, but I belonged there. It was at the exact same place where I was once hit by police (after chanting “fuck you, men in Blue,” at an anti-police violence rally in 1970). I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Last night we were all just glad to be together and outraged that this white man, this rich charlatan, could have won–elected President by the most dangerous elements in America.  We weren’t them. We all had at least one thing that upset us most, that brought us to yell louder–his anti-immigrant threats, his violence, his racism, or his attacks on women and anti-abortion rights. But we were all there together, angry, and unafraid, and part of a real “movement” based on shared solidarity, and knowing that “love trumps hate.”

It was the right place to be, not at an endless meeting focused on strategic plans, by-laws, and position papers. There is always time for that.

 

 

 

 

It’s not just Boston (Vote ‘no’ on Question 2 – The Boston Globe)

Posted on by Ann Withorn

The article below was written by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and was printed in the Boston Globe as an argument for VOTE NO on Expanding the number of Charter Schools in MA —         Chttps://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/18/vote-question/G9mDK1u7xe8TG4PNlN1QbK/story.html

“By Martin J. Walsh OCTOBER 18, 2016
AS A FOUNDING board member of the Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester, I’m a longtime supporter of Boston’s charter schools. Last year, as mayor, I proposed state legislation to raise the cap on charter school growth while also giving charter schools access to state building funds for the first time.

It may surprise some, then, that I am voting “no” on ballot Question 2 — and urging everyone in the Commonwealth to do the same.

My reasons are clear. Question 2 does not just raise the cap. Over time, it would radically destabilize school governance in Massachusetts — not in any planned way, but by super-sizing an already broken funding system to a scale that would have a disastrous impact on students, their schools, and the cities and towns that fund them.

This impact would hit Boston especially hard. Twenty-five percent of statewide charter school seats, and 36 percent of the seats added since 2011, are in Boston. Each year, the city sends charter schools a large and growing portion of its state education aid to fund them. This funding system is unsustainable at current levels and would be catastrophic at the scale proposed by the ballot question.
For one thing, state reimbursements to cover the district’s transitional costs have been underfunded by $48 million over the last three fiscal years, a shortfall projected to grow into the hundreds of millions if the ballot question passes.

On charter schools, a new partisan divide
With just weeks to go before voters consider a plan to expand charter schools in the state, Democrats have swung against the question in large numbers.

In addition, our charter school assessment is based on a raw per-student average that does not adequately account for differing student needs and the costs of meeting them. This system punishes Boston Public Schools for its commitments to inclusive classrooms and sheltered English immersion, as well as everything from vocational education to social and emotional learning.

If those factors don’t tilt the playing field enough, there’s a kicker. Because our charter school assessment is based largely on the district’s spending, the more high-needs students are concentrated in district schools — and the more we have to compensate for withheld reimbursements — the higher our charter payments grow. Currently, our charter school assessment is 5 percent of the city’s entire budget. Under the ballot proposal, it would grow to almost 20 percent in just over a decade. It’s a looming death spiral for our district budget, aimed squarely at the most vulnerable children in our city. It’s not just unsustainable, it’s unconscionable.

I have heard it argued that this kind of financial pressure is needed to force Boston and other districts into making long-overdue reforms. In fact, Superintendent Tommy Chang has advanced an ambitious and thoughtful change agenda. We are completing a long-term financial plan to focus our spending more effectively, efficiently, and equitably on classrooms. We are using an equity-and-data lens to make decisions about our facilities footprint and grade configurations. We are reducing transportation costs. We have increased school autonomy and modernized hiring practices, and petitioned the state for even more flexibility in these areas. Instead of accelerating reforms, the ballot proposal would undermine our planning and replace steady progress with increasingly bitter budget, facilities, and labor disputes.

My final reason for opposing Question 2 is as someone who values and cares about our charter schools. Massachusetts is rightly proud of how our charters have transcended the unremarkable performance and shocking scandals that have beset charters in many other states. That success is built on 20 years of sound growth. I know from experience how much planning it takes to launch and grow a strong charter school. Since the first schools opened, in 1995, the Commonwealth has added an average of 1,762 charter students each year. The ballot question could more than quadruple that rate, with increases concentrated in Boston and other urban districts. This reckless growth would change our charter culture and greatly increase the likelihood of school failures that hurt kids and discredit the reform movement.

The fact is, Boston has the best charter schools and the best district schools of any major city in the nation — both with long waiting lists and fiercely proud school communities. The way to continue our progress and bring it to all students is not through wholesale upheaval that pits school against school and family against family. It is through a sustainable funding system and greater collaboration.

This ballot question is not a referendum on charter schools. It is a deeply misguided proposal that is fundamentally hostile to the progress of school improvement, the financial health of municipalities, and the principle of local control. I urge everyone to join me on Nov. 8 in voting “no” on Question 2. Then we can get to work — together — to improve all our schools.

My response is:

……This is how the “elite leadership classes” classes do it today. Remember R.D. Laing? It’s a classic “knot”.

They back down by switching positions in the face of defeat — and then they claim victory. They almost deny they were ever on the other side. In fact, they seem to say that actually, there never was another side because the side they are on at the moment is always the right side. Until it isn’t…Mayor Walsh was for the Olympics, then he wasn’t. Because he never really was. He was always just for Boston.
He is for charters, but now he’s against Question 2 because it will really hurt charters, even if it claims to be pro-charter???? What’s the sense here?

I had not worried about the Mayor as a neoliberal before, he didn’t seem that astute. But he obviously has some as his advisors, at least. And the problem is, we DO need to stop this ballot question… as with the Olympics, and Trump.
But talk about reclaiming the narrative with a fast switcheroo.

This helps clarify my unease about the latest simplistic electoral shift. We can now all be against Trump (not Republicans, just Trump) because he is a misogynist.
He is. That’s true. But what about his Islamophobia? Or his white supremacy? His xenophobia? His radical capitalism? His patriotism? And “Making America Great again” is the biggest lie we are not calling him out about.
I hope he will lose.
But I fear he will lose and the only thing that will be discredited is himself, and his male crudeness. Not his real message, not his cohort of Republican obstructionist enablers.
And Hillary will triumph as the “good girl” victim….Who has stood her ground as a woman, but not as any kind of Progressive.

Oh dear

Back to (Radical) Basics: Remembering What Matters, Again

Posted on by Ann Withorn

Back to (Radical) Basics: Remembering What Matters, Again

UPDATE October 16, 2016

Since February, I’ve pondered the value of this website/ blog. I’ve come to realize that its existence matters more to me than I initially thought it would. I think about what to post, worry about why I avoid posting, go from wanting people to comment to being fearful of feedback.

Mainly, I find myself waking late at night asking what I can say that won’t be obvious, too self-centered, or just confusing. Often I roll over and go back to listening to audiobooks about the Nazis, or slavery, or whatever is so big and so bad that it helps me stop obsessing about the last misinformed and mean-spirited NPR comments I heard from Trump supporter in Atlanta, or DC.

Still, I keep trying to write. I’ve edited my site, and added more people from Face Book and Linked In to a notification list. I’m telling more people about http://www.Radicalreentry.com, even if it feels pushy.

Why?
Because every time I listen to the news, or read something new, my original hope of engaging with people, as I did so naturally at U.Mass.Boston, wells back up. It’s still hard now not to have everyday contact with a wider community. So much seems to be going on with this crazy election, and in this confusing world. And so much of what is happening hurts so much. It seems so wrong. I know I have to be part of doing something about it. But it’s all so hard.

Just this month, I downloaded “Now,” to my home page. It’s an amazing song written by Canadian singer/songwriter Brandy Moore, who performed it at this Spring’s North American Basic Income Congress. She also has another song “Because I’m alive” that an equally powerful call for a basic income. Her words remind me of original purpose of this website, to “remind myself not to forget what really matters.” Check her out http://www.brandymoore.ca/music.

For me, right now, today, I want to remember five things:

1) History still matters. Getting the story straight still matters. More than ever I find myself wanting to be sure my facts are correct, my arguments are sound, that I’m not just off on another rant, no matter how justified. I have to stop worrying about sounding “boring.” I don’t get to be so contrarian any more, or say something outrageous just for effect. When Trump does his provocative routine, it’s no longer cool to laugh. I wish we could all turn our backs when he talks, shame him, be clear that he is hurting people with his words. He is cruel. Michelle Obama said it loud and clear, Trump’s words “demean us all.”

This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesn’t matter what party you belong to ― Democrat, Republican, independent ― no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.

And I know it’s a campaign, but this isn’t about politics. It’s about basic human

decency. It’s about right and wrong. And we simply cannot endure this, or expose our children to this any longer ― not for another minute, and let alone for four years. Now is the time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough. This has got to stop right now.
Because consider this: If all of this is painful to us as grown women, what do you think this is doing to our children? What message are our little girls hearing about who they should look like, how they should act? What lessons are they learning about their value as professionals, as human beings, about their dreams and aspirations? And how is this affecting men and boys in this country? Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this. And I know that my family is not unusual. And to dismiss this as everyday locker-room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/watch-michelle-obama-donald- trump_us_57ffc2b9e4b05eff5582381a

2) NOW is the time to talk about poverty — not just about the plight of the middle class, not only income inequality, not just about insecure jobs going away — but about why poverty is still tolerated, how poverty is still simply wrong, unacceptable and not subject to strategic planning.

Our governor feels “forced” to cut 420,000 state jobs, but not to demand tax

increases. People are protesting, unions are speaking out.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/10/14/state-employee- layoffs-could-coming massachusetts/DsObNLkrZ7LEG3tbZ0XixL/amp.html?client=safari

Harvard’s William Julius Wilson just got a multi-million grant to study urban poverty in Massachusetts, yet again. People are protesting. How can someone like Wilson look at himself in the mirror and take that money for his Center and his graduate students, in part to establish his “place at the center of the current

policy discussion.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/10/13/harvard-think-tank-gets-millions-study- poverty-but-will-learn-anything-new/xVNaXDBC7xaP4hjRBFTegO/story.html

We all have to be focused about this, or we will be back to the newest version of neoliberal global gobble-de-gook. We don’t need to “study poverty no more”; we need to get more money directly to people so they won’t have to wait for bosses, or spouses, or gods, to provide economic security. That will take organizing, led by poor people themselves, and a meaningful Basic Income, plus other social necessities like health care for all, excellent public schools, and accessible housing, clean water and air.

3) NOW is the time to defend the public, the social contract, and to expect responsibility from “government,” with all it’s flaws. When a hurricane hits, when bridges fall down, when underfunded schools “fail”, the answer is more public funding, from more progressive taxing of ourselves. Not more private investment, not more Crowd Sourcing, or another “public-private partnership”.

Today when I hear even my friends casually complain about inadequate, poorly organized public services, or even “corrupt” politicians and public

servants, I interrupt. I say that we need those programs; we must demand that they are better, not privatize more, not give up on our few legitimate claims to give ourselves what we need. Who else can we make demands of, Wells Fargo? Wikileaks? Social Media? Where else do we still have any social rights, weak as they may seem?

4) NOW is the time to talk about what it means that the proletariat is evolving into a precariat. Guy Standing writes convincingly that the Precariat is the “New Dangerous Class,” (2012), and then goes to demand real changes in a “Precariat Charter” (2014). Especially in light of the popular shifts evidenced by Trump’s ascendance into legitimacy, the success of Brexit’s anti-immigrant logic, and the rise of a nationalist European Right, we must face the reality of a world where the existence of growing Precariat is undeniable. This emerging, disparate precariat grows out of a shrinking already poorly organized proletariat.

And that with an unprotected, fearful precariat it’s every man and woman, for themselves

It’s uncomfortable to move away from the reliable socialist premise that the self-aware proletariat, acting as a working class, is the primary engine for progressive change in history. Sure, class consciousness was never enough — there were always central complexities of race, gender and cultural dynamics at play. But it was central.

The long-clarifying mantra of “no war but the class war,” is more confusing than helpful when people still know that they “work,” but are not sure who their real bosses, not their managers, are. When they still need solidarity but aren’t sure with whom, and against whom?

More than ever, we need a broad-based, movement that allows folks to ponder such things. It must be Left and feminist, Earth-informed, multi-cultural and queer. Of course, people of color and people with deep-in-their-bones awareness of racism, poverty, and social disregard must lead it.

5) Naming what’s really “wrong” really matters — even it rings bad old bells from “Moral Majority,” religionist days. Even if it seems simplistic, or claiming a righteousness that is unknowable, we have to step up. Reverend Barber says, today’s “big issues are not about Left vs. Right, but right vs. Wrong.” Our movement has to be willing to say, loudly, the today’s world hurts too much, too unnecessarily. It’s just wrong and we know it even if we are unclear about what’s right, or even all the reasons why what’s wrong is wrong. We can’t take it any more. We have to do something. Together….

Whew…another sermon, if not a rant, after all. But I could not stop. Please comment, argue back, engage. I feel so alone.

Voting FOR Clinton in 2016

Posted on by Ann Withorn

Voting FOR Clinton in 2016
Ann Withorn http://www.radicalreentry.com

I understand why anyone who identifies as “progressive” is unhappy about voting for Hillary Clinton, or having her as President. I will be too. The day after her election I will wake up trying to argue against her oh- so-predictably unsatisfactory positions. BUT I won’t wake up more afraid of the United States of America than I have been in my adult life — as I will if Trump wins, which some polls still suggest he can.

We are a complex nation dedicated to making the capitalist economic and social order seem to work, no matter how much it unnecessarily and cruelly hurts most people in this country. Globally, the U.S. sometimes seems to support justice only when it also helps us, while setting hypocritical standards in other places that we neither meet nor seriously address at home.

But a Trump Presidency would be of a different order of magnitude and import.

Of course, his election would continue to endorse the capitalistic system everywhere. Worse, a Trump Presidency would promote a meaner, more unapologetically cruel capitalism than we have officially defended for more than a century. A Trump administration would try to institute even more xenophobic immigration policies. It would mean tolerating and giving “equal voice” to racist and misogynist words that have been publicly indefensible for 40 years. It would give Presidential power to make our already compromised federal judiciary and “justice system” more dangerous than since FDR.

If Trumps wins the majority of American votes for President, his election will give new legitimacy to the ugliest parts of this society, and tell those already at most risk here never to trust anyone not in their shoes. It will surely make it even scarier to be an immigrant of any status.

Of course, such a scenario will not be caused by one person’s vote for anyone else, nor by anyone not voting. Hillary will probably still win. But no matter how we vote, or where we live, either Clinton or Trump will be next President after November.

So we just have to vote, and to vote for Hillary. And then let the struggle continue.

Maybe Trump won’t do all I fear. I assume he can’t. But electoral approval of what he so openly stands for means taking a very wrong turn, not just more of the same.

We can’t risk it. We must use the one piece of individual civil power we still have to say “No” to Trump. Let us not be so precious and focused on our own correct criticisms, that we forget those people whom we know will be most hurt if Trump somehow rises to legitimacy. For one day, let’s just get over ourselves and our current political failure to create better options.

Let’s vote FOR Hillary. At the least, we will know that — within all the unsatisfactory choices of our own making — we did the one thing we could do to stand against what a Trump victory means.

Then let’s learn from it all and do way better sooner than the next time. Too many people will be hurt if Trump wins. It will be wrong. We know it, and we have to do what we can to stop it. Please.

PS A big reason why I urge this course is because one of the people I most respect, Rev William Barber of North Carolina, was willing to speak at the Democratic Convention. His “endorsement” of Clinton seemed similarly unenthusiastic. But I assume he did so as part of his mission to stress the implications of our choice in the midst of profoundly inadequate circumstances. I’m trying to do so too.

I recently sent an earlier version of this: “to friends who I know aren’t planning to vote for Clinton… because I want to make my case to you first, not really to change your minds but because I want you to understand why I must, for almost the first time, really disagree with you about something really serious. Please comment if I might seem to mischaracterize or denigrate a decision not to vote for Hillary. Please give me fairer words, because you are my comrades and I expect to go back to agreeing with you about almost everything the day after the election. So give me the editorial advice that will keep us together. But still need to speak to whomever might listen. ” I have tried to include their wise counsel in this version September 28

“The South, My South”

Posted on by Ann Withorn

“The South, My South”
Thoughts generated by Charlotte events, by Black Lives Matter, and by Reverend William Barber
Fall 2016.

I learned early and have never really stopped believing that white people who grow up in the South are less different from black people who grew up there than they are from both white and black people who grow up in the rest of the US.

Maybe I’m wrong in terms of how it works nationally for Black people. And surely, especially in the age of Trump, how this plays out is changing. But, in my experience, white and black southern people can never not notice race, never deny that their racial identity matters, for worse and for better.

Every white southern person still knows that she or he is white and that that makes a big difference. Some even consciously admit that they directly benefit from that whiteness; others feel that that their whiteness matters less than before, while still others imagine that they now suffer more from it due to political correctness, and Affirmative Action. But every southern white person recognizes that their white identity is a key “social fact” that determines much of who they are. That’s just how it is.

White people don’t talk about it among ourselves so much, for good reasons. For many of us, whether in all-white settings and in mixed race environments, our whiteness is not “brought up”, but it is always there. For white people who are immigrants, and/or new to the South, it is different. And of course, southern black people are always aware, for basic, life-protecting reasons.

Black Southerners know even more intensely that being black is critical for them. And that exploring what it means in their individual case, and for their family and community, is essential, even if they, as a friend once declared, are “…sometimes tired of being Black. Of course I’m proud now, and aware now of all the complexities. But still it gets tiring. Not just the “two-ness” Dubois talked about, but just the day-to-day awareness of it all.”

Sometimes I think that this has changed a lot since I left the South almost fifty years ago, but then I look at voting patterns, and social/surveys of political attitudes and I don’t see it. I speak with my sister, now in North Carolina, and it still seems that race matters there in different ways than it does here. A white friend’s daughter who lived in Atlanta for two years before moving back to Massachusetts, feels it.

So when I read news from Charlotte, Charleston, New Orleans and Florida, I know exactly why “Black Lives Matter” is still a more radical statement in the South than it is elsewhere. Just maybe not as different as I once would have thought.

Here when white people object to the phrase it is mostly because they want to assert that “ALL lives Matter.” In the South I fear that it is still true that for many white people, the underlying objection stems from an almost-conscious understanding that somehow

“White Lives Matter, and so do Black Lives.” But the voice is a white voice. The first perspective is White. The legitimate speaker about whose lives matter is, first and foremost, a white voice, not a black voice.

It all makes me listen with awe to Reverend William Barber, whose North Carolina based “Moral Mondays Movement” is so inspiring. He and the work he is doing around the US gives me hope. And his September 23 NYTimes Op-Ed statement about the Charlotte situation was so on target. See what you think:

” Why We Are Protesting in Charlotte
By WILLIAM BARBER ISEPT. 23, 2016 Charlotte, N.C.

Since a police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday afternoon, the ensuing protests have dominated national news. Provocateurs who attacked police officers and looted stores made headlines. Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency, and the National Guard joined police officers in riot gear, making the Queen City look like a war zone.

Speaking on the campaign trail in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Donald J. Trump offered a grave assessment: “Our country looks bad to the world, especially when we are supposed to be the world’s leader. How can we lead when we can’t even control our own cities?” Mr. Trump seems to want Americans to believe, as Representative Robert Pittenger, a Republican whose district includes areas in Charlotte, told the BBC, that black protesters in the city “hate white people because white people are successful and they’re not.”

But Charlotte’s protests are not black people versus white people. They are not black people versus the police. The protesters are black, white and brown people, crying out against police brutality and systemic violence. If we can see them through the tear gas, they show us a way forward to peace with justice.

On Thursday, I joined 50 Charlotte-area clergy members who were on the streets this week. Yes, a few dozen provocateurs did damage property and throw objects at the police, after being provoked by the officers’ tear gas, rubber bullets and military-style maneuvers. But as we saw, thousands more have peacefully demonstrated against the institutional violence in their communities.

That systemic violence, which rarely makes headlines, creates the daily traumatic stress that puts our communities on edge, affecting both those of us who live

there and outside observers who often denounce “black-on-black” crime. We cannot have a grown-up conversation about race in America until we acknowledge the violent conditions engendered by government policy and police practice.

Anyone who is concerned about violence in Charlotte should note that no one declared a state of emergency when the city’s schools were resegregated, creating a school-to-prison pipeline for thousands of poor African-American children. Few voiced outrage over the damage caused when half a million North Carolinians were denied health insurance because the Legislature refused to expand Medicaid. When Charlotte’s poor black neighborhoods were afflicted with disproportionate law enforcement during the war on drugs, condemning a whole generation to bad credit and a lack of job opportunities, our elected representatives didn’t call it violence. When immigration officers raid homes and snatch undocumented children from bus stops, they don’t call it violence. But all of these policies and practices do violence to the lives of thousands of Charlotte residents.
As a pastor and an organizer, I do not condone violent protest. But I must join the Charlotte demonstrators in condemning the systemic violence that threatened Mr. Scott’s body long before an officer decided to use lethal force against him. And I must condemn the militarization of Charlotte by the authorities who do not want to address the fundamental concerns of protesters. For black lives to matter in encounters with the police, they must also matter in public policy.

The North Carolina N.A.A.C.P. has called for full transparency in the Scott case, including a Justice Department investigation. There are still many unanswered questions, which is why we demand that the governor release video from body cameras recording the shooting. And we want accountability for officers who did not have their body cameras on when they confronted Mr. Scott while he was waiting for his son to get off the school bus.

Our protests are about more than the Scott case. Every child on that bus — every person in Mr. Scott’s neighborhood — is subject to systemic violence every day, violence that will only increase if Mr. Trump and others continue to exploit the specter of violent protests for political gain.

We have seen this before. After the civil rights movement pushed this nation to face its institutionalized racism, we made significant efforts to address inequality through the war on poverty. We did not lose that war because we lacked resources or met insurmountable obstacles. We lost it because Richard M. Nixon’s “Southern strategy” played on white fears about black power by promising to “restore order” without addressing the root causes of unrest.

In the Scriptures, the prophet Jeremiah denounces false prophets for crying “peace, peace when there is no peace.” We cannot condemn the violence of a small minority of protesters without also condemning the overwhelming violence that millions suffer every day.

Instead, let’s look again at the vast, diverse majority of the protesters. This is what democracy looks like. We cannot let politicians use the protests as an excuse to back reactionary “law and order” measures. Instead, we must march and vote together for policies that will lift up the whole and ensure the justice that makes true peace possible.”

 

William Barber II, president of the North Carolina N.A.A.C.P., is a founder of the “Moral Monday” movement and the author of “The Third Reconstruction.”

The Harvest is Past

Posted on by Ann Withorn

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved”
So lamented Jeremiah.

I understand. And it is now Fall, here.
This blog has come into being slowly, because I remain unsure of what I want to do with it, much less how to present it with ease. I still know that I want to communicate and share ideas with others beyond my known circle. Facebook does not work for me as a means for this, although
that is supposed to be its purpose. But no matter how hard I try, its form does not satisfy. It seems random, without form or direction. Somehow I want more control in creating a context for what I say, and what sayings I pass on, where conversations lead.
But time is passing, and my website and my blog have not saved me. Both are, in today’s parlance, “underutilized.”
These days, before rising I read e-mails and forward content to people in my contact list–often with a short subject line about what I value, or what’s wrong, or absurd, about them. The resulting e-conversations way stay in my mailboxes for a long time.
Of course I miss teaching, with its scheduled topics and soon-familiar community of learners. My office provided this in a even less structured, but satisfying way. But now CPCS is gone.
That harvest is also past.
So I’m starting again. Below I post something I recently wrote for the twentieth anniversary of Welfare Reform (remember its name is “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act”? ) for Boston’s Poor People United Fund, alongside pieces by James Jennings and Georgia Mattison. Next I am posting excerpts from some of the emails relating to the election and poverty that I’ve been sharing,
I hope the this will bring me back into the conversations and actions that matter most today.

Please comment

Keeping on Keeping On Twenty Years after Welfare Reform

Ann Withorn http://www.radicalreentry.com
Throughout the 1990’s, most anti-poverty and welfare rights activists fought “welfare

reform,” hard. Professional advocates wrote position papers. Clergy, poverty lawyers, Head Start parents and labor leaders spoke out. We held forums, meetings, speak-outs and rallies. We testified at legislative hearings in Massachusetts and in Congress.

The energy was intense. And the messages stayed clear: “welfare reform would hurt poor women, and their children….It should not be passed: it was wrong.” We argued fiercely against new Reformers’ revised contentions that income benefits should not subsidize “workforce participation;” nor was education and training “cost effective.” Instead, the goal of Welfare Reformers was to make benefits harder and harder to get, to cut the rolls, and simply to impose time limits on any eligibility — 2 years (in Massachusetts) or 5 years federally. They argued that only their approach could end insidious “welfare seeking behaviors.” After all, if there was no meaningful welfare to seek, then the problem would be solved, right? Especially after the Feds turned it into over state block grants, with loose oversight.

Activists insisted instead that “all mothers worked”; that the circumstance facing poor women were complex and individualized. Income maintenance as provided under the Social Security Act, had become a Welfare Right. And, besides, we all knew that available jobs alone were unlikely to provide adequate wages or time to nurture children well.

Talking past each other, we asked what would happen during the next recession, while others asked how quickly we could cut welfare rolls. . We published endless Fact Sheets, proving that the welfare reform proposals were racist in intent, and effect — because poverty was so racialized — even though more white people would actually be hurt. We tried to get folks to see

that at some point in most lives, bad things happen: a worker could lose a job, a father would disappear; life could just become too hard for anyone to manage. Drink and drugs could make it all worse. And it might not be temporary. Children always needed so much. We thought most people would make the connections, if only we warned them often enough. But we were wrong. After 1996, we had to acknowledge how the depth of public fear of “dependence” was reinforced by the real stigma of living on welfare. Or how most working people needed to accept the slogan justifying Reform that “any job is a good job” — because it meant you are a “hardworking person who never asked for a handout or help from anybody.” We also missed the shallowness of the support for welfare among white non- poor liberals. They were tired. Once welfare reform was passed, with bi- partisan support, then “welfare as we knew it,” in Clinton’s infamous words “was ended.” Poof, gone. No more fussing. Conservatives mostly just expressed quiet, not gloating, relief. A lot of liberals, and social workers soon urged making the best of a bad situation, helping everyone find a job as soon as possible, or if that failed, to find ways to get a child, or even a parent, labeled “disabled” and therefore still qualified for something. Some concerned businessmen received incentives to get people “job ready,” and to initiate programs aimed at the now inevitable “transition from welfare to work” –regardless of what that work might mean for already demanding lives.

Too many non-poor activists warned too frightfully of immediate deathly results. Most poor people, especially Black and Latino people, knew instead that hard lives would be even harder, with fewer options, and less hope. And fewer people would notice, much less care.
The hard evidence” is still coming in, but it seems clear that more women simply wrote off public help as a viable option. They took bad jobs with little security, stayed with dangerous men or relied on families which had failed them in the past. More mothers gave up on that college degree or that hope for whatever had seemed possible before.

It didn’t happen overnight, but more and more people started to expect less, to work off the books more, thereby become less visible, less able to make demands.
Obama, sadly, didn’t really help. The 2008 Great Recession, yielded no calls even to rethink welfare reform, much less to reweave the safety net for all. For eight years he didn’t blame or demonize poor people, but chose not to take up poverty as his cause; he soon joined the Clintons in safer concern for the plight of the “middle class.”

So what now? I miss Kip’s indefatigable energy that led me to join her in getting arrested and jailed in protest of Massachusetts’ 1997 imposition of Time Limits. Today, Rev. William Barber’s “Moral Revival” inspires me to join a new Movement beyond electoral limitations. Barber offers the same hope that Kip did: that if we build a movement, not about Left vs. Right, but about Right vs. Wrong,” then we may be able “rediscover poverty as the central moral and political issue facing us all.”

So, “to keep on keeping on” today, twenty years after Welfare Deform, means that our only hope is still “not to mourn, but to organize.” But I also wonder more than I ever did: Can we? Will we? Who is the “we?” And How? For all our sakes, let’s keep talking.

For the Poor People’s United Fund of Boston September 2016

 

 

 

My Woman Problem

Posted on by Ann Withorn
Please folks, talk to me. Is this reasonable? Does anyone else feel this way? Help me clarify here. This Blog is now open for immediate comments, without my mediation.   Do it.  Also, below is another site that seems to contradict much of what I am saying here.  But if it is after the conventions, and Hillary is the nominee, I guess these thoughts will allow me to keep going.

My Woman Problem

I just read two fine books, Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South and Ella Baker: Community Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement. Both women inspire me and remind me of autobiographies of other radical women who do the same: Bertha Capen Reynolds, An Uncharted Journey, Gerda Lerner, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography, Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star, and Maya Angelou, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I admire strong, brave women wherever they are: — whether they are the “Mother Heroes” of welfare rights, women trade unionists, or other strong radical women activists around the world and through history. This is real, at the heart of who I am and hope to be.

Likewise, U.Mass.Boston women students from many backgrounds whom I worked with always inhabited a “judgment free zone” in my heart. They wanted to learn with me, a self identified white radical atheist socialist feminist troublemaker. It was enough for me to love them from the beginning. without denying or trading on any privileges. These undeniable social facts about me simply needed to be acknowledged, challenged and used collectively to support students’ learning and life goals.

But in my political work away from U.Mass I held back from many white women, especially middle class suburban Christian women, including mainstream white feminists. I tried, but didn’t give them much wiggle room to meet the unstated but rigorous standards of acceptability required to become eligible as “potential comrades” — a cohort I so proudly claimed to seek.

I was not so tough on white men. After all, what could I expect? If they tried to be good guys I was open to working with them, in spite of themselves. Sometimes it didn’t work, but then I never minded an open conflict.

But I was not interested in trying to do political work with well meaning, seemingly comfortable white women who hadn’t been victimized by abuse or violence or something else, or who weren’t angry about it if they had suffered. At best, they were in denial. I wasn’t rude but I wasn’t interested. With N.O.W. types, or social workers, or other helping professionals trying to do good, I was especially bored. I simply wrote them off.

In 1970’s feminist criticism-self-criticism sessions I had owned up to this problem. Later, women in other settings criticized me for it. One League of Women Voters member even said she was afraid of me. I said I was sorry, and tried harder not to let my disinterest show. But it remained.

After all, I got class and economic injustice. There is a ruling class who steal and rule with no constraints — it takes a movement of all to fight them. And I always try to name and fight white racism as the toxic “disease of the public mind” that has infected white people in the US, It has killed, harmed and disregarded people of color, thereby fatally undermining whatever exceptional “greatness” this country could ever claim. I could be forceful, funny, moving and even humble when opposing such things.

Of course, I knew how unfairly and disrespectfully this men’s world treats all women, not only the poor and dark skinned women with whom I sought solidarity. But somehow my feelings about feminism remained a guilty problematic. Was it because I never really felt the same uncomplicated commitment to the cause? Why did I support the Equal Rights Amendment but without the passion it deserved? I wanted women’s leadership but why was I not as forceful in demanding it as I was in fighting cutbacks? Or, especially, why didn’t I try harder to support women, as women, when they got power at U.Mass. or locally? How could this be?

The answer, I guess, once again comes back to the personal. In 1970, I went with a friend to an organizing meeting of Bread and Roses, the radical women’s collective which launched Socialist Feminism in Boston. I left impressed by the women, the movement and the language. But still, my first response was, “I guess I can be a feminist — so long as I don’t have to love my Mother.”

After years of therapy I thought I understood. But now, for all my feminist talk and writing, why do I still allow this justifiable fear of the one mean woman who so un-lovingly raised me to block relationships with so many individual feminists, and even to the feminist movement as whole? I too easily find fault with bourgeois white professional women colleagues who earnestly “try to make a difference.” I once wrote a review where I called Eleanor Roosevelt a “sheltered pickle.” I distrust their words and deeds in ways that I never hold back from white leftists or African American and other non-white activists.

I hid my disregard for mainstream feminists behind solid class and anti-racist arguments. After all, so many feminists were so white, so privileged, so clueless that it was easy to withhold full support. Didn’t it makes sense to avoid working with white, middle class, straight Christian feminists given how their unacknowledged investment in their own privilege deliberately marginalized the voices of women of color, poor and working class women, and lesbian/bisexual/transgender women? Besides, women in power do not necessarily further any women’s interests and fact can be instrumental to women’s subjugation

But I do know that’s not the whole story. Somehow I just keep finding it hard to fully engage, to see women who present themselves first as feminists to be natural allies.

I now recognize my attitudes as an understandable over-reaction to my own Southern Baptist Mommy Dearest, yet it hurts to watch myself holding back. Must I still believe that dressing up for a non-radical women’s fundraiser to nicely celebrate “women’s progress” means joining Mother’s team, becoming a “good girl”?

I don’t feel that about other mainstream events to promote Healthy Boston or Community Arts, for example . I pick and choose, rationally knowing that there are lots of reasons to join with decent people, even if they don’t agree with all my politics, and aren’t comfortable being radical. It’s ok

After all, what’s the harm in voting for Bernie, while contemplating actually supporting Hillary as the Democratic nominee exactly because she would be the first woman President? She is, of course, the archetypal flawed, white neoliberal. She’s so proud of herself, so sure she knows better.. She still defends welfare reform; she thinks America is great, but can be greater. And I know I will be not-so-secretly proud when she wipes the floor in a debate with the Donald.

There, I’ve said it. It worries me that I even think this way about Hillary and the whole mainstream feminist project. I don’t have to like her, but, somehow I’m not proud of myself anymore for putting her down because she and her proud feminist supporters just assume I will, because she will be the first woman President of this this messed up country of ours. Oh dear……

 

 

Being Scared is Not as Bad as Being Unaware

Posted on by Ann Withorn

 

Being Scared is Not as Scary as Being Unaware

March 12, 2016

I’m not usually scared. After all, what can somebody do to me that would be worse than growing up with a Mother who hated me just for being me? Except for a few miraculous teachers, I couldn’t expect much from anyone I knew. Instead I chose to love the abolitionists, and those others in history who stood up to the Nazis, and the white racists, and what Bob Coles called “the privileged ones.” I probably afflicted the comfortable with more passion than I was able to comfort the afflicted. Even though I tried.

I spent my life learning about, and exposing, what’s wrong with the world.   I tried to force others to see how bad things really were. I sought examples of other misfits who could be brave exactly because they never expected to be loved.

“The world is what it is,” I reasoned from my experience. “We can and must try to change it, but we can only do that when we face how bad things are, how cruel and unjust the world is, not when we fool ourselves.” I praised the power of social movements and admired them for serving the people.

I studied American racism, and European fascism, the US right, and all kinds of evil doers — in order never to be surprised by liars and dangerous people. I so hoped that another me would have exposed the Nazis and the Klu Klux Klan. I dreamed of organizing with the abolitionists, standing up to McCarthy and Nixon, and, at least, never to have denied what was wrong, even as others were busily pretending “everything happens for a reason.”

Sure, I could be fooled. I wanted so much to believe that my Gregory Peck handsome father really understood and loved me that I forgot the ways he hurt me: that wasn’t him, really. He was weakened by the alcohol, betrayed by bad bosses who fired him, or undermined by Mother’s lack of love for him. I was angry for him, not mad at him.

Only when I was 66, with both Mother and he dead, and with me retired from the job that had saved me, could I face that Daddy used me, damaged me in the name of love. It still hurts so much to face — to admit that I too could deny the bad things that happened to me — me, the Radical Truth Sayer. How could I have fooled myself so?

Since slowly coming to understand this new narrative, I have tried harder to be less hard on others when they avoid rather than confront hard things. I have sought to understand how people whose ideas and behaviors seem so wrong, or dumb, or clueless can be that way. I have struggled to be kinder, to forgive others, and myself, for being unable to cope with how bad things are, I’ve tried to understand more, to be less sure. On my good days it seems to be working.

But now there is the archetypal angry White male Donald Trump, with all his vainglorious, bullying, name calling meanness. He enjoys his own outrageousness, relishes making fun of everyone, and being politically un-correct about race, gender and “losers.” I know men like him far too well. A true Neo-Fascist, he brings out the worst in everyone around him, rousing others to build walls, to hate immigrants and Muslims, even to ask his followers to raise their right hands and pledge themselves to Donald Trump. The pictures are chilling

Donald Trump makes members of his crowds raise their right hands and swear to vote in the primary.   “Thank you. Now I know. Don’t forget you all raised your hands. You swore. Bad things happen if you don’t live up to what you just did,” Trump said before continuing with his speech.“Who likes me in this room?” Trump often asks.

Donald Trump cheers when his supporters rough up brave young Black, Latino and White people, journalists, and anyone else unafraid enough to openly challenge him. He proudly threatens those who oppose him. He truly scares me. I can’t hide behind my awareness of the Right, nor any historical comparisons to past demagogues. Trump is here in my world, right now.

I’m afraid, I’m very afraid. If he wins the nomination I hope I will be unafraid enough to attend his rallies, to incur his wrath, and to do my part to expose the hostility of his followers. That’s a pledge I will keep.

.