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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.

.

 

 

Basic Income on International Womens Day

Posted on by Ann Withorn

This was written by Liane Gale and me, and was published on March 8, 2006 in the Bien Newsletter.  But it was missing the quote from Emma Goldman we had originally led with

“Not by the ballot, but by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation, will woman be set free. Then will she be a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force ofdivine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.”

Thinking about Basic Income on International Women’s Day                                                 March 8, 2016 Guest Contributor Opinion, Opinions & reviews

By Liane Gale and Ann Withorn
, for the Basic Income Woman Action Group (BIWAG)
Since 1909, International Women’s Day has been a day for recognizing women’s economic, political and social achievements. Yet over the past century, March 8 Women’s Day celebrations have revealed tensions between feminists, socialists and anarchists about the meaning of women’s roles in society. Feminists saw full equality through equal participation in the polity as the major way women would gain power. Socialists argued that full inclusion of women as workers within a self- aware proletariat was the way for women to achieve solidarity, and therefore power. Anarchists envisioned women’s liberation as based on learning new ways of living and loving, so that a new way organizing society would become possible.

Today, we view the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) as a means to transcend such historic differences. BIG offers a way for women to achieve basic economic security outside of the labor market. It firmly denies that only certain activities done outside the home and community should be rewarded, much less be the chief source of one’s respect and social value in society. With a meaningful basic income as a secure base for living, women everywhere should be more able to live a life without fear, and of their own design.

If basic income could fundamentally change the lives and fates of women and girls, and with it the fate of humanity, then why is this not widely discussed in the community? One case in point is the appeal by Martha Beéry to the national media agency in Switzerland to invoke bias towards male views in a panel on basic income on national television in 2012 that only included men. The decision was in her favor, but the inclusion of women’s points of view in regards to basic income has been slow both in mainstream and social media. Despite this, recently we have seen a welcome surge of contributions about the economic and social realities of women, that often offer basic income as a solution to some of the disadvantages women face.

These analyses include calls to elevate the value of care work and other contributions to society (such as community work), which are underpaid or not paid at all, and as a result do not elicit much respect by a society which largely equates money- making abilities with importance and status. Organizations, such as the Care Revolution Netzwerk, that is active in German- speaking countries, Mothers at Home Matter from the UK, and initiators and supporters of the “Leap Manifesto: A Call For a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another” are all grassroots efforts to change the current narrative. With the Basic Income Woman Action Group (BIWAG), we strive to contribute to this international effort. To that end, we are facilitating national and international conference calls with interested members and maintain a BIWAG Facebook Group.

The program of the 15th Annual North American Basic Income Congress in Winnipeg, Canada (May 12-15) is especially attentive to women’s concerns and to enhancing women’s roles in the movement. More than half of the planning committee members are women. Dr. Felicia Kornbluh, professor of Gender Studies, writer, welfare rights advocate and member of the Vermont Commission on Women, will give a keynote on “Two, Three, Many Precariats: Basic Income and the Fight for Gender, Class and Disability Justice”. Two other keynotes will also be given by women. At least sixteen panel presentations and speakers will be directly addressing links between basic income and women. In addition, three BIWAG sponsored round tables will allow serious time for discussion of “Women’s Roles within the Basic Income Movement”, “Basic Income and the Care- Centered Economy”, and “Basic Income’s Role in Ending Violence Against Women.” A panel on the Color of Poverty and speakers from the Aboriginal Council of Winnipeg will also bring much immediacy to the event.

The 2016 theme of International Women’s Day includes the goals of ending all forms of discrimination and violence against all women and girls everywhere, and we believe that a basic income would be a firm step into the direction of a more humane world for all.

To learn more about BIWAG or to get involved, please join our Facebook group or contact us at withorn.ann@gmail.com or liane.gale@gmail.com.

 

Thinking about Basic Income on International Women’s Day

Radical ReEntry Enters the Blogosphere

Posted on by Ann Withorn

Dear readers, I urge you to explore some of the material published on my website before you jump into this blog, Doing so should give you a sense of who I am and where I’m coming from. I hope the stuff I have presented as “data” from my life as an educator, speaker, writer and activist engages you. Get to know me and my ideas a little first, then you can introduce yourself and we can talk. I look forward to it…..

What’s Going On?

I’ve long feared the American Rightwing, being acutely aware of how real, scary and cruel it can be.  It represents an unbroken stream of thought, speech and action extending from the “Slave Power” of John C Calhoun, through the violent illogic of post-Reconstruction “Redeemers,”  and into the political powerhouse of Dixiecrats transformed into Conservatives/Republicans who embody a tradition of home-grown fascism.  No joke.

Now a large subset of the polity, the Right has morphed into a cross-class, white people’s movement that undermines any original Constitutional promise to “promote the general welfare.”

It has pushed back even 1950’s-style commitments to public investment in infrastructure, schools, higher education, etc, etc. Eliciting memories of the same decade’s Red Scare, today’s Right demands exclusion: by walling off the border, denying opportunities, incarcerating more people of color, and punishing more immigrants, women, LGBTQ people who are just trying to live full lives. It is scary.

Continue reading Radical ReEntry Enters the Blogosphere