Latest Read: Gulf Music

Pinsky, Robert.  Gulf Music.  New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2007.

Robert Pinsky, previously the poet-laureate of the US, has written a grand collection of poems centered on the here and now.  These poems are reflections on contemporary American life.  The title reminds one immediately of Hurricane Katrina, which is contemplated specifically in the title poem, but it also reminds one of the war in Iraq - the Persian Gulf.  And as such, Pinsky covers both domestic and foreign policy, but also, he considers the more mundane and the more personal.  Altogether, although some poems stick out more than others, this collection is a somewhat of a snapshot of life of all sorts in America in the first decade of the third millennium Anno Domini.

I'm also partial to Pinsky's voice.  The way he connects stanzas such that they have disparate ideas but transition so fluidly.  For instance, in "Gulf Music" the poem, which recalls the earlier hurricanes of the Gulf area, but forces one to think about the more recent and uses a sing-song, rhythmic chanting to conjure up thoughts of Cajun culture and voodoo magic - the hurricanes seem to be part of a spiritual unity:

New Orleans style borrowing this and that, ah wail-ah-way la-la,

They probably got "714" from Joe Friday's badge number

On Dragnet.  Jack Webb chose the number in memory 

Of Babe Ruth's 714 home runs, the old record.

As living memory of the great hurricanes of the thirties

And the fifties dissolved, Civil Defense Forces 714

Also dissolved, washed away for well or ill - yet nothing

Ever entirely abandoned though generations forget, and ah

Well the partial forgetting embellishes everything all the more:

Alla-mallah, mi-Mizraim, try my tra-la, hotesy-totesy.

Another of my favorite poems is "Poem of Disconnected Parts," which strings together ideas that only obliquely refer to each other.  It begins:

At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.

They coined the motto Each one Teach one.

In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners

Address them always as "Profesor."

And continues from there.  Pinsky is clearly indicating/indicting the torture of prisoners under the Bush administration, but also raising questions about education.  Is it revolutionary or reactionary?  Well, it depends on the context.  For the ANC education was revolutionary.  For the powerful, education is a means of control.  Is it a matter of what is being studied?  Or is it a matter of the context in which things are studied?  As a member of the teaching establishment, I'd like to think the former.   The post-modern in me thinks there might be something to the latter.  Pinsky (incidently - also a member of the establishment, at BU) raises the question and it is one to grapple with.  It is to his credit and our benefit, that he raises that and many more in this enjoyable book.

The Problem with X

I've been reading about the Chicano movement and it occurs to me that cultural nationalism, while important and helpful in some respects, continues to distract.  At heart, I am an internationalist in my communistic leanings and as such, anti-nationalist of any sort.  Nationalism seems to distract and ultimately to become a rationale for maintaining capitalistic social structures within the nation.  

Ultimately, while nationalism can be a force for liberation, it also is a force for maintaining class-based oppression, especially within the nationalist group.  In college, it was a distinction between Risorgimento nationalism in 19th century Italy (a nationalism of liberation) and say, the fascism of Mussolini's brand (a nationalism of domination).  But, really, these are not distinct phenomena; they are two faces of the same coin.  Nationalism really is a distraction from true liberating revolution because it tends towards elitism and a weak critique of power structures.  Instead, the suggestion is that if only "we" had sovereignty, things would be better.  It is an appeal to clan rather than an appeal to humanity.

So, this is my problem with the Chicanos - many of the so-called revolutionaries who eventually became accepted into the bourgeoisie and lost the vitality of their argument.  It then, also, is a problem with the most popularized of cultural nationalists: Malcolm X.  And, ultimately, with a whole slew of totalitarian communist-nationalists like Stalin, or Mao.  Power, and ultimately wealth, continue to be allocated in unjust ways under nationalist systems and ideologies.

An Obama Critique

Ok, after all this gushing, perhaps a bit of perspective?  A more realistic approach?

Whatever it is, I think it needs to be prefaced by an acknowledgement that Obama was never, never claimed to be, the leftist-radical candidate.  He's essentially a Democrat, which means centrist.

Second preface: As much as people are upset with him for the following critiques, for the most part they are issues that really should be harder pressed by the American people.  As he said in the beginning: this isn't about him, it's about us.  He's going to (have to) govern more or less from the center.  Where that center is will determine what is feasible for him to do.  Some 90% of Americans want some kinda "single-payer" healthcare system, but do you think 90% of Americans have called up their Senator/Rep and told them that if we don't have single-payer in the next four months then their Senator/Rep should start looking for another line of employment?  Somehow I don't think so.

Okay, so what are my critiques (besides the larger affirmation of capitalistic means of production and social structuring which I can hardly fault him for as he's been pretty much up front about that since day 1 and is a non-starter in America these days, but yet, ironically, is at the root of many of the following critiques, even if most Americans don't recognize it as such).

In no particular order . . .

1) healthcare . . . we need single-payer, we need it now and it looks like we'll probably get enough "reform" that everybody can go home to their constituents, but not nearly enough to fix the fundamental problems.

2) Honduras.  It's not being played completely wrong, but I worry . . . the rhetoric doesn't seem forceful enough (though that's not really his thing)

3) "Terrorism" Detainees . . . it seems like political expediency is trumping justice here.  Not particularly surprising, but disappointing, and well, really a major moral failing.

Over all though, I still think he's worth supporting and on some level we need to support him because he's "our guy" at the moment.  He's not perfect, and we should tell him when he's not living up to our expectations, but we also need to remember that it isn't just about him.  It's also about us.  And we shouldn't mistake our own rhetoric and opinions for real organizing and action.  A lot of yelling and righteous indignation don't make change.

Obama's Alright by Me

Why does everybody (this goes particularly to the left) wanna criticize Obama?  I can understand it from the right (even if it's frustrating to hear the same old crap).  But Obama is doing a really good job - he just has certain calculations.  

For starters: he's the President of the United States.  As in: the whole enchilada.  He's not the President of the Democrats.  He's not the President of the Progressives.  He's not the President of the Single Payer Healthcare Advocates.  He's not the President of Black People (despite the scary shit you might hear out of the mouths of the neo-Nazis).  He's the President of the United States of America.  It's like everybody who thought his 2004 DNC speech was freakin' amazing just missed the whole point.

My point, anyway, is that he gets it, Bush did not.  That's what makes Obama good - at least in my eyes.  He's not a partisan, he listens to all sides, and makes the best decision.  You can tell that he's sensitive to Republican concerns - he takes them seriously, unlike GWBush who felt that he was the decider and that he had a mandate to do whatever he wanted.  He was the President of the Republican Party, Obama is the President of the US.

To all lefties out there - don't let the perfect get in the way of the good!

On the other hand, I wish he would be a bit more forceful towards those on the right.  One thing that he hasn't used (and as far as I can tell, nobody has since maybe Reagan), is the bully pulpit.  The good ol' technique of Theodore Roosevelt - if Congress isn't doing what you know the American people want done, you go directly to their constituents.  Why hasn't there been a direct and public call for citizens to call their representatives and tell them to get busy on healthcare reform (I think if he really wanted to put all of his political capital in one basket, he could even push single-payer through)?  Well, there has been a quiet organization happening through the same networks that got him elected, and perhaps he's wary of making too much noise and pissing people off.  On the other hand, he has to know that politics is and always will be a game of power and that if he doesn't assert his, somebody else will.  

In any case, we on the left need to criticize where it matters: we should be continuing the critique of the Republican ridiculousness.  RNC Chair Steele's attack on the Obama healthcare plan was just plain stupid.  He brought out the same, old, sorry excuses that they've been using for years - it's socialistic.  A bureaucrat is going to control your health, not a doctor.  It's too expensive.  Taxes are going to go up.  I suppose it just goes to show that the GOP is grasping at straws now that they're in the minority.  They must resort to obvious empty rhetoric, lies and scare tactics, as they have nothing cogent to bring to the table.

On a side note - am I just being cynical, or is it just like the 'publicans to run a woman for President (2012) and have a black RNC chair during a period where they are in the political hinterland.   Somehow, when the Dems drop the ball and the Reps are back in the White House, I just don't think the President is going to be all that different looking than the vast majority of the party: old, white and male.

What's the Plan?

What do we want?  What are we fighting for?  Are we even fighting?  Or are we merely criticizing?

It seems, somewhere in the last 30 years, we've lost our revolutionary traditions.  I'm tempted to point to the success of the Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Chicano, etc. movements at changing bourgeois culture.  The problem is that all of those organizations left behind and/or forgot about the working-classes.  Additionally, socially, we've fallen into some bad habits.

1st) The 60's movements' bourgeois rhetoric that emphasized the rights of the individual rather than collective rights (or used the a rhetoric of collective rights to win individual rights) has us today focusing on similar battles for justice instead of critiquing deeper, capitalistic injustice that runs across race, gender, ethnicity.  As long as we keep fighting for a piece of the pie we will never develop a praxis that rejects the pie altogether.

2nd) We have privileged voice, articulation and argumentation over straight-up organizing.  I think it has to do with the way that our education system has taught morals and/or the way that democracy is supposed to work.  As long as you are speaking out against injustice then people will see the righteousness of your communication and then join you.  Real organizing is door-to-door and face-to-face (see 3 below for another argument for why this isn't happening).  When was the last time somebody knocked on your door to talk to you about the revolution?  (Though I did have a couple of volunteers from the mayoral campaigns stop by . . .)  We don't know how to organize anymore - the success of SNCC and the UFW (to name merely two organizations) came from organizing communities door-to-door.

3rd) We don't really talk to people anymore.  I blame it on television and/or the internet and/or the DVD.  We've lost human connection and so we don't know how or we're too scared (or maybe I'm just talking about myself) to knock on doors and introduce ourselves.

4th) So what should we be fighting for?  Better wages, more (and better) opportunities, more local, community control.  How should we do it?  By organizing.  1st step personal goal: get involved in a pre-existing local neighborhood organization; maybe I'll meet my neighbors and learn some things about organizing . . .

A Good Teacher

I've had many conversations about this one, and despite being in a faculty meeting and being told that it is an inappropriate topic of conversation, it still interests me.  And I've never understood what makes teachers so scared of this question.  I mean, I get it - believe me, I get it: there are administrators out there that are incompetent, conniving, power-crazed, just plain crazy, etc., etc., etc.

But, on the other hand, good teaching is good teaching and I've always lived by the credo: come get my job.  I'm going to do the damnedest I can to teach the best way I know how and be the most professional I can be, and if I'm that bad, then if some nut-job goes after me, and nobody stands up and calls bullshit, no students, no colleagues, nobody . . . well, perhaps I didn't deserve to be in the classroom anyway.

So, that out of the way, what makes a good teacher?  Of course, most of my conversations on this topic have been with other teachers I consider to be outstanding, and given the respect that teachers get in this society, maybe this is all for nought, but the latest conversation made me think.  I, hardly surprisingly, had/have an opinion: what separates the good teachers from the mediocre/bad/ones that should go get another job: the ones that are always thinking about their practice and thinking about how to improve it.  A friend of mine put it better: adaptability - which covers a much broader range of skills.  I tend to think about how to improve after the fact - adaptability is about adjusting in the moment (not my strength - which maybe explains my frustrations and self-doubt).  Anyway, the overall point here is that good teachers don't tend to be static or stuck in their ways.

The MAT program at Duke U.'s mantra is "A.L.E.R.T.": "A Liberally Educated, Reflective Teacher".  (It's kinda amazing I still remember that after all these years, especially as it was first introduced to me on the, like, last day of classes when we were told that accreditation people would be popping by and if we didn't say anything else we should at least repeat the mantra.)  The point, of course, is to always be thinking about what you are doing so that you can make adjustments if things aren't working well, or could work better.  In that sense, good teachers are born, not made.  I'm not sure you can really teach that, which is why it is so hard to figure out who is a good teacher and who isn't until they get up in front of the class and teach a couple of years.

Power Corrupts and Blinds

Everybody knows that power corrupts.  It's become cliché.  But it also blinds - how else can the powerful proclaim that although power corrupts, they, themselves, have not been corrupted.  With power comes the sense that one is so powerful that one is incorruptible.  It's so easy to criticize others, and so difficult to recognize one's own fault, even when one looks.

I knew a man who had a position of power and actually verbalized his own understanding of the "power corrupts" cliché as meaning that his power corrupted the way that other people saw him.  That is, that people just didn't understand what he was doing or why he was doing it.  That his actions and intentions were pure, but the fact that he was doing them with power backing him, meant that people misperceived him.  Of course, in reality, he was corrupted and blinded to his corruption, for really that is the corruption - one always thinks that what one is doing is "right" or "justified" or at the very least "not wrong".  Otherwise, one wouldn't do it - human beings generally don't go out of their way to consciously do evil, or at least psychologically protect themselves by convincing themselves that they aren't evil, or that the ends justify the means.

The other day I met a lobbyist who refused to admit, despite persistent questions from an otherwise sympathetic audience, that lobbying was at minimum problematic; that there was something anti-democratic about people with lots of money hiring other people because of their contacts to use those contacts to push legislation.  I've met other lobbyists who at least admitted that it sucked but that it was the way the system worked.  This one, though, kept defending her job because she was promoting "good" legislation - her power had corrupted her and blinded her to the fact that she had an inordinate amount of power compared to, say, the average citizen, because of her contacts.

I know that in my own case I have used the power of being a teacher expeditiously, rather than cautiously, sometimes frankly, coercively.  I'm not particularly proud of this fact, more like disappointed in myself.  One can only try, I suppose, but one needs to at least acknowledge the fact that it's a difficult path and that occasionally one strays.

Latest Read: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Friere, Paulo.  Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  New York: Continuum Publishing, 1970.

This is a classic in progressive/radical education and I suppose I should feel ashamed that it's taken me this long to read it.  However, it's one of those things, like Das Kapital that I've read so much about, that I always sort of thought I knew what it was about, so I didn't need to read it.  Turns out, this time, I was right - and, I was disappointed.

Which isn't to say that the book isn't worth reading or isn't valid.  Only that after 10 years of practical experience, it made me wonder about the applicability of the theory to my classroom.  I suppose, my dissatisfaction is also a sign of how conservative I've become in my old(er) age.

Friere's thesis is that 1) education for the oppressed should be helpful to their revolution, and 2) the education should be student-centered; students should decide on the curriculum, fitting it to their needs.  As he puts it, "the distinction [is] between systematic education, which can only be changed by political power, and educational projects, which should be carried out with the oppressed in the process of organizing them."  I like this in theory: the pedagogy's focus is on revolutionary praxis on the outside (purpose) and on the inside (practice).  And Friere's really talking about adult education.  In fact, his own experience is with adult literacy programs in rural Latin America in the 1960s.

Does the same theory apply for high school students in 21st century urban America?  Here are the problems, as I see them: 1) teenagers, being teenagers, lack impulse control.  2) American teen-agers, brought up on American media, consumed by American consumer culture, are extraordinarily self-centered.  3) I'm sure this is revolutionary heresy but, I've come to believe that we need some sort of standard education - what you learn cannot just be what you are interested in, there has to be a (heavy) component of - this is what we, as a community, need to learn.  Education is a tool of socialization and I think this is a positive, not a negative, thing.  Or at least, can be.  It's not socialization, so much, that's the problem, it's the society that one is being socialized into that is either good or bad.  So, then, it's not about whether students should be "forced" to learn things, but rather, what things they are learning.

Class as the Root Problem

Ok - so, back in the day (God, I'm getting old, this has to have been over 10 years ago now) I tried to make the case that class issues (read: warfare) should be the main direction of leftist action moving forward.  The person I was talking to, shot me down and argued that class was only one mode of oppression, and that all modes of oppression should be equally targeted.  How can you prioritize?  I was won over intellectually, although in my heart of hearts, I always thought I was right, though couldn't really articulate it.  Here we try again. 

My thoughts lie in what I'll call the hierarchy of oppression in America today.  I want to situate this in space and time; there may be other times and places where this theory won't work.

The first hierarchy of oppression is based on the concept of the nation: who's in and who's out.  It is the most basic form of Othering - powerful folks will side with powerless folks against other powerful folks when there is a national threat.  This actually might be lessening somewhat, especially if you believe Hardt and Negri (see their book: Empire).  Anyways, I still it is useful and appropriate, and it is the most basic form of Othering.

The second most basic form is class.  Rich folks will side with other rich folks of whichever race or gender or whatever against poor folks.

Next is race.  Race, of course, is all sorts of wrapped up with class in the US, but I still think rich white folks see more in common with rich black folks than they do with poor white folks.  (Of course, if you look at it from the bottom up, it might not look the same, but I'll argue that we need to focus on the powerful, not the folks that are fighting each other at the bottom.)  That said, I think it is telling that blacks who make it into the bourgeoisie are often described as acting or being white.  This is a class-based attack couched in racial terms.

Gender and sexual orientation and all the rest of it comes afterward.  These are largely fights that take place within the context of a culture.  Nation, Class and Race all imply inter-cultural conflicts.

Ultimately, I think we need to focus as high up the hierarchy as possible.  I'd like to see an anti-national movement, and in part I think there is one developing in a pro-immigration sense.  But on the other hand, I think it is an awfully hard sell, and ultimately, I think citizenship is a valuable construct for fighting a lot of the other battles farther down the hierarchy.  Instead, I think we should be fighting the class war.  Everything else is a distraction that ultimately only reinforces the class-based system.  To the extent that the women's rights movement, or the civil rights movement or the gay rights movement have succeeded, it's all been about gaining access to the middle class, not about making fundamental changes in the economic structure that leaves millions of people oppressed.

Oppositional Culture

How does a culture of opposition develop?  According to James C. Scott (whose book Weapons of the Weak not only is a favorite, but is one that I will be reviewing in a few weeks) opposition culture develops out of the grievances that the oppressed express to each other.  But my take, anyway, is that a revolutionary oppositional culture needs to be directed at specific individuals that can then be said to violate a norm that is proposed by the revolutionary culture.

The problem is that the dominant, hegemonic culture defines the values and behaviors that earn power.  People without power have two choices for gaining power: adopt the values and behaviors that the hegemon teaches lead to power (it has been pointed out that drug dealers are good capitalists, for instance), or develop a new culture that may or may not change the power relationships that currently exist.  Scott also points out that so-called revolutionary movements created in the name of the peasants have often merely replaced the power elite with a new power elite, and sometimes (usually) even made things worse.  See Communism (big C), more or less.

One can hardly blame the oppressed for deciding that it makes more sense to dream of one day being powerful than to dream of one day ending powerlessness.  But, the revolutionary dreams differently, I suppose.  The question is whether or not there is a strong enough culture of opposition.  It seems like in America today, there are few people to blame specifically - there's Madoff, but he's behind bars, and is an isolated (yeah, right) case.  In Boston, I can't understand why more people aren't furious at Mayor Menino, and all I can think is that he's a good Democrat, so the citizens that associate with the Party think he's looking out for them.  And he says a lot of the right things, and even gets the city to do some good things for the citizens of Boston.  

The real movers and shakers in Boston, hell in the nation, are in the Fortune 500.  They are the ones that are creating the world we live in.  They are the ones that make millions while the rest of us, well, don't.  But we don't know who they are.  It's not like we can point to so-and-so and the policy decisions that s/he is responsible for and say: that person is oppressing us.  Our experience has become so bureaucratized - in our lived experience with government, with our employers - that we don't know who to blame anymore, except "the system".  Hard, really, to build a revolutionary culture in opposition to that - it's not concrete enough.  A person, an individual who you know and can see and ultimately judge based on the values of your revolutionary culture, that's what's needed.

On Class

So, the typical understanding of class is connected to economic, or social status.  That there are three classes: Upper, Middle, Working.  If you dig a little deeper, these are then divided into subclasses (Upper-working, Lower-middle, etc.).  Are these categorizations still useful?  Well, sort of.

First of all, the history of the development of the notion of class is tied more-or-less directly to the Industrial Era.  Pre-capitalist societies tended to be caste systems: aristocracy, kings, peasants.  With the rise of a true middle-class along with capitalism and industrialization, the rigid divisions began to fall away and classes developed.

But this was also a time when one understood class and associated with others based on class divisions.  Being working-class meant something in terms of identity, and that doesn't appear to be the case, at least not in the same way as it used to.  So, I wonder if class is a useful term anymore, at least in America.  There definitely is a sense of haves, have mores and have nots, but there isn't the same sense of identity.

So, then, as a revolutionary, what is one to do?  Should one (or the better question is, can one) encourage the development of a "working-class culture"?  How does one do that if people don't identify as working class?  Is there another identity structure that can be used to encourage the development of a revolutionary culture?