I am a misanthrope. I like the idea of humanity. It's just that humans keep letting me down. Team work is not my strong point. In fantasy land I'd be the self-reliant frontiersman of the American myth.
Tied in closely with that misanthropy is my cynicism. I want to hope for the best from folks, but I expect that the base, low, and ignoble usually prevail.
I detest haggling. I particularly detest haggling for haggling's sake. If the price is $10 for an item, I presume the seller wants $10 and ask myself if that's what I am willing to spend. I have little interest in making a pitch for $8, hoping to settle for $9. Heck, my first new car was a Saturn. No haggling. I made a half-hearted effort to at least get floor mats with the deal, to no avail. I liked that - the transaction was rather forthright, all in all.
Given my misanthropic, individualist, cynical, anti-haggling biases, it makes perfect sense that I work with labor unions and am a true believer in the labor movement, doesn't it? Well, I do. I can and do reconcile my seemingly inconsistent beliefs, but that's a whole other posting and then some. The anecdote may work better than the philosophical musing or exposition.
This past Saturday I had the chance to attend a breakfast event sponsored by the South Florida AFL-CIO that epitomized why I believe so wholeheartedly in organized labor.
Anyone who has spent any length of time in South Florida with eyes and ears open observing the surreality of this place knows that "melting pot" is as far from the truth as one can get.
Class conflict? We've got Fisher Island - I don't know that my yearly income gets me fare for the ferry there - and we've got Miami, among the poorest cities in the nation.
Color? Ask the folks of Overtown and Liberty City about opportunities for African-Americans here. I am painting with a bit of a broad brush here, but far too many folks of Cuban descent - themselves brown folks, not white, if you were to ask anyone from up north - have a strong anti-black racist streak. I pick on them a bit because they are the dominant group. The non-hispanic whites that run most of the rest of the country for the most part ran like hell for Broward and points farther north rather than live among folks who, while of a darker skin tone, merely wanted to live the American dream free from Castro's hateful regime.
And that ties into culture. Don't dare lump a Puerto Rican in with the Cubans or the Dominicans, and if you want to see fireworks on the cheap, call any one of them a Mexican. Among folks that I would have labeled "black" at one point in my life, I've learned that former Jamaicans, Haitians, and Mississippians are as varied as any bloc of individuals can be. Even your so-called white folks run the gamut from former New Yorkers who are Jewish to the Pentacostalist bubbas of the Panhandle to bemused former Midwesterners of the agnostic persuasion.
Color, class, culture, conflict - we've got them in abundance.
Unless you are at a South Florida AFL-CIO shindig. There in one room on a sunny and pleasant Saturday morning were bus drivers, longshoremen, teachers, UPS drivers, school system mechanics, firefighters - I could go on, but there were folks from all walks of life, from GEDs to PhDs and all points in between. Black, white, brown - folks of all colors. Men and women. Native born and newly-arrived. And all there for a common goal - to make South Florida a better place for working people and their families.
The labor movement here is the only community that I have witnessed firsthand that transcends those boundaries of color, class, and culture that so divide our everyday lives in South Florida. I come away from meetings like Saturday's seeing our diversity working in harmony for a change, and that misanthropy, that cynicism, that sense of isolation that comes from seeing one's self as an individual in isolation rather than in community, all recede a bit. Hope takes their place.
I prefer that feeling, frankly.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
At what price "cool"?
The other day I was biking home from work. I came to a red light. Three high school kids crossed the sidewalk in front of me. All three at some point in time all but gawked at me, and they kept looking back after they crossed the street. The look was clearly not one that I'd have received had I been in a Mercedes or a Maserati. No, it was more in the "does that dude on the bike come from Mars?" vein.
I feel pretty confident I know why. I was in full bike commuter regalia - rain jacket with vents open, bike helmet, front and tail lights a-blinking, panniers, right pant leg rolled up, the whole nine yards. In Holland this would make me normal, in Chicago not unusual, but here in Miami this is the functional equivalent of maybe growing a third eye in your forehead - something you just don't see everyday, if at all ...
Miami is hyper-America. Take the worst elements of shallow American consumer culture and boost them with some steroids. You've got an idea of Miami at its worst. (Disclaimer - I like living here. The positive stuff is for another day, another time, another blog entry.) In my neighborhood particularly, you see high-end conspicuous consumption. By having neither a Mercedes nor a SUV, never mind by being a one car family, my wife and I are the Coral Gables equivalent of the Beverly Hillbillies.
So, by being a sensible bike commuter, I pretty much epitomized the antithesis of what passes here for "cool."
But I have to ask, at what price comes being "cool" here, at least when it comes to whether and what one drives? We live within a stone's through of the Everglades and yet people drive SUVs to go six blocks to the 7-11 to get their sorry ass a Big Gulp. Humanity walked from Africa across the Bering Strait to Patagonia, and yet here in the most advanced society humanity has yet devised, most folks can't even envision a half mile walk to get a soda pop.
I have yet to figure out why in the world anyone in the Gables needs a Range Rover. Are there packs of rogue wallabies over by the golf course? And then there are Hummers. People here drive Hummers. Seriously, folks - do you expect to fend off IEDs on the way to Publix to get groceries? Do you fear the possibility that the Taliban of Dadeland Mall are going to seize your women folk and put them in a burqa?
Buying a vehicle that costs tens of thousands of dollars; that simply sits and occupies space 99% of its existence (ask yourself - what portion of a vehicle's existence 24/7/365 is spent with a person behind the wheel?); that costs hundreds of dollars a year to fuel up and insure; that destroys the very air we breath, the soil that feeds us, the water we drink; that requires the maintenance of an insanely expensive military state simply to secure its fuel; that indirectly, through that fuel, finances the world's most repressive states; that indirectly, through that fuel, finances the world's worst terrorists (as Bill Maher put it, when you drive alone, you drive with Osama ...); that gobbles up inordinate amounts of government resources to maintain roads that gobble up an insane amount of space; that is a menace to pedestrians and those who themselves don't drive; and that contributes to urban sprawl and a lack of human connections, is just not all that cool when you think about it.
And when I think of costs, when I think of the age of those kids and the lengths to which this imperial beast will go to protect "our" oil - how did it get under their sand anyway? - I wonder if their lives will be a future cost as well.
I'll settle for not being cool. It's healthier for my self, my sanity, my community, and my planet.
I feel pretty confident I know why. I was in full bike commuter regalia - rain jacket with vents open, bike helmet, front and tail lights a-blinking, panniers, right pant leg rolled up, the whole nine yards. In Holland this would make me normal, in Chicago not unusual, but here in Miami this is the functional equivalent of maybe growing a third eye in your forehead - something you just don't see everyday, if at all ...
Miami is hyper-America. Take the worst elements of shallow American consumer culture and boost them with some steroids. You've got an idea of Miami at its worst. (Disclaimer - I like living here. The positive stuff is for another day, another time, another blog entry.) In my neighborhood particularly, you see high-end conspicuous consumption. By having neither a Mercedes nor a SUV, never mind by being a one car family, my wife and I are the Coral Gables equivalent of the Beverly Hillbillies.
So, by being a sensible bike commuter, I pretty much epitomized the antithesis of what passes here for "cool."
But I have to ask, at what price comes being "cool" here, at least when it comes to whether and what one drives? We live within a stone's through of the Everglades and yet people drive SUVs to go six blocks to the 7-11 to get their sorry ass a Big Gulp. Humanity walked from Africa across the Bering Strait to Patagonia, and yet here in the most advanced society humanity has yet devised, most folks can't even envision a half mile walk to get a soda pop.
I have yet to figure out why in the world anyone in the Gables needs a Range Rover. Are there packs of rogue wallabies over by the golf course? And then there are Hummers. People here drive Hummers. Seriously, folks - do you expect to fend off IEDs on the way to Publix to get groceries? Do you fear the possibility that the Taliban of Dadeland Mall are going to seize your women folk and put them in a burqa?
Buying a vehicle that costs tens of thousands of dollars; that simply sits and occupies space 99% of its existence (ask yourself - what portion of a vehicle's existence 24/7/365 is spent with a person behind the wheel?); that costs hundreds of dollars a year to fuel up and insure; that destroys the very air we breath, the soil that feeds us, the water we drink; that requires the maintenance of an insanely expensive military state simply to secure its fuel; that indirectly, through that fuel, finances the world's most repressive states; that indirectly, through that fuel, finances the world's worst terrorists (as Bill Maher put it, when you drive alone, you drive with Osama ...); that gobbles up inordinate amounts of government resources to maintain roads that gobble up an insane amount of space; that is a menace to pedestrians and those who themselves don't drive; and that contributes to urban sprawl and a lack of human connections, is just not all that cool when you think about it.
And when I think of costs, when I think of the age of those kids and the lengths to which this imperial beast will go to protect "our" oil - how did it get under their sand anyway? - I wonder if their lives will be a future cost as well.
I'll settle for not being cool. It's healthier for my self, my sanity, my community, and my planet.
Monday, January 21, 2008
MLK
Many moons ago when I was a fairly new attorney I represented an African-American principal. I honestly do not recall the reason. If memory serves me correctly it was a dispute about work performance, something really petty. What I do recall was reviewing the principal's personnel record. He was a long-term employee. He had more than three decades of service in the school system. Or should I write "systems."
I was shocked when I reviewed his file. When hired he worked for the "negro" schools. The first four or five years of this man's career were spent in a state-sanctioned segregated school system. It floored me. I grew up in Ohio, not exactly a land of racial harmony, but throughout my primary and secondary education the schools I attended were twenty to thirty percent African-American or more. There was de facto segregation by neighborhood, but I grew up in the north - there were no colored- or white-only drinking fountains, bathrooms, waiting rooms, or such. The "South" was an alien world to me. That was the bad place where white people were mean and cruel to black folks. Not we Ohioans. Jim Crow was not a Buckeye ...
By the time I met that principal I'd lived in Virginia. I'd traveled in Kentucky. But as for "the South," well, I'd never really been there. Miami is not exactly the heart of Dixie.
That file made an impression on me. I'd not confronted such overt racial distinctions before, certainly not in that context. There in black and white, pun intended, was the man's application to work in the black system - the white schools would never have hired him. Before that day, I'd certainly never sat down and asked an African-American person who was raised in the South before desegregation just what his life was like. It was surreal. That world of civil rights demonstrations, protests, lawsuits, the joke that was "separate but equal" - that was not the distant past left to the sands of time. I learned instead that it was this man's life.
I'm a bit older now. I've seen more of my nation. I've lost that smugness of being a Northerner. My home city has had race riots that have gutted its core - again. My beloved Chicago is an example of how we Midwesterners can craft a segregated society as miserable and bigoted as anything the South ever created, without need for a single law or a single "whites only" beach. And I've come to appreciate what an incredible leap we have made as a nation within living memory, as well as how far we have to go.
I attribute a significant amount of the distance we've covered on the journey from a past of slavery and its repercussions to a more just society to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He led through moral suasion, through appeals to peace and reason, he led through example. He appealed to the best in us, not the base.
When people realize the power that they have within themselves to effect change for the better, to improve their lot in this life, to become agents of change and to no longer suffer as others' subjects, the world is a better place for it. True leadership does not dictate - it educates and unleashes and channels that latent energy.
In that vein, I believe wholeheartedly in the labor movement. To me, at its best, it is the most effective engine of social change. Beyond better wages, safer work sites, shorter hours - more time for living and less spent working - the labor movement has fought for the franchise, for education, and, frankly, for freedom. Dr. King saw, appreciated, understood, and articulated the overlap between the civil rights movement and the labor movement. Indeed, they are two sides of the same coin, existing symbiotically - or not at all, as any survivor of fascism or totalitarianism can tell you.
The man was murdered while he was in Memphis supporting a garbage workers' strike. The lowest of the low organized and demanded to be treated like human beings, with dignity. They carried signs that read simply, "I am a man." Not a cog, not a machine, but a human being. Dr. King came to support them, and in that way he came to his end. I have come to appreciate Dr. King for his work on behalf of workers, for making that connection between workers' rights and civil rights, and for indeed nudging us along to a world where we are not to be judged by the color of our skin but the content of our character.
I was not alive myself when Dr. King preached the gospel and spread the good news about a fairer, freer world that we could bring into being if we just worked at it. His life came to a premature and cruel end before I was born. For me today is a day to think about what he stood for, to reflect where we've been and we're we need to go as citizens of this nation, and to mourn. There is not a doubt in my mind the world would have been a better place had we had Dr. King to accompany us on the long journey to justice for at least a few more steps.
I was shocked when I reviewed his file. When hired he worked for the "negro" schools. The first four or five years of this man's career were spent in a state-sanctioned segregated school system. It floored me. I grew up in Ohio, not exactly a land of racial harmony, but throughout my primary and secondary education the schools I attended were twenty to thirty percent African-American or more. There was de facto segregation by neighborhood, but I grew up in the north - there were no colored- or white-only drinking fountains, bathrooms, waiting rooms, or such. The "South" was an alien world to me. That was the bad place where white people were mean and cruel to black folks. Not we Ohioans. Jim Crow was not a Buckeye ...
By the time I met that principal I'd lived in Virginia. I'd traveled in Kentucky. But as for "the South," well, I'd never really been there. Miami is not exactly the heart of Dixie.
That file made an impression on me. I'd not confronted such overt racial distinctions before, certainly not in that context. There in black and white, pun intended, was the man's application to work in the black system - the white schools would never have hired him. Before that day, I'd certainly never sat down and asked an African-American person who was raised in the South before desegregation just what his life was like. It was surreal. That world of civil rights demonstrations, protests, lawsuits, the joke that was "separate but equal" - that was not the distant past left to the sands of time. I learned instead that it was this man's life.
I'm a bit older now. I've seen more of my nation. I've lost that smugness of being a Northerner. My home city has had race riots that have gutted its core - again. My beloved Chicago is an example of how we Midwesterners can craft a segregated society as miserable and bigoted as anything the South ever created, without need for a single law or a single "whites only" beach. And I've come to appreciate what an incredible leap we have made as a nation within living memory, as well as how far we have to go.
I attribute a significant amount of the distance we've covered on the journey from a past of slavery and its repercussions to a more just society to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He led through moral suasion, through appeals to peace and reason, he led through example. He appealed to the best in us, not the base.
When people realize the power that they have within themselves to effect change for the better, to improve their lot in this life, to become agents of change and to no longer suffer as others' subjects, the world is a better place for it. True leadership does not dictate - it educates and unleashes and channels that latent energy.
In that vein, I believe wholeheartedly in the labor movement. To me, at its best, it is the most effective engine of social change. Beyond better wages, safer work sites, shorter hours - more time for living and less spent working - the labor movement has fought for the franchise, for education, and, frankly, for freedom. Dr. King saw, appreciated, understood, and articulated the overlap between the civil rights movement and the labor movement. Indeed, they are two sides of the same coin, existing symbiotically - or not at all, as any survivor of fascism or totalitarianism can tell you.
The man was murdered while he was in Memphis supporting a garbage workers' strike. The lowest of the low organized and demanded to be treated like human beings, with dignity. They carried signs that read simply, "I am a man." Not a cog, not a machine, but a human being. Dr. King came to support them, and in that way he came to his end. I have come to appreciate Dr. King for his work on behalf of workers, for making that connection between workers' rights and civil rights, and for indeed nudging us along to a world where we are not to be judged by the color of our skin but the content of our character.
I was not alive myself when Dr. King preached the gospel and spread the good news about a fairer, freer world that we could bring into being if we just worked at it. His life came to a premature and cruel end before I was born. For me today is a day to think about what he stood for, to reflect where we've been and we're we need to go as citizens of this nation, and to mourn. There is not a doubt in my mind the world would have been a better place had we had Dr. King to accompany us on the long journey to justice for at least a few more steps.
Friday, January 18, 2008
And why I signed in in the first place - my idea du jour
I have an idea for a personal weight-loss regime. It goes something like this. I get a diaper. I spot my toddler. I get his attention. I then announce, loudly, "time for a diaper change!"
Game on.
Having zero desire to relinquish the poo, he runs like an escaped parolee hopped up on crank toting a stolen television set sprinting through the trailer park with half the police force of Hicksville and the entire "Cops" camera crew in tow, while I engage in a frantic steeplechase over the couch, around the chairs, and under the dining room table.
My old age and treachery will eventually prevail over his youth and skill. I figure I'll nab him by the side of the fridge, possibly at the front door, and if that fickle goddess Fate smiles upon me, I'll do so with at worst a bruise or three. Him? He'll get giggles and a clean diaper out of the deal. It could be worse.
At the rate the little guy goes, this is good for at least 30 to 45 minutes of good cardiovascular workout time a day.
In addition, if he gets really good at it, this may be viewed as the foundation for his future in football, securing his old man and mother a comfortable retirement and, if we're lucky, sky box tickets for Super Bowl LXXV. I'd settle for the weight loss and the joyful giggling from Mr. Man as he evades Daddy Chunkster, but I'd certainly not object to the sky box tickets for what it's worth.
Game on.
Having zero desire to relinquish the poo, he runs like an escaped parolee hopped up on crank toting a stolen television set sprinting through the trailer park with half the police force of Hicksville and the entire "Cops" camera crew in tow, while I engage in a frantic steeplechase over the couch, around the chairs, and under the dining room table.
My old age and treachery will eventually prevail over his youth and skill. I figure I'll nab him by the side of the fridge, possibly at the front door, and if that fickle goddess Fate smiles upon me, I'll do so with at worst a bruise or three. Him? He'll get giggles and a clean diaper out of the deal. It could be worse.
At the rate the little guy goes, this is good for at least 30 to 45 minutes of good cardiovascular workout time a day.
In addition, if he gets really good at it, this may be viewed as the foundation for his future in football, securing his old man and mother a comfortable retirement and, if we're lucky, sky box tickets for Super Bowl LXXV. I'd settle for the weight loss and the joyful giggling from Mr. Man as he evades Daddy Chunkster, but I'd certainly not object to the sky box tickets for what it's worth.
You can't make this stuff up
When I linked in to post a new entry, this greeted me at the blogger.com site:
"We are excited to announce that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian!"
Wowza.
I suppose it best to hit the trifecta at one time. Imagine the grief had one of those gone up before the others ... "You got Hebrew but no Persian - you got something against Iranians?" or "No Hebrew - but you got ARABIC? What are you - anti-semitic or something?"
You can't please all the people all the time, but give blogger.com some props for damage control ...
"We are excited to announce that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian!"
Wowza.
I suppose it best to hit the trifecta at one time. Imagine the grief had one of those gone up before the others ... "You got Hebrew but no Persian - you got something against Iranians?" or "No Hebrew - but you got ARABIC? What are you - anti-semitic or something?"
You can't please all the people all the time, but give blogger.com some props for damage control ...
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The military in a democracy
There is an article in today's NY Times about the mercenaries used by my government in Iraq. That triggers a few questions. If in a democracy we cannot get enough people to volunteer to serve in the military to perform the duties that the military is called upon to perform in a foreign land, then should we continue to be involved in that conflict? If we have to resort to mercenaries to fight our wars, doesn't that raise serious issues about support for that war when waged by a "democratic" state? And how is it that when those mercenaries murder civilians with abandon, they are not subject to trial - that no law applies? This last point was the gist of the article. Zero accountability for one's actions is morally suspect at the best of times. To avoid any accounting, any trial, from any sovereign for the killing of a human being is truly surreal to me. Then again, like Alice through the looking glass, I and my nation entered the realm of the surreal in late 2000 and haven't looked back since ...
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
I should have been that I am ...
" ... I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing."
And so I begin a blog.
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing."
And so I begin a blog.
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