Pie and Coffee » General

Wielding Power

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:17:09 +0000

Wielding power is tricky. When famine struck Ireland in 1782-1783, the English government used its power to close the Irish ports to keep local food in Ireland, a policy which caused food prices to drop immediately. Merchants protested the port closures, but the government held firm. During the Great Famine of 1845-1852, however, the government did not act, the ports were left open, and huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England while the people of Ireland were dying of starvation. Not until almost a million died was any government relief organized, and it took the form of corn meal so coarse that it often killed the constitutionally-weakened Irish who ate it. The government’s failure to save the impoverished Irish people is not surprising. Parliament’s primary constituency was the business class, which emerged from the famine wealthier in cash and property.

Rita Corbin, 1954

The conviction that governments serve elites rather than the general populace is widespread. In The Boston Globe, December, 21, 2011, Brandeis Professor Kanan Makiya said that Iraq is now run by corrupt “political elites…. no better than the former Baathist elite that was overthrown.” Also on December 21st, the Associated Press reported that 10,000 Egyptian women demonstrated against the brutality of the caretaker military government which demonstrators empowered only months earlier after Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. That same day, the BBC broadcast a story of Chinese villagers barricading their streets against local officials who’ve been seizing their land. According to the BBC, “Every year, tens of thousands of demonstrations occur [in China] against corrupt officials.”

Giving anyone power over a nation is risky. When the Israelites asked for a king, the prophet Samuel warned them:

…the king who is to reign over you…. will take your sons and assign them to his chariotry and cavalry, and they will run in front of his chariot…. He will make them plow his plowland and harvest his harvest and make his weapons of war…. He will also take your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will take the best of your fields, of your vineyards, and olive groves and give them to his officials. He will tithe your crops… and you yourselves will become his slaves
(I Samuel 10-18)

This is not to say that all politicians are corrupt. Some use their authority for the general good, but power tends toward personal aggrandizement and favoritism. The authors of the US Constitution were so wary of tyranny that they tried to craft a government with three branches checking each other’s power. Little did the founding fathers realize that all the branches would eventually serve the same master–the rich. From a nation originally lauded as a land of equal opportunity and broad prosperity, America has become a country where 50% of its population is either poor or low income, while the top 1% own 38.1% of the wealth. (This wealth gap is even greater if one includes the tens of millions of undocumented people working in the US.) Although the wealthy, white, male, slave-owners who established our republic proclaimed government “of, by, and for the people,” it wasn’t until a hundred years later that public education was provided and fifty years after that before fair wages, reasonable hours, and safe working conditions were mandated. Civil rights took another quarter century. Environmental protection is still a work in progress.

But since the election of President Ronald Reagan, the government has increasingly reduced services while transferring wealth to the rich. People think nothing now of paying fees to use public parks or to have their children participate in school sports. Fire departments, the postal service, public transportation, libraries, and schools go begging, while the lords of Wall Street and the mandarins of the military industrial complex gorge themselves at the people’s expense. And yet, ironically, many impoverished Americans still cheer for super-wealthy politicians, like Mitt Romney, whose economic policies would make his class even richer.

Then again, the corrupting influence of power is not confined to politics. When Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened their ice cream business in Vermont, they famously pledged that no executive would ever earn more than seven times the salary of their lowest paid employee. The CEO now earns $250,000, quite a bit more than the average Joe.

Similarly, while Pope John XXIII encouraged Catholic decision-making via consultation with bishops, lay people, and other faiths, subsequent popes have moved ever closer to top down rule and papal infallibility. Interestingly, one of the most prestigious theologians of our time, Rev. Hans Küng, made an impassioned appeal in June 2011 for decentralization of Church power. In an open letter, Father Küng points out blunders of Pope Benedict XVI, the most autocratic pope since Pius XII, and argues that frequently held councils of bishops are less prone to error or abuse. Küng rejects authoritarianism saying, “unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone.”

But shouldn’t we go even deeper than pointing our fingers at political, business, and religious leaders who abuse power? After all, don’t all of us wield some authority over others? Police officers, teachers, parents, owners of pets, and yes, even Catholic Workers can wield power abusively. Here at Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker, a core group of volunteers manages donations, determines the rules, makes the menus, and has the final word on how long a guest can remain. We too can lord it over others and save the best portions for ourselves. We might not even notice our elitism. At Saint Benedict’s Catholic Worker in Washington, DC, volunteers would sleep on the floor if all our beds were full because Christ urged us “to take the lowest place,” as He certainly did. When we first came to Worcester, members of our community would go out in pairs to spend one night a month on the street to remind us of how difficult homelessness is and of the fact that the Son of God had “nowhere to lay His head.” Like governments, which Thomas Jefferson suggested should be overthrown periodically, power arrangements on the interpersonal level need to be evaluated and reformed constantly.

Brian Kavanagh

I’m happy to say that Ben and Jerry announced in late 2011 that their company will become 100% fair trade. They will give up some of their profits to redistribute wealth and power downward. It doesn’t happen often and isn’t easy, but power can take the form of servitude. We can grow in moral stature and personal happiness by divesting power and sharing decision-making. The Occupy Wall Street people take it on the chin from critics who demand immediate results, but they model a better world by eschewing leaders and embracing consensus. Ultimately, the most vital state, congregation, or business is community-based with loyalty voluntarily given and power dispersed as widely as possible and oriented toward service of others.

Once again, Jesus sets the standard:

Though He was in the form of God, He did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather He emptied himself and took the form of a slave…
(Philippians 2:6-7a)

Originally printed in the January 2012 issue of the Catholic Radical. PDF link

508 #121: SWIP

Mike — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:56:14 +0000

508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panel is Brendan Melican.

Audio: mp3 link, other formats, feed

Video: Downloads and other formats

[0:56] The George Street Challenge is coming up.

[2:15] They’re doing The Taming of the Shrew in Green Hill Park the next few weeks.

[3:00] Billy Blue is coming back to Worcester Saturday.

[3:30] Gary Rosen thinks Brendan is running for City Council next year.

[3:46] There was a Tea Party protest Saturday at which an interloper attempted to desecrate the flag.

[5:46] We oppose the City Council’s planned anti-pit bull ordinance, as does the Worcester Animal Rescue League.

[14:33] New York Times operating profit is up, whereas the Globe + T&G’s revenue is down. (To clarify, their circulation revenue is up, but circulation is probably down.)

[15:10] We revisit the long and frustrating history of the South Worcester Industrial Park. Thanks to Nicole for helping produce this segment.

Flag Day

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:05:12 +0000

On June 14, 1969, I won a prize for an essay called “What the Flag Means to Me.” Years in the Boy Scouts informed me of the symbolism in the American flag and taught me flag etiquette. I knew red stood for the blood of American patriots, white stood for the purity of American ideals, while blue stood for the glory of her achievements. I knew you should not fly the flag in the rain or at night, as well as how to fold it smartly into a triangle. I saluted it daily in school and believed that it must never touch the ground or be held in a parade at a lower level than another flag. I had seen enough movies to know that the Stars and Stripes coming over the horizon meant rescue from harm and the restoration of justice. I was proud to wear an American flag patch on the shoulder of my scout uniform.

I was confused by newspaper images of Old Glory being flown upside down (a sign of distress) outside the crown of the Statue of Liberty by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I was no fan of Abbie Hoffman’s American flag shirt or Peter Fonda’s American flag helmet in Easy Rider. I saw these things as disrespectful.

Then, in 1975, I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and learned how, in 1864, six hundred Cheyenne, two thirds of them women and children, were massacred, after they sought protection under an American and white flag. When American troops questioned orders to kill even the infants, the commanding officer, Colonel John Chivington, said, “Nits make lice.”

A year later, two months before the nation’s bicentennial celebration, I saw Stanley Forman’s front-page newspaper photo of a furious white opponent of desegregation in Boston trying to spear a black lawyer with an American flag Boston’s City Hall. The more I learned about US racism and imperialism, the easier it was for me to understand why some people see the flag as a symbol of oppression and violence.

The Soiling of Old Glory, by Stanley Forman

At a 1984 International Women’s Day protest on the steps of the US Capitol, I saw women plunge a US flag into a tub to “wash the blood out of it.” Speaking to the crowd minutes later, Elizabeth McAlister said that she wasn’t sure the flag could be cleansed in so a short time.

On the other hand, my experience in countries where different ethnic and religious groups were slaughtering one another, often without US instigation or arms, renewed my belief that, while not perfect, American ideals of justice have significant substance. Despite our shameful segregationist past, contemporary Americans are remarkably tolerant compared to many people I met overseas. I also began to associate the sight of an American flag, not with the US government, but with my affection for baseball, pizza, New England, family, and friends. I could see how the national symbol could mean different things to different people at different times.

Giant flag: After by shaindlin/Flickr

Then again, flags originated as battle standards. The ubiquitous display of the American flag during the first Gulf War connoted support for the US troops. Although some peace activists took to carrying a US flag in an attempt to wrest the symbol from the right, it largely remained emblematic of support for the war. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about any flag is that it’s meaning is ambiguous.

And yet, many Catholic Churches proudly display an American flag, some right on the altar itself. I used to scoff at my leftist friends’ assertion that Americans worshipped the flag as an idol, until I learned that a Connecticut Catholic school fired Stephen Kobasa, a teacher of many years, for refusing to display an American flag in his classroom and how a Worcester veteran threatened to punch any priest who tried to enforce the Vatican rule that a flag cannot cover a coffin during a funeral Mass. (So virulent was local opposition to the flag restriction at funerals that Bishop Harrington asked and received permission from Rome to exempt the Worcester diocese from the rule.)

Given that Americans grow up, not only pledging allegiance to what the flag stands for, but also to the flag itself, it should come as no surprise that many venerate it. In 1898, when the American Flag Association was formed, a call went up for legislation to protect the flag, calling it a “sacred jewel” that commanded “national reverence.”

My own mixed feelings about the American flag in particular, and all national flags in general, make me reluctant to demand that churches cast them out, but I was very moved by the witness of Mark Colville, a Catholic Worker in New Haven, who refused to kneel during Mass so long as an American flag was displayed on the altar. When parishioners asked him why he kept standing during the Eucharistic Prayer, he told them that he could only kneel before God and not the state. He didn’t pass out leaflets or get into shouting matches with his pastor. He didn’t stop attending Mass either. Over time, a consensus emerged, and the flag was removed.

Especially nowadays, when religion is so closely associated with anti-religious policies (calling wars things like “Operation Just Cause,” putting scripture quotes on US rifles, and comparing the sacrifices of soldiers, who have killed more than 100,000 Iraqi and Afghan civilians, with those of Jesus), it behooves us to be crystal clear. “Love your enemies” is irreconcilable with war. “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor” contradicts capitalism. “Welcome the stranger” ” flies in the face of restric- tive immigration policies. Many fundamentals of Christianity are radically different from those represented by the American flag. While the differences between Americanism and Christianity are far from total, they are certainly sufficient to hold the flag at arm’s length, away from the Church.

Saint Patrick’s Day and other items

Mike — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:10:45 +0000

Pie and Coffee classic: The Real Saint Patrick, starring the Duffy Bros.

Cargo Cult Activism
New essay on Pie and Coffee; somehow marked as published a week ago, rather than yesterday. Didn’t want you to miss it.

Google Fiber, Worcester, and the Broadband Market
Worcester, like many communities, is working hard to bring the Google Fiber for Communities pilot program to the city, so residents and businesses can get Internet access “more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today.” Yochai Benkler, one of my intellectual heroes, headed a recent Berkman Center study of America’s screwed-up Internet market, and the mediocre Internet access we get as a result. If you’re wondering why cities are begging Google to bring them services that phone and cable companies won’t, this interview is a clear and detailed intro to the subject.

Eben Moglen on “Freedom in the Cloud”
A great talk by the free software lawyer Eben Moglen on the threats Facebook et al pose to privacy and freedom, and “how we should fix it”:

It’s not like what we have to do to begin to reverse the catastrophe is hard for us. We need to re-architect services in the net; we need to redistribute services back towards the edge; we need to de-virtualize the servers where your life is stored and restore some autonomy to you as the owner of the server. The measures for taking those steps are technical … as usual the box builders are ahead of us.

The New Normal
Is humanity doomed to war and violence, or is change possible? One of the radio shows that stayed with me through the latter part of 2009 was Radiolab’s “The New Normal”, which offers some hope. Here’s the mp3 link.

Keeping the same computer for the next 20 years
Mark Pilgrim outlines his bold goal. Also: why he moved from the Mac to GNU/Linux.

“Lent perfect time to begin vegan diet”
Letter to The Republican:

The season of Lent is the perfect time to consider a plant-based diet. This 40-day period preceding Easter is when Christians have traditionally abstained from meat and dairy in memory of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting and prayer before dying on the cross
Such a gesture would be a tangible expression of Jesus’ message of compassion and love for all living beings. Animals are being raised for food under abject conditions of caging, crowding, deprivation, drugging, mutilation, and manhandling. When trucked to slaughterhouses, they travel for days without food or water only to be bled, skinned, and dismembered while still conscious. Wastes from factory farms foul the water we drink and the air we breathe, and meat production accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Most chronic killer diseases are linked to consumption of animal products. We have choices, and there are consequences: blessings and curses.
–SHELDON WATKINS
–Springfield

Cargo cult activism

Mike — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:15:36 +0000

Richard Feynman explained “cargo cults” in the classic essay Cargo Cult Science:

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land.

Activists can think this way, too. We’ve seen something work in the past, and so we try it again. Sometimes the underlying situation, power dynamics, and participants are very different, so the tactic or strategy doesn’t work. If we understand why it worked the first time, we can modify it to work in the present. But too often, if it doesn’t work, we just try it again with more passion. I mean, it worked for the Civil Rights struggle/labor movement/Gandhi/right here in this town in the 90s. Why wouldn’t it work for us today?

The South Seas cargo cultists didn’t realize that the important thing about a radio was what was inside, not what was outside. We should step back more often to analyze what we’re doing, to create tactics and strategies that work like the effective ones of the past, rather than just looking like them.

I’d bet we can avoid some of the worst of “cargo cult activism” by asking a few questions of the next thing we’re planning to try. Why do we think this will work? What’s a recent example of this working? How well do we understand that example? Did it work the last time our group tried it? If not, why not?

Reflecting on fasting and action to close Guantanamo

Mike — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:21:08 +0000

Yesterday was the 12th and final day of the fast. It was spent, by many, in jail. For the others, it was a day of cooking food, roaming the corridors of the courthouse, and tidying up outreach.

This morning, three of us went down to the Japanese Buddhist temple for drumming and chanting.

“If even monks become weary and sloppy in saluting with joined palms, then no one will perform raihai. One would no longer salute parents, children, wife and husband, neighbors or laborers with palms together.”
–Nichidatsu Fuji

Which suggests one value of Thursday’s actions. If Catholic Workers aren’t creating illegal memorial services for dead detainees in the Capitol dome, then who will perform them?

Second Sunday of Advent

Mike — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:09:55 +0000

Here’s a picture of the Advent wreath we made this week. We colored white candles with melted crayons (my friend is a master at this), melted them to a piece of cardboard, put that on a tray, and covered it with evergreen branches from the tree in the backyard. I think it looks great.

We’ve been marking Advent with readings from the Henri Nouwen booklet. Today for the first time we also used the Bishops’s prayers. I was surprised to see that as part of your Advent ceremony they ask you to visit a website. Makes me feel less silly about blogging my second Sunday of Advent.

My friends have the Advent doodad pictured above in their kitchen. Day by day, you hang figures from the pegs. No idea what this is called.

61 arrested in White House demonstration against war and torture

Mike — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:19:38 +0000

This afternoon, an estimated 82 61 people Americans were arrested outside the White House while protesting the Obama administration’s continuation of Bush-era policies of war and indefinite detention.

More photos

Video of the demonstrations, including incorrect arrest estimate:

McClatchy video

Continuing the call to close Guantanamo

Mike — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:12:44 +0000

Worth noting that all summer long, people have continued to gather each Tuesday near the White House to encourage President Obama to keep his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo and end America’s policies of torture.

These vigils are a continuation of the 100 Days Campaign.

508 #83: Kola Akindele

Mike — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:00:01 +0000

508 is a show about Worcester. Today’s panel includes Brendan Melican, Cha-Cha Connor, and City Council challenger Kola Akindele.

Audio: mp3 link, other formats, feed, lo-fi versions for slow connections

Video: Downloads and other formats

The latest round of debate over Worcester’s pools ended in a contentious City Council meeting this week. Some are seeing the issue as a litmus test in the upcoming City Council election. It has also spurred new calls for a change in the city’s charter.

508 contact info

Upcoming candidates should include Mary Keefe, Rob Diaz, and Grace Ross. Feel free to post questions to them in the comments to this post.

Just the Kola Akindele interview: