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

Thirty-three years later, my weight reached 199 pounds. I had to face the fact that I had gradually become a fat man in pretty poor physical shape.

A year earlier, in the aftermath of her father’s slow deterioration and death from Alzheimer’s, my wife, Claire, began running. She certainly didn’t need to lose any weight–she sill fits easily into her wedding dress–but read that physical exercise into old age helps keep a person’s mind sharp. After watching her get out and run faithfully for a year, even in snow and rain, I was finally shamed into joining her.

On February 18, 2009, I pushed myself to “run” a mile. I changed my diet too, dropping to two meals a day, one light and the other heavy. I started losing about a pound a week and feeling more comfortable during my runs. By April 26, Claire and I felt fit enough to try to a five kilometer (3.1 mile) road race. All kinds of people ran–thin, heavy, young–and even some pushing strollers. We finished 262nd and 302nd out of 500. She ran it in 32 minutes and I came in a minute faster. I was delighted. From then on, I became hooked on running.

I signed up for other races and began meeting people. I started attending a weekly race in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which my older all-around athletic brother Michael and his friends run regularly. Those friends were very encouraging. Harry Haywood coached me in ways to get faster and avoid injury. After each race, we enjoyed a couple beers and had a lot of laughs.

Meanwhile, back in Worcester, Claire and I discovered a weekly run starting at An Cu Liath (the Greyhound), an Irish Pub in Kelley Square, a place where six streets meet without a traffic light. This three-mile race is free and ends with a pot luck at the pub. Although somewhat standoffish at first, the members of the Central Mass Striders club who sponsor the race have become as pleasant to hang out with as the folks in Holyoke. You couldn’t find friendlier people than Beth, Tracy, Sue, Karen, Dave, Mike, Tom, Eddie, J.J., and Sanjay.

Worcester, 6:30PM Mondays: An Cu Liath City Run Monday 3 miler. An Cu Liath Pub (The Grey Hound), 11 Kelley Sq (Bring your watch!! Freebie self timed race through the Canal District). This event is part of a weekly 52 part series. Contact: Scott (CMS member), USA, 01602. 1-508-951-5324 anculiathcityrun@charter.net

And ace runners like John Pajer, Thaddeus Bell, and Carol Hurley always share the secrets of their speed. Another standout, John Colucci, will tell you he runs to honor a son who was brutally murdered. Quite a few runners are parents or grandparents. Many, like Thaddeus, used to be quite heavy. Some, like the affable bar owners Cyndy and Paul Curley, go no faster than 10 minutes a mile. And yet, Cyndy ran the Bay State Marathon and is planning to run another in Ireland come April. Unlike my high school, where athletes were so focused on individual achievement, these runners keep things in perspective. Nobody is boastful. Folks who have run dozens of marathons wear those achievements lightly.

Nonetheless, friendly rivalries have developed between me, “Iron Man” Al Barrera, and “Flash” Jack Goolsky. We race every Monday night at 6:30. In the winter, reflective vests alert drivers that we will be darting across streets. Just before Christmas, we ran as a group in and out of the atrium of the Worcester Medical Center led by a fellow in a Santa Claus suit. We also stopped at K.J. Baarron’s Fine Wines and Spirits for a free whiskey toast.

And, to my surprise, I got faster. I now finish in the top third of most races. I even won a race for my age group. My time has dropped almost ten minutes in the 5k. In my first year, I ran 79 races and am looking forward to attempting the Worcester Half Marathon on June 13. My weight is stable at 154 pounds. My co-worker Ken says I’ve become obsessed and warns that I will pack on all the pounds again eventually. But I don’t think so because I am not just dieting and exercising. I am having terrific fun. I love the competition and the comraderie. On a week when he beat me soundly, Scott Stevens, a Central Mass Striders board member who posts online results of the pub races, razzed me with the entry “Scott Schaeffer-Duffy beatdown”. He included a photo of a traffic sign depicting a child running and the word SLOW. His caption read, “Signs erected for the safety of Scott Schaeffer-Duffy.” I laughed my head off when I saw it.

You may wonder why this article is included in The Catholic Radical. [Ed.: Or Pie and Coffee, for that matter.] It’s not only because I’m excited about the topic, but also because one of our readers recently wrote that, even though he liked our paper, it was “not merry.” His comment reminds me how important it is not only to expose injustice, but also to celebrate goodness.

In his marvelous book Born to Run, Christopher McDougall, a former war correspondent for the Associated Press who is now a long distance runner, describes a revelation he had during an ultra-marathon. When McDougall fell to the back of the pack, a world class runner relinquished his chance at victory and jogged alongside the writer to encourage him. McDougall learned from this athlete that “the reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other . . . but to be with each other.”

No matter what your income, age, skill level, or weight, runners will welcome you into their offbeat family. They have taught me joyful lessons about genuine community.

This article was originally published in the April/May 2010 issue of The Catholic Radical.

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If you want to get involved with the effort to bring Google Fiber to Worcester, you can get started with this map.

Mike recommends the Central Mass Striders weekly 5k. Meet 8:30am Saturdays inside the Worcester State College gym.

The School Committee raised the CFO’s salary to some controversy. School Committee Member Tracy Novick went direct about her “yes” vote.

Worcester Magazine has a cover story about bloggers this week. We have mixed feelings about it.

Finally, Brendan talks about ice hockey and ice bocce.

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?

See also:

• Failure is overrated, a redux
• How to hold a demonstration

This post was inspired by a conversation we had during a 508 podcast:

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Today’s topics are union activity at Clark, and trends in campus crime.

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This week, Mike and Brendan begin with a recap of city government’s efforts to bring Google Fiber to Worcester. The Whiskerite charity beard competition raised almost $1000. Check out the video.

We have learned of the origins of the “Right Place, Right Time” song. (Video here, too.) Anyone have a copy of Worcester’s 1972 theme?

CSX wants to expand their Worcester rail yard. We are planning to learn about Worcester’s position on the Opioid Overdose Prevention program.

Worcester’s metalheads are awesome. We may as well link to Juggalo News.

Mike is enthusiastic about the Free Store at the Holden Recycling Center, and Coinstar.

We don’t like Worcester’s proposed pit bull ordinance. Mike recommends a Malcolm Gladwell article on the subject.

Finally, Holmes Wilson had a beautiful wedding in the Midtown Mall.

As I mentioned earlier, I went to a talk by Dr Sándor Fülöp, Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations, at the British Ministry of Justice headquarters on Thursday evening (2010-02-25). Here are some notes I took. Any inaccuracies are mine.

The Commissioner is one of four ombudspersons in Hungary, appointed by a two-thirds supermajority by Parliament for a 6-year term (good), eligible for reappointment (not so good). It is the only such commissioner for sustainability in the world. The legal basis is the Ombudsman Act, passed only a couple of years ago.

The name is poetic, but really the job description as provided in the Act is that of an environmental ombudsman – a complaints officer. It would be unwise to reopen the Act to include socio-economic concerns of future generations, for fear of industrial lobbying that would erode the environmental focus.

The main duties and powers of the Ombudsman:

• enforcement of constitutional rights re environment
• mediation with administration/government
• access to parliament (even the plenary) and constitutional court with expediency
• some scientific capability in the science unit
• examine policy – even European Union measures and international treaties
• power of suspension and remedy from operators
• litigation, intervenor (amicus curiæ)
• safeguarding the interests of future generations
• access to environmental information
• climate change and the sustainability of local communities (resilience)
• access to confidential documents, even commercial and military ones (an important power)

The Commissioner’s Office has only been with full staff in post for 14 months. So far, some 600 cases have been submitted, 400 dismissed, leaving about 200 valid cases. Among these, 70 has been decided and there are 130 live investigations.

In the advocacy work, 50 Bills in Parliament have been analyzed, such as

1. reform of the Administrative Code re access to information and public participation
2. deletion of the budgetary item for seed/gene bank is against the interests of future generations
3. Kyoto carbon-trading units scandal – wrongful spending of ringfenced state funds

The largest case was that of a straw-based powerplant as large as 50 MW; too big. It would draw straws from a radius of 150 km with 200 trucks arriving per day. Worse, it would be located next to a World Heritage Site. The landscape would be changed into one dominated by the biofuel ‘weed’. The Unesco World Heritage treaty had not been transposed into Hungarian national law. The environmental impact assessment was done by the investors themselves. The Ombudsman’s final report had recommendations to all parties.

The smallest case concerned the noise of a late-evening café in downtown Budapest. Various areas of law could be involved and the complainant was given a menu of options to take the matter further.

Conclusion. These might seem like piecemeal work in a planet approaching (or even going beyond) its ecological boundaries. But this builds up a network of knowledge. The environment inspectorates in Hungary have low prestige, and do not apply the ‘finality principle’: only pushing files rather than dealing with environmental problems.

Questions and answers. Networking with churches and environmental industries are being explored.

The political atmosphere was fortunate when the Bill passed the Parliament: without consensus-forming work from the civil society, neither the governing party nor the opposition would have been able to create the new post. It so happened that the Speaker of the Parliament and the President of the Republic were both environmentalists. In preparation for this, an NGO worked for 7 years on the Ombudsman Bill, mocked up an ombudsman’s office and worked with it – similar to the success of the Friends of the Earth’s Big Ask campaign on a Climate Change Bill here in the United Kingdom. The most vociferous opponents of the new post were existing ombudspersons (for example, that for human rights).

The Ombudsman was not reluctant to say that his post is not impartial: it is victim-centred. The variety of possible norms, mandates, and conflicts for the post are philosophical questions he was not prepared to answer. There might well be a distinction to be made between a supposedly-impartial ombudsman and a biased public advocate; perhaps the commissioner is more the latter. He likened his office to a state NGO (quango?).

My questions for further consideration. How would a British sustainability ombudsperson/commission work with the existing Sustainable Development Commission and Climate Change Committee? Can we learn from the experience of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and its predecessors? Which Montesquian branch of the State would it belong to, if any? It would serve us well to study the Hungarian Ombudsman Act carefully.

Thanks to the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development and the United Kingdom Environmental Law Association for organizing the event, and to the Hungarian Embassy in London for facilitating it and providing the excellent wines.

In the past 5 years or so, I have heard from time to time impatient proponents of a Green Senate, a committee for sustainability, a parliamentary chamber with a built-in long-term view and overriding power in favour of measures for sustainability. Famous proponents include Norman Myers, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and (most recently, this past Tuesday) John Strickland. I do not think such a constitutional arrangement would work.

First, who would we appoint to this Senate? Would they be 70-year-olds, having accumulated years of experiences and (one hopes) accompanying wisdom? Or would they be 20-year-olds, or even teenagers, who have a stake, with realistic interests, in the future? Or a mixture thereof? Then, what about the midlifers? Are they totally disinterested, and should only be shoved around by the young and the old?

And quickly you can foresee the second question: How would we appoint them? By popular election with pre-screening? By lot? Very soon I come to my main point, and I hope the reader gets it before I tell. With more than one person in the world, there inevitably comes politics. As much as we would like God to send edicts which we all equally receive with equal clarity, that is not the case.

Either we engage with politics, or we get apathetic and let others (the Pope, the King, the Prime Minister, the political class, etc.) run our lives for us. Politics cannot be circumvented or transcended. Or rather, the only way to transcend politics is to engage. There is no Enabling Act, no Guardian Council, no Workers Vanguard, that can deliver the Final Solution without real politics. There is no such thing as a system so perfect that people do not need to be good.

That means the only way to ensure sustainability is for those who care about sustainability to engage, to talk progressive talk with neighbours, to vote, to go to hustings and meetings, to agitate–educate–organize, to listen and learn, to run for political office and lose (sometimes), to win a few offices and use the power for good ends.

If you do not like the people running the system, aim to replace them. If you do not like the system, change it. But do not expect these to be once-and-for-all, straightforward, and clean. As much as there is no silver bullet, no single technological fix in environmental problems, the same applies to politics. It requires a collective change of mind, which will be messy and will take longer than we would like.

In the words of the prophet Bob Marley: ‘So you think you’ve found the solution, | but it’s just another illusion. | (So before you check out this tide,) | don’t leave another cornerstone | standing there behind. | We’ve got to face the day; | come what may: | We the street people talking; | yeah, we the people struggling.’ (So much trouble in the world)

And on the way, there will be setbacks, losses, defeats, wastage, betrayal, assassinations. (Though I hope the latter ones do not ever visit the present incumbent of the Presidency of the United States of America.) And what is the Christian response but to take these on with courage and hope? (Holy Martyrs, pray for us.) Was that not the way Jesus showed?

‘For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.’ (Romans 8:24,25 KJV)

There are no easy solutions: one can only go out to knock on doors and canvass. With this note, I relied heavily on the thinking of my friend Rupert Read, who taught that theoretical social studies in economics and politics are useless on their own except in praxis. He also demonstrated this brilliantly with his own life. ¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

Amendment after discussing with Rupert:

Yes, I think I should moderate my position.

To speak for the motion, a sustainability commissioner or committee only elevates the idea of sustainability in our constitutional architecture to the level that human rights already occupy. This is long overdue. To expand on the human rights mechanism: a minister certifies each Bill as compatible with the Human Rights Act; then there are enforcement mechanisms through domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights to induce revision of incompatible Acts of Parliament.

Then we might think what are the norms of sustainability to be enumerated? How do we articulate the remit of the Green Senate, the mandate for our commissioner? The bare ‘whether they like it and think it is sustainable’ may not be enough. For human rights, there is the European Convention etc.; this is along the same lines.

Even if we introduce such a commissioner or committee, we should still reserve the right to criticize it. We should stay vigilant and political. Our interlocutors would have no qualms hijacking a ‘Green Senate’, so we should feel free to criticize it if it becomes mere greenwash for expedient projects. I think I am preaching to the converted, as you, Rupert, are the leading critic of liberal neutrality! (A recent example of such a lapse has been pointed out by Chris Goodall: The Committee on Climate Change shouldn’t have answered the question it was asked [about Heathrow expansion].)

The best thing about entering a charity beard competition is telling people with a straight face: “I have entered a charity beard competition.”

Thanks to the organizers for raising money for the Worcester County Food Bank and giving us an excuse to stop shaving!

WINNERS: Burly Man – Derek Ring; Facial Topiary – Mike Benedetti; Fan Fav – Peter Mascitelli; Best in Show – Duncan Arsenault.

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Inspired by Jeremy’s Worcester Magazine cover story “Selling Worcester: Who will take the lead to market our city?”, we discuss the rich oral tradition around Worcester’s many slogans, including the long-lost “Right Place, Right Time” and Bruce Russell’s “This City Should Be Destroyed”. Worcester even had a No Slogan Day. In the ad industry, slogans have fallen from favor.

Mike mentions that you can buy Ethiopian/Eritrean foods at Fresh Farm in Worcester, across the street from Lincoln Plaza. This Saturday is the Whiskerite fundraiser, Distant Castle anniversary party, Q arts fundraiser, and Pecha Kucha IV Haiti fundraiser.

Jen tells us about Clark students and alumni uniting to help Clark food service workers unionize.

The ongoing Venerini Academy story is starting to make sense as we learn their fundraiser has left a “trail of lies”.

Mike didn’t like the AP article in the T&G about Wal-Mart’s financial situation; he thought the NYT article was better.

Worcester: Right Place, Right Time

Matt Feinstein performs “Right Place, Right Time” on 508 #100

Worcester: Paris of the 80s, Port Au Prince of the 90s (via WCCA)