las meditaciones de victoria

On Being Biased and Opinionated, the Immigration Debate, and George Lakoff's Frames

I had an unsuccessful weekend in Northern California working on a documentary I began last month with friends. For me the gist of our project had been simple: immigrants are a vital part of our economy. Undocumented immigrants are not terrorists and shouldn’t be equated with them. They clean our houses, weed our gardens, grow and harvest our fruits and vegetables, and cook the food we eat in restaurants. They are essential members of our economy and the elemental role they play is completely unrecognized in the national debate on immigration. Well, to my surprise, my two childhood friends have adopted different frames of this issue and they are both concerned that I may be too opinionated and biased to accurately document this story. Meet BC and PBAH:

In his recent analysis, George Lakoff clarifies the complexity of the immigration issue and how framing the debate as an “immigration problem” has excluded the broader social and economic concerns that define the issue. In the paper, Lakoff puts my two friends in two separate frames. One friend he calls “The Bean Counter.” The Bean Counter’s opinion is: We can’t afford to have illegal immigrants using our tax dollars on health, education, and other services. BC has children in local public schools and is concerned that immigrants not paying taxes are destroying his children’s education and bringing down the quality of care at local hospitals. My other friend is what Lakoff calls “Progressivism Begins at Home.” His perspective is: The immigrants are taking the jobs of American workers and we have to protect our workers. PBAH works in construction and feels threatened by undocumented workers who work for half his pay (“That is when they get paid,” PBAH admits!). Both BC and PBAH draw on the invasion frame popularized by the Minutemen and right-wing bloggers, a frame that employs images of mass people crossing our borders and destroying America. 

That evening I had to restrain myself from calling PBAH and sharing another of my opinions, that the BA he earned in college might be better used in a job that requires a degree the unskilled worker seeking construction jobs doesn’t have. Once it registered for me what BC and PBAH thought about immigration, I couldn’t help but feel that George Bush and his call for “comprehensive immigration reform” had won the immigration debate. How could my two friends overlook the billions our president has cut from education since he’s been in office? And how could they miss the economic reality that low-skilled, low pay workers are what make the American economy go round, and that if we want to change that, we’d better start getting used to paying a lot more for the cheap products and services we enjoy? The number of low-wage workers who have been coming to America for so many years so that Business can flourish has no place in the frame that BC and PBAH and the American public have so credulously adopted. This proves, yet again, the brilliance and effectiveness of frames and the cunning ingenuity of those who continue to develop and take advantage of them.

Politics and Poetry

My desk is overflowing with family and dinner and dogs, with lovers in San Francisco that send notes and blow kisses, all delivered by the moon in bouquets of sweet words that I’ve erased and emphasized and categorized since December.

The sunrays dance in my backyard and I can hear the children and the relatives knocking—tap, tap, tap, yak, yak, yak—pining to play, shop, run, or sigh. I am not too stubborn to ask “What is the meaning of all this?” or too self-righteous to wonder if I’m on track and living in God’s will or maybe in that of my Grandmother Renate, the first one to have shown me that something large, empathetic, bountiful, and forgiving does exist, even alongside tyrants, murderers, and genocidal maniacs. It was under a willow in the neighbor’s yard, the kind that wept strong branches grown to cradle a sick child left all alone in the dirt, where I began to understand life. It was under that tree, where the sun never reached and the earth was always cold, that caterpillars verified its cycle.

I went back to that tree recently. My dog had wandered off and I was searching for her along the periphery of my mother’s property. The tree’s branches had been cut short and the earth beneath was exposed and dry. Although her trunk looked naked, it was still inviting me to curl my body around and find comfort in the stillness and the sweetness of the sun baking on clean wood. I was struck by the memory of a world before cable and computers, a world even before death, when war was history and we were busy recovering, piece by piece, year by year, from our past. It reminded me of a time before I was aware of racism and bigotry. My only religion was the Constitution my father taught me. I also learned that sometimes good people did bad things, too.

My family celebrated American holidays simply because we were American. When bad memories ached from deep inside, we released the foul air slowly by pretending with spoons that we were the Pointer Sisters and by playing Ravel’s Boléro with chopsticks and spatulas. There was no sadness that “Here Comes the Sun” on the record player couldn’t fix—lying on my stomach behind the couch, ear pressed up against the speaker, my head inevitably filled with secret playground kisses that could heal any suffering.

I sat down to blog about democracy and language today, but when the tick, tick, tick of a poem rattles, there’s nothing to do but let it out. Like a branch that breaks off of a willow tree, death begets life, old becomes new, and from its memories I know I will to survive.

The Blessing and The Curse

I like to pretend that writing is my chance to exhale the world and the war, the death of media and democracy’s downfall, pretend that I can overlook the LA smog and the sadness and what tries to grab my attention on the street. When I’m writing my goal is to somehow dip sweetly into a little downtime where I can ignore the couple eating dinner at the 7/11—two greasy hot dogs that had been turning on the electric toaster grill all day—and ignore the short man in the blue jacket and the black baseball cap dropped off by the coyote he’s indebted to, even as he sits there on the corner of Reseda, not sure what town he’s in, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but sell mangos and strawberries and large sacks of oranges until his master returns and the $7,000 dollars he owes for the trip across the border is paid off. I try to take my mind far away from Washington D.C. because, after all, I really am far away from the scandal and the blood that is dripping from the hands of each and every one of those men and women who are not representing Democracy or America’s citizens. I like to think writing is my meditation, a time I can clear my mind of most everything.

Then, as I begin to write about love or nature, voices like the one of Eduardo Galeano break through somehow and I begin digressing from this meditation to the tail end of the interview I caught on Democracy Now!. On the program Eduardo Galeano wanted us to imagine what it would be like if half a million Americans, most of them women and children had been killed by foreign invaders. It would take “millenniums,” he said to forget what occurred. Well, in Iraq, we have killed nearly half a million people. Women and children. Yet here in the U.S., we routinely read the numbers of the dead and move on to the Metro section. Galeano ended the program answering a question about the role of the American people in the world today. “What should be their role, as distinct from the government’s?” he was asked. Galeano responded, “It would help to understand that the world is much more than the U.S. I mean, this is a very important country, indeed. But we are all important. We are all able to say something that deserves to be heard.”

And then I realize that this is why I write. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to forget the couple at the 7/11, or the indentured human being on the corner selling oranges. And I can’t ignore the smog in Los Angeles or the scandals and lies coming from Washington. I cherish the meaningful debate that once made up this Democracy and allowed for outrage and tough questions both in times of war and peace. So for now, I have to just keep doing what it is I seem to be unable to stop doing. Does anyone have any other suggestions for meditation?

The NSA, The 2008 Elections & You

I don’t know what is worse—that my phone company has turned over my entire phone record to the NSA without a warrant, or that the President seems to have gotten away with yet another outrageous abuse of executive power. Monday’s address from the oval office, announcing the mobilization of troops to the Mexican-American border, reminded me that the easiest way to tell if George Bush is lying is when his lips are moving.

So what are they doing with all this information? Well, two frightening scenarios surfaced yesterday that suggest possible answers to my question. The first, surprisingly, came from MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough, a Newt Gingrich Contract with America Republican. Reacting to the ABC report that the FBI had specifically seized the phone records of ABC, New York Times, and Washington Post reporters, Scarborough suggested this activity had been an effort to cover up any illegal government scandals before they hit the headlines. Scarborough’s terrifying conclusion: “Had this alleged power been used during the Nixon Administration, Deep Throat would have been exposed before Watergate erupted.”

Even more chilling was a scenario posted by BBC Journalist Greg Palast on BuzzFlash. Palast’s opinion is that they are collecting the data, ultimately, for the 2008 elections. Think about 2000 and 2004. We had massive voter machine errors, voter registration fraud, ballot irregularities, and voter suppression efforts. It kills me to write with such a conspiratorial tone, but after reading Palast’s piece, I fear that the secret collection of phone records is only part of a domestic spying program that involves the collection of data from many areas of our private lives. I can’t imagine, with all that information, what’s in store for 2008.

There is some good news. The chance that Karl Rove will last until 2008 is looking worse and worse by the minute. Rumors are rampant, but I guess we will have to wait a little longer until we can exhale and at least put the Karl Rove nightmare to bed.

The Daily WIP - an update.

When I was a teacher I woke up at six. In one hour I scrambled to feed the dogs, eat some breakfast, find something preppy and appropriate to wear, and rush to school in time for last minute preparations or corrections before classes began at eight.  Although I loved teaching, I don’t miss four o’clock exhaustion, endless grading, dreaded examinations, and parent phone calls. In the six years I spent in the classroom I forgot my dreams and the plans I once had for my future. In the  summer I wanted only to recuperate and relax.  Like a retiree in my garden, I planted vegetables and read and did nothing, always aware that fall was just around the corner.

Since leaving my teaching job, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my newfound time at my computer reading endless opinions from a variety of blogs. Between commenting on other sites and the upkeep of my own blog, I am actually starting to identify as a blogger. My daily tour includes sites like the The Nation Online and the Daily Kos.  Alternet is always reliable for finding fact filled stories and somehow, in my Google searches, I can’t stay away from The Huffington Post.

I originally started reading blogs out of frustration of the daily sensationalism and narrow range of debate offered in the newspapers I’d always respected. I turned to blogs after growing weary of the bias served up by angry men daily on the nightly news. I turned to blogs when I realized I couldn’t trust the places I’d always come to for information. On the web I found sources that are independent from corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, and PR campaigns. I found websites that provided alternatives and stories I wasn’t reading anywhere else.

However, there is now a most disappointing trend even in cyberspace. The dismal representation of women’s voices in mainstream media has found a new home in the blogosphere. For fun, as I’m writing this blog, I just checked out the numbers at two sites to prove this point. The Nation Online, where I enjoy blogs for their slightly personalized, but still journalistic, approach to writing blogs, has a current ratio of 1 to 4, with Katrina vanden Heuval as the lone regular woman. The Huffington Post is my least favorite blog. I find the site’s layout overwhelming and the quality of most pieces the equivalent to People magazine for blogs. The Huffington Post is consistently the worst representation of women’s voices in the blogosphere: 2 to 18 are featured tonight.

This continued under-representation of women in media, along with the deteriorating quality of established media sources, has challenged me to develop The Daily WIP. The Web provides the opportunity for a virtual newsroom that can report daily news stories from around the world. Although I have no proof of this (yet), the missing women’s voices may just be what are needed to lead our nation and the world out of wars and into solutions that create peace. I hope to have the beta site up for you to enjoy by September. When we are live, please support The Daily WIP in the independent media revolution.

Is the DNC stragegy really what we need?

Below is an excerpt from a letter I sent to my congressional representative this week.

As a Democrat, I write to you from a place of confusion, of concern, some despair, and much disillusionment. I write to you with hope that you can provide some reassurance to me, a Democrat foot soldier deeply troubled by this nation’s state of affairs. I am writing to you, as the 2006 elections draw near, for direction and guidance in these dark times.

I grew up in love with our country and our political system. I learned early on how to be a part of it. In 2004, I put all my energy, even energy that should have been devoted to my students, into the Kerry campaign. I brought family members with me on trips to Nevada to get out the vote. It was clear we were a part of one of the largest grassroots campaigns the Democrats had ever seen. While I appreciate the mobilization effort offered on the DNC website, I am concerned because I don’t think, as an activist, I need more mobilization tips. Rather, I am looking for a vision to guide us. Activists need the knowledge that we have leaders with whom we can identify, leaders who walk a familiar walk, talk a similar talk, and with whom we share a unified belief that being a Democrat means caring for others and improving the lives of all Americans, whether they are Republican or Democrat, brown or white, documented or not.

Looking at the party as a whole, it seems fragmented—a handful of different interests that do not sum up to any identifiable ideology. I am surprised in this time of corporate scandal and insincere and unnecessary wars that Democrats haven’t taken the opportunity to make a distinction between honest politics and thievery.

My deepest fear is that I have been naively idealistic about the moral fiber and character of this country. After all, we conquered the Native Americans for this land and built our economy with slaves from Africa. This unsettling history has been particularly disturbing in light of the immigration marches last Monday, and the millions of voices that day demanding to be treated with dignity and respect. With piracy and abuse part of our history, is it beyond us to treat others with dignity and respect in the present?

I  hope you will help me by providing some clarity and reassurance from Washington. The promises I hear from our leaders on Sunday morning talk-shows ring empty and do very little to convince me that Democrats have a vision and are actively working to implement it. I hope you will respond to all or any portion of this letter and give me some hope that Democrats are doing all they can to fight for freedom and peace in America and abroad.

Westly or Angelides - you decide

Wednesday night’s gubernatorial debate between Phil Angelides and Steve Westly, sponsored by The California League of Conservation Voters, illustrated the slim pickings and disappointing choices for the Democrats in June’s primary election. I am guilty of not paying much attention to California politics. Too often I’ve relied on organizations like the CLCV when deciding how to vote. Maybe this apathy was why I was so surprised by Wednesday night’s performance. After each candidate made his closing remarks and the applause had subsided, I turned to the woman sitting next to me and shared my thoughts. “If this is all the Democrats have to offer, we’re screwed.”

From my seat in the auditorium at the Museum of Tolerance, I was able to determine a winner, but it was more like watching a torturous 1-0 baseball game, and not because the pitching was great. Each candidate had one dominant sound bite he mind-numbingly returned to, even when the point had nothing to do with the questions that were supposed to direct this debate. One wanted to paint the other as a dangerous real-estate developer with a history of paving this great state in concrete at whatever cost. The other candidate wanted to portray his opponent’s allegiances to Governor Schwarzenegger as costly and problematic. Both claimed they would make California a “green” leader, but didn’t offer much about how they would make this a reality. One candidate sounded very Republican in the amount of times he swore he would not raise taxes. The other candidate made repeated claims to his record in all areas of the debate. In his final testimony he slightly altered his tune and stated “I have a real record in this area.”  Were all the other claims “unreal” records?

This debate was constant bickering—a no-holds-barred attempt at tarnishing the opponent’s public image in a fashion neither savvy nor interesting, and, more often than not, off topic. To top it off, one candidate has invested 20 million of his own money in this campaign, while the other candidate has received 41 percent of his campaign funds from developers – two fundraising practices not at all comforting for voters tired of big money and corruption.

 As the candidates’ lips kept moving, the room around me momentarily fell silent and my thoughts drifted to what a female candidate would bring to this debate. I am not talking about a haughty, over-ambitious type female, but a woman with the principled incisiveness of, say, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and, perhaps, the intelligence and reach of Susan Sontag. The philosophical depth of Hannah Arendt would be comforting, especially alongside a commitment to truth comparable to Simon Weil.

 Before the debate, I was really hoping one of the candidates would embody a stage presence, something similar to the grace and dignity of Oprah Winfrey. What naïveté! These are just my thoughts, of course. Be sure to check the CLCV website for today’s television re-broadcast of this debate so you can make the decision for yourself.

The Great American Boycott 2006

On Monday my sister and I took to the streets of Los Angeles to document history. We walked miles, pedaled boulevards, marched routes and sang songs of protest in solidarity with all immigrants that came out on May 1^st. Despite the lower figures reported in the LA Times, I am certain there were at least a million people on the streets that day.

CNN anchors like Jack Cafferty and Lou Dobbs would like us to believe that the march was meaningless—thousands of contemptible illegal human beings wanting more than they deserve. I am a citizen and so is the housekeeper with whom I spent the morning marching down Broadway. I met others who are not citizens, but whose children are fighting in the United States Military in Iraq. I heard stories of students who came to this country as infants and whose temporary residence status will expire when they graduate from high school this spring. Children without Social Security do not qualify for student aid and must make the decision between staying here in the United States and skipping college, or going back to study in their countries of origin at the expense of possibly never seeing their families again. I saw Teamsters and police officers, politicians and teachers, DJ’s and singers, religious figures and entire families, marching for a human solution to the complex problem of undocumented workers in the United States. Everyone carried flags – red for courage, white for purity, and blue for justice.

Size matters. The simultaneous work stoppages on Monday brought our two ports, Long Beach and Los Angeles, to a near standstill. Our Central Valley fields were emptied of farmworkers. There was an unprecedented unity among employers and employees, including growers who demonstrated their solidarity with idle tractors and farm equipment left alongside Highway 101 in silent protest. The farmworkers on Monday created the largest agricultural work stoppage on record in California, even greater than the Grape Strike of 1973.

At the end of the day, after Mayor Villaraigosa and Dolores Huerta, after the sun had begun its western descent below the horizon, after “If I Had a Hammer” and several prayers, when we began to notice the distance we had walked in our calves and thighs, my sister and I packed our cameras and backpacks and got on our bicycles and headed home down an empty and quiet Wilshire Boulevard.