las meditaciones de victoria

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.

Love & Life - Reflections at 32

I met a young industrialist in the Santa Ynez Valley who donates a portion of his proceeds to charity. I immediately wanted to find out if he speaks Spanish and if he wanted to go on a date. His face is printed in my memory of that lunch, the afternoon I met him at his burrito stand. All he said was, “What can I get for you?” My thoughts went to children, life on a ranch where lovers kiss between the grapevines and beneath oak trees, where women ride horses and children grow up working hard. Where life is about life—it’s straight and clear like the sun rising and setting one time each day.

I have memories of a home on the range. Of amber grain, of diesel trucks and Wrangler jeans, of carpenters that make magic with concrete and construct canopies out of cars, that kayak on Saturday and take chances with the truth; of a man who listens to female vocals and Toots in Memphis and thinks I’m handsome, like architecture or some simple pine cabinet made from the only tree to fall by my chainsaw that summer. I fed him Pepsi as he cut the beams out of one hundred years of growth. I had no tan lines that summer, sunning naked by the stream under the redwoods. Back then I was nubile and young. I was only 20 and ready to marry a mountain man. How different it all would have turned out. I may never have gone to Mexico or lived in LA. I may never have started my business or adopted my dogs. I may never have had my heart broken, only to discover a dream inside. Lying naked in the sun on those warm rocks by the river, I may never have found myself or my life.

Before I take out the stationary to write a note for Santa Ynez, I sit in the innocence of my young self. Instead of slipping back, I clarify and quantify and qualify and can never seem to find myself in love again. He orders a steak. I prefer fish. We laugh. I go home to my house and he goes back to his and I lay down with the big black dog at my feet and the small white one by my ear and the sun sets and we wait for it to rise again.

Maintain Net Neutrality—Get our reps on the phone today!

Do you want your dial-up back? Are you ready to give up the relative ease with which you can click a button and watch that interview you missed last Wednesday on the Colbert Report? How would you feel if your Internet service provider charged you extra to send emails at high speed? Can you imagine a world where Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN were the only news websites available on the Web? The Internet as we know it just may be coming to an end for the ordinary citizen.

Unless you fall under the categories of corporation, special interest group, or major advertiser, the quality of service and diversity of content you’ve grown accustomed to on the Internet is at stake. The future includes preferential treatment that costs money—and that’s more money than you or I can afford. Legislation that preserves network neutrality, or equal service to all Internet customers, is threatened. Phone and cable companies hope to alter what is currently operated as a public trust by turning the Internet into a private investment. Their lobbyists are in Washington now, engaged in a take-no-prisoners campaign to weaken national communications policy laws. Not only does that mean that the conveniences I enjoy today on the Internet may not be available to me in the future—like the new Bruce Springsteen album I downloaded today—it means all the content I rely on for my research and work, alternative media like Democracy Now! and blogs like Daily Kos, could all be relegated to a slow lane of service, or simply shut out, unless they are able to pony up the same amount as the large media conglomerates outbidding for my hits. 

At SAVE THE INTERNET.COM, you can join a coalition of grassroots organizations, bloggers, and concerned citizens that have come together to preserve Internet freedom. There you can link to your congressperson or senator and speak out now before net neutrality becomes a thing of the past.

We Shall Overcome

In the Calendar section of Friday’s LA Times, Richard Cromelin criticizes Bruce Springsteen for “declining the opportunity to add his voice to the rising chorus of pop music that’s commenting on current events” in his new album, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.” This tribute album contains 13 songs associated with Pete Seeger, including a reinterpretation of “We Shall Overcome.” The front page of the Calendar also features Neil Young’s new album, “Living With War,” a collection of songs that directly assail the President and explicitly call for his impeachment. 

Artists like Neil Young face an uphill battle in the post-ClearChannel world and the chances that his songs get through the ClearChannel censors are slim. Neil knows that, but he’s fed up and he’s choosing to keep on rocking in the ex-free world. I think Richard Cromelin has overlooked the brilliance of Bruce Springsteen’s choice to both leave Seeger’s most confrontational work out of the tribute and to refrain from direct commentary on the War and Bush. As a result, we may actually hear music from the new album on the radio. 

In all the anti-war rallies I’ve attended, at some point I’ve had the urge jump on stage, grab a microphone and start leading the crowd in “We Shall Overcome.” It’s a simple song that moved millions through the civil rights marches of the 1960’s. It was translated into Spanish and encouraged farmworkers to keep moving as they marched the 340 miles along California’s Highway Five to the State Capital of Sacramento during the grape strikes. It was sung in South Africa in the later part of the anti-apartheid movement and in the 1980’s was translated in Hindi and became a patriotic song in India. A new version from The Boss needs to be heard on the radio because it may be just what we need to give us hope. Hope for freedom. Hope for brotherhood and sisterhood. Hope for unity. Hope for an America without fear. Hope for an America without war. Hope that we shall overcome someday.

Certain Fear

Today’s 100^th anniversary pictures of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake remind me of the terror of an earthquake’s wrath. After experiencing several earthquakes, including San Francisco in 1989, I often wonder why a fear of earthquakes is absent from my daily life. I don’t worry when the ground will open up beneath me, or what I would do if a tree or nearby building were to fall. Instead, I fear suicide bombings and our President. I fear resentment and the United States’ role in upsetting the entire Middle East. I fear retribution and events that will inflict suffering on both Bush supporters and those of us who have been anti-war since September 11, 2001.

I knew someone at the World Trade Center that day, my twin sister’s good friend Felicia. All that is left of her now are memories. Like the cold Brooklyn morning when I couldn’t get out of bed, the heaviness of my early twenties particularly burdensome. Instead of trying to pull me out of my weariness, Felicia hung out with me under the covers, sharing stories and laughing instead of getting me up and about as we had planned. There was also one night when she and my sister were visiting my apartment in Washington Heights. I asked them to pick up some salmon for dinner at Citarella’s. “Be sure to get enough” I implored. They picked up an entire salmon, head and all, and we laughed all night crafting stories we were supposed to enjoy for years to come. Stories about how they transported the fish all the way from 72^nd to 181^st street on the subway and across Bennet Park, only to discover that under no circumstances would a creature that size fit in my oven.

Looking this morning at pictures of San Francisco leveled 100 years ago, I remember Felicia’s face among the thousands, her picture held up by her husband for a news camera to see. I know why I don’t fear earthquakes yet continue to live in fear of new terror attacks. I believe there is an uncertainty to fault lines and plate tectonics that doesn’t match the inevitability of terror created by the war in the Middle East. As a nation, we’ve taken sympathy from around the world and manipulated it into a conquest for oil and territory in the name of victims like Felicia. The recent report that George Bush now feels it is his legacy to overthrow the government of Iran is a clear picture of what we can expect under his leadership – a future filled with fear of retribution.

I Need a Miracle (or a Life!)

I spent last week in New York for business. On Thursday evening I was heading down Broadway, my target—Amy Goodman. I was going to see her for the first time, hoping to steal a moment after her presentation where I could hand deliver a letter with information about my new website, The Daily WIP.

At 74^th   Street I passed a mass of Deadheads doing the dead walk up and down the block in front of the Beacon Theater. Ratdog was in concert through the weekend. My feet were aching inside my inexpensive heels and my body was perspiring over previously dried layers of sweat, all intensified by the synthetic material of my work outfit. I barely glanced at the dirty locks meandering across the street, silent fingers waving in the air—the universal Dead declaration for “I need a miracle.”  In other words, a free ticket. My computer bag, tugging at my shoulder, held the neatly typed letter I had stored in a secure compartment alongside my Dell. I thought to myself, “Those fools don’t need a miracle, they need a life!” I’m not sure what kind of life I wished upon the concert-goers lying in wait outside the Beacon. It couldn’t possibly be the isolated, lonely, wrought with insecurity, coupled with ego-mania, world I live in.

Amy Goodman’s presentation at PS 199 horrified me with statistics, like how the Clear Channel monopoly on our airwaves actually has obscene policies that prohibit any radio station from airing songs that contain the world “WAR.” After the presentation, I placed the letter in Amy’s hand, smiled, and unknowingly prayed for a miracle of my own when I begged her to read it.

It was well after nine and it was the end of an exhausting New York day. I decided to treat myself to Josie’s up on Amsterdam, but the place was so busy that I was banished to the sidewalk with an oversized beeper that was intended to notify me of an open table. While standing out there, I realized the entire block to the north of Josie’s was the side wall of the Beacon Theater. I walked toward a doorway that only opened from the inside and realized I could hear the music through the crack in between door’s two panels. I closed my eyes and my body slipped into that old feeling of getting lost in drum space. I danced slow enough to remember how long it’s been since Jerry died.

The sound of the side door opening shook me out of my brief trance and a man ran out of the theater. I quickly jumped through the space in the wall just before the door slammed flush against the concrete. I took the beeper and stuffed it in my purse and ran down to the stage just in time for New Speedway Boogie.

One way or another this darkness got to give…and I promised myself to never again stop believing in miracles.