White Courtesy Telephone

Unaccompanied Minors in Detention

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Given the current national debate on immigration, and given how little things have changed for unaccompanied minors in the past seven years, the WCT editors are republishing this October 2007 post written by WCT contributor Albert Ruesga shortly after his  visit to a detention center in Phoenix.

The mood in House 5 is somber.  Eight children ranging in age from 14 to 17, three of them girls, sit patiently as a young lawyer reviews their rights.  Several days or weeks earlier, the children, unaccompanied by family members, had been arrested along different parts of the U.S.–Mexico border attempting the dangerous crossing.  They were fleeing the poverty of their home countries.  They had come for work or to be reunited with their parents.

“How many of you are from El Salvador?” the lawyer asks them in Spanish.  Four children raise their hands.  “How many from Guatemala?”  Three more hands go up.

One young boy who looks a little taller and fairer than the others explains as best he can that he’s Romani—a Gypsy—but also speaks a little Romanian.  The advocate assures him he’ll be briefed later that day in his own language.  The boy neither smiles nor frowns, but folds his arms and looks past the pink and blue curtains into the brightly lit courtyard outside the window.  His eyes focus on a distant point as he struggles to piece together the meanings of the few words of Spanish he can recognize.

*                    *                    *

The children’s detention center in Phoenix is a series of squat, cinder block buildings with an adjoining soccer field and a small swimming pool, surrounded by a large metal fence.  The facility is managed by Southwest Key Programs, an Austin-based nonprofit.  Staff members, most of them women, do their best to care for the 130 children in their charge.

One of the most striking aspects of this facility is the complete absence of any Mexican children.  According to Aryah Somers, a staff attorney with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, there’s an agreement between Mexico and the United States that all Mexican nationals apprehended at the border will be immediately returned.  According to some reports, after being handed over to Mexican authorities, unaccompanied children have been dropped off in border towns in the middle of the night and left to fend for themselves.* Before coming to this facility, non-Mexican children might have spent days or even weeks in border jails.

Only two countries—the United States and Somalia—have failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

*                    *                    * 

The walls of House 5 are painted a dark blue and decorated with colorful maps and children’s drawings: a brown vase filled with shimmering red tulips; a bay of impossibly blue water surrounded by mountains; a young vagabond in a bright green sweater carrying a bundle on a stick.  In one corner, there’s a cardboard model of a steamboat painted pink and white, with orange trim.  A sign on the wall explains the etiquette of Reporting to the Teacher: look at the teacher, stay cool, tell what you saw, answer the teacher’s questions, say “thank you.”

A brightly painted phoenix hovers above the common area where the eight children sit quietly, listening to the advocate describe their rights.  Two of the young girls sit together, supporting one another; a third sits apart.  Five boys are spread evenly across two long sofas.

“How many of you know what human trafficking is?” asks the advocate.  The children stare at her blankly, so she explains the concept by telling the story of a young girl who asks a coyote to help her cross the border.  The coyote charges five thousand pesos, an impossible sum, but the young girl is able to scrape together a thousand pesos, promising to pay the rest later.  Unfortunately, the border crossing is botched and the young girl is arrested.  After some time spent in detention, she’s released into the custody of an aunt who’s a naturalized U.S. citizen.  The coyote telephones the young girl, demanding his four thousand pesos.  “But I was arrested!” she protests.  He’s unmoved and threatens to kill her family unless she pays.  He gives her a way out: he has a job for her, he says.  So she gratefully accepts the offer—after all, she had come to the United States to find work.  Things go well at first.  But soon she finds that no matter how hard she works, it’s impossible to reduce her debt to the coyote.  She thought she’d be working for a family, but instead finds herself in a house filled with strange men who abuse her.

The children’s eyes are glued to the sweet-faced advocate, their hands at their sides or folded on their laps.  None of them volunteers his or her story—this isn’t the time, and it’s always better not to say too much.

*                    *                    * 

I’m moved by what I see at the detention center, but even more by what I imagine these children suffered before they attempted their journey to el Norte.  I think of the struggles of children in my own country who grow up in extreme poverty, in surroundings that slowly wear away at their sense of self-worth.  I wonder how the young children in the detention center—some of whom never received a formal education—understand anything as abstract as a “right.”

What goes through their minds when the advocate shows them laminated photographs of the courtroom in which they’ll have their first hearing? of the kindly judge who speaks no Spanish? of the other judge who “has no hair and is a little more serious”?

I wonder about the national boundaries that none of us had a role in creating.  Can it be possible for our moral responsibility to extend as far as Brownsville, but no further south?

-----

* I have not been able to confirm these reports.

Image source: The Medical Journal of Australia

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Central American Minors Pushed North by Poverty, Violence, Hopes for Refuge

Just Out: Wage Theft Comic Book

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Interfaith Worker Justice is a national organization that engages faith communities to support and advance the rights of workers.  The organization has just produced an accessible “wage theft” comic book, in both English and Spanish, that helps bring this issue to life.

You can download or order copies of the comic book by clicking here.

 

Cooks Gone Wild!

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Leslie Lilly is the immediate past President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties.  Her professional career spans more than twenty-five years in the charitable sector, primarily in the American South and Appalachia. In this guest post, Ms. Lilly breaks with White Courtesy Telephone tradition by appearing intelligent and balanced.  —Eds.

There is a price to pay for willful ignorance sustained at someone else’s expense.  Paula Deen will have a long time to consider what she might have done better or differently, or perhaps stopped doing altogether, in the aftermath of the bad kitchen behaviors that are now public record.  Her fans as well as her detractors are in full-throated defense or condemnation, depending at which end of the table they have chosen to sit.  

The public uproar started when Deen went on video for a court deposition.  A former employee in one of her restaurants filed a lawsuit accusing Deen of employment discrimination.  The deposition had the same flavor as a cook show episode, albeit a very different topic.  Deen was her flamboyant self; her cup of folksiness ran over as she described at length her racial attitudes.  It was quite a performance.  She owned up to her naughtiness at having used the “N” word, expressing her regret and sorrow and that she never meant to hurt anyone.  She was sorry, sorry, sorry.  She loves black people.  

Well, all hell broke loose.  There have been more television interviews, more apologies, explanations and tears.  Yet the more Deen talks and tries to negotiate her way out of this briar patch, the more excruciating her anguished protests of repentance become.  She’s been seared like a steak by the public shaming.  The charitable-minded have come forth and counseled against an excess of blame, i.e., “those without guilt should cast the first stone.”  These outpourings of humility must account for Deen’s latest cookbook rocketing to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list.  So when will we be done?  

Some say, because she is not a young woman, we should forgive her white, “old school,” Southern way of talking about race.  She has suffered a painful comeuppance, including the loss of millions in product endorsements; and though misguided, her comments weren’t intentionally nasty, just like utterances we’ve heard from other nice people we know.  Why, heck, some of them are even our relatives!  Meanwhile, others who - listened to what she said, saw hoop skirts and Massa’s plantation resurrected before their horrified eyes.  These are the people who do not think it would be fun is re-live the 19th Century, especially in the South.  To them, Deen’s racial attitudes were simply offensive.

Deen is a savvy entrepreneur who has successfully capitalized on Southern culture and culinary heritage by making “Southern” the heart of her brand; so she isn’t just dishing up fried chicken and collard greens when she is promoting her business.  She is selling a version of an “authentic” South for which she is the star spokesperson. When you go out on that limb, you own it.  When she says Southern white folk are less prejudiced toward black people than others she is too polite to name, she does so with the credibility of someone divulging a family secret as if it’s the gospel truth to her millions of trusted fans.  She defends her racial attitudes, saying all Southern white people have this “special” relationship with black folk because their shared history is deeply and commonly rooted in the South.  This white chauvinism conveniently ignores the pain and suffering endured by blacks as Southern slaves. Deen’s great-great-great-great grandfather was a slaveholder.  Had this “special” relationship been internalized in Deen’s narrative, a more racially sensitive perspective might have emerged to also change her behaviors.  It would have helped had they also been enlightened by her modern reference to the two hundred years of struggle by African-Americans to achieve racial equity in this country.  It is terribly painful to witness someone so deeply out of touch with the arc of their own Southern history; and who has given so little thought to the harm it does to infect others with old deceits.  

The civil rights movement ended Jim Crow, the segregation in our public schools, and won the right to vote for millions of disenfranchised African-Americans.  This past June, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act; the George Zimmerman trial got started; and a hard-fought battle for a comprehensive immigration bill took place in the U.S. Senate.  We are not living in a post-racial society.  Deen’s fall from grace is a reminder of how easy it is to lose your way when your brain disconnects from its moral compass; or, in another painful episode of same, given the gravity of the Zimmerman trial, is it ever appropriate to tell a knock-knock joke when lives are lost and at stake?

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China to the West: Pay No Attention to Those Corpses Behind Our Bilateral Trade Agreements

So, this past Friday in Oslo, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was barred by Chinese authorities from attending the ceremony at which he would have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Here are three takes on the same non-event where concerned Westerners wrung their hands and lamented the state of human rights in China:

1. From the New York Times:

Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, [adds] that China [needs] to learn that with economic power [comes] social and political responsibility.

“We can to a certain degree say that China with its 1.3 billion people is carrying mankind’s fate on its shoulders,” Mr. Jagland said in a speech at the [Nobel Peace Prize] ceremony. “If the country proves capable of developing a social market economy with full civil rights, this will have a huge favorable impact on the world.”

Translation: I’m convinced we’re screwed unless we find a way to rationalize trade with the Chinese.  But the human rights Liu Xiaobo is fighting for are a moral issue not an economic one.  I will therefore split the baby by invoking the notion of a “social market economy,” the Middle Way between socialism and capitalism.  That way we can have our almond cake and eat it too.

Getting a recalcitrant population to acquiesce to a market economy on the state’s terms is a gentleman’s game requiring a delicate touch not an iron fist.  And China is being, well, gauche, n’est-ce pas?

2. From Congresswoman Pelosi’s speech on the House floor:

“Today, the House of Representatives is congratulating Liu Xiaobo on the Nobel Peace Prize and sending a clear message of support for human rights and democracy in China. We do this in recognition of the importance of the relationship between China and the United States, that we have many issues where we have common ground or where should seek common ground. But all of that is better served by candor in our friendship and not ignoring sore spots.

“We continue to call for Liu Xiaobo’s immediate and unconditional release, and for the Chinese government to listen to the many Chinese citizens who are calling for human rights and freedom in China.”

Translation:  I can safely refer to the most egregious abuses of human rights—the denial of basic freedoms, the jailing of thousands of dissidents and their families, and the torture of Falun Gong members—as “sore spots” because the American public isn’t paying attention and half of them wouldn’t be able to locate China on a map anyway. 

So, who’s mixing the martinis? 

Editor’s note:  Before we move on, I need to get this off my chest: It’s a mystery to me why our leaders bother with these effete upbraidings.  After all, by many accounts, our policy of constructive engagement with China has been enormously successful.  Over the past several decades we’ve learned some important lessons from the Chinese about denying due process and using state-sponsored torture to strengthen national security.  And while the US government does not control the media, we’ve succeeded in concentrating ownership of it into the hands of an ever-smaller fraternity of elites.  China, for its part, has embraced capitalism and is deeply grateful for an American public sated by its purchases of cheap Chinese goods.  Not too long ago, China Security and Surveillance Technology, a company that installs surveillance systems for the Chinese security apparatus, was the first Chinese company to join the New York Stock Exchange.  According to Terence Yap, then-vice chairman and chief financial officer:

his company’s software made it possible for security cameras to count the number of people in crosswalks and alert the police if a crowd forms at an unusual hour, a possible sign of an unsanctioned protest.

Sounds like a growth industry to me, both in China and in the West, as an increasingly restive population begins to form crowds at unusual hours in unsanctioned places for allegedly nefarious purposes.

3.  Stay away from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, urges China.  Here’s its officially sanctioned rationalization:

Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Dec. 25, 2009, after a Beijing court convicted him of violating Chinese law and engaging in activities aimed at overthrowing the government.

“We urge relevant U.S. lawmakers to stop their wrongdoing on this issue, change their arrogant and rude attitude and show due respect for the Chinese people and China’s judicial sovereignty,” said Jiang.

... Jiang said earlier that more than 100 countries and international organizations had expressed support for China's stance.

“Justice lies in the heart of the people,” said Jiang.

This man Liu is a convicted criminal for God’s sake!

China is betting that world leaders will be more concerned about their own hold on power than about the ultimate disposition of their immortal souls.  The argument seems to have worked for at least 19 countries and sent a frisson of terror through many more, judging from the anemic statements coming out of Oslo.

Meanwhile, let's enjoy those everyday low, low prices while we still can.

Hey, President Obama: Lose the Strut!

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From the Philadelphia Daily News via The Field Negro:

IT WAS BASEBALL pioneer Satchel Paige who warned: “Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.”

In the wake of the midterm elections, that’s one bit of advice that President Obama would do well to follow. If his presidency is to survive, he must look forward and must begin to make changes now.

But exactly what should Obama do, and how and why? ...

Lose the strut …. The president has a way of pushing himself up on the balls of his feet as he walks. I call it “the strut,” and I suspect I’m not alone in finding it off-putting.

Hear that, you Democratic handlers? Better get busy!  If you want my man to be re-elected in 2012, you had better start polishing up that Brand Obama now.  First thing you want to do is help him lose that uppity strut, that confident “I’m the President of the United States” walk that seems to be annoying so many people.  Maybe try dressing him in camo and getting him a guest appearance on that eight-part mini-series TLC is donating to the Palin for President campaign.  Have him shoot a large Alaskan mammal—and be sure to script him, nothing over two syllables: something like, “Gummint will never take away my right to kill me this big-ass moose.”  Whatever you do, don’t let him be photographed stooping over some rabbit turd of a tarball in Prince William Sound!  You dig?

All right.  Re-electalicious!

Hurry! Big Pol Sale Ends November 2nd!

… But there’s still plenty of influence to be bought at everyday low, low prices!

While the Citizens United Supreme Court decision might have set back the efforts of advocates working to introduce democracy to the United States, it had the beneficial effect of creating a new market for the buying and selling of political influence.  This is a great boon to those of us concerned about our sagging GDP.

The polling stations will close November 2nd, but don’t worry if you miss this window of opportunity.  Our still-tepid lobbying rules make it perpetual open season on members of Congress. Even Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D., District of Columbia), who hasn’t faced a serious political challenger in years, has given lobbyists the “come hither.” According to a report in the October 18, 2010, issue of the National Review:

The “chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management”—as she described herself—called a lobbyist who had given to her “other colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee,” but not to her.  And she was puzzled.  “I was, frankly, uh, uh, surprised to see that we don’t have a record, so far as I can tell, of your having given to me despite my, uh, long and deep, uh, work,” ... “In fact … my major work … it’s been essentially in your sector.”

I would fire the lobbyist not only for this oversight but also for failing to help the members of this Subcommittee draft their legislation.  As we learned from the Corrections Corporation of America’s work in Arizona, simply lining the pockets of legislators is not a vigorous enough exercise of our free speech rights.

A Message for Ben Bernanke

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My friend Rick Hohensee is back.  He’s single and a Virgo, and you can visit him at his MySpace page or in front of the Treasury building in Washington, DC.  As for his credit line proposal, perhaps Rick can offer his talent for satire as collateral.  I believe the expression is “Oh, snap” …

Raising Awareness of Our Awareness of Darfur

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The Darfurians “don't know the significance of the fact that Matt Damon is worried about them.”

Get ready to hit the mute button when the Dewars commercials come on.  Otherwise enjoy this Washington Week-style satire from our friends at The Onion.  Happy Thanksgiving! ...

Innovations in Fundraising: Spinning Straw Men into Gold

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The October 20th New York Times brought us this item*:

After Rush Limbaugh referred to Iraq war veterans critical of the war as “phony soldiers,” the CEO of Clear Channel Communications, the parent company of Mr. Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, received a letter of complaint signed by 41 Democratic senators. Mr. Limbaugh decided to auction the letter, which he described as “this glittering jewel of colossal ignorance,” for charity, and he pledged to match the price, dollar for dollar.

On Thursday night, Mr. Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host, said he thought the letter would bring in as much as $1 million. He was wrong.

When the eBay auction closed yesterday afternoon, the winning bid was $2.1 million. It is the largest amount ever paid for an item sold on eBay to benefit a charity.

The money will go to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation Inc., a nonprofit organization in New Jersey that provides scholarships and other assistance to families of marines and federal law enforcement officials who die or are wounded in the line of duty. Mr. Limbaugh is a director of the organization, which had total revenues of $5.2 million last year.

Having made his own fortune by underestimating the intelligence of the American public, it was only a matter of time before Mr. Limbaugh would explore new markets.  People will pay top dollar, apparently, for the artifacts of boneheaded self-righteousness.

Mr. Limbaugh’s action suggests a new frontier for fundraisers.  Can the indicted members of nonprofit and foundation boards  make it up to their disgraced organizations by auctioning off their arrest warrants, for example, or their prison dungarees?  Suppose the housekeeper who dusts Alberto Gonzalez’s empty office (Mary, are you reading this?) were to donate to the ACLU the series of memos establishing the United States as a nation that tortures.  How much would these fetch on eBay?

Some of you will recall that several years ago, Mr. Limbaugh’s housekeeper, Wilma Cline, approached Florida authorities to reveal that she had acted as his drug buyer for years, illegally purchasing more than 30,000 painkillers.  Perhaps Mr. Limbaugh would consider auctioning off the court briefs that helped him avoid prosecution, or the master recording of the radio show in which he called defenders of medical marijuana “potheads.”

My advice to fundraisers: Hop on this gravy train as quickly as possible.  The bottom will fall out of the market once consumers realize the tokens of human folly and vice are in liberal supply.

_____

* “Critical Letter to Limbaugh Fetches $2 Million,” by Stephanie Strom.

Children in Detention

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The mood in House 5 is somber.  Eight children ranging in age from 14 to 17, three of them girls, sit patiently as a young lawyer reviews their rights.  Several days or weeks earlier, the children, unaccompanied by family members, had been arrested at different parts of the U.S.–Mexico border attempting the dangerous crossing.  They were fleeing the poverty of their home countries.  They had come for work or to be reunited with their parents.

“How many of you are from El Salvador?” the lawyer asks them in Spanish.  Four children raise their hands.  “How many from Guatemala?”  Three more hands go up.

One young boy who looks a little taller and fairer than the others explains as best he can that he’s Romani—a Gypsy—but also speaks a little Romanian.  The advocate assures him he’ll be briefed later that day in his own language.  The boy neither smiles nor frowns, but folds his arms and looks past the pink and blue curtains into the brightly lit courtyard outside the window.  His eyes focus on a distant point as he struggles to piece together the meanings of the few words of Spanish he can recognize.

*          *          *

The children’s detention center in Phoenix is a series of squat, cinder block buildings with an adjoining soccer field and a small swimming pool, surrounded by a large metal fence.  The facility is managed by Southwest Key Programs, an Austin-based nonprofit.  Staff members, most of them women, do their best to care for the 130 children in their charge.

One of the most striking aspects of this facility is the complete absence of any Mexican children.  According to Aryah Somers, a staff attorney with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, there’s a “gentleman’s agreement” between Mexico and the United States that all Mexican nationals apprehended at the border will be immediately returned to Mexico.  According to reports, it’s common for unaccompanied children to be dropped off in Mexican border towns in the middle of the night and left to fend for themselves.

Before coming to this facility, non-Mexican children might have spent days or even weeks in border jails.  Children have reported being deliberately mistreated while in Border Patrol custody.  According to the Florence Project, these children

are handcuffed, forced to sleep on the floor without blankets or pillows, denied medical treatment, and verbally and physically abused.  Children report that they are given only one piece of bread in the morning and a small taco at night, and then punished when they say they are hungry and ask for more food.

It’s worth noting here that only two countries—the United States and Somalia—have failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

*          *          *

Business As Usual For The NYSE

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Where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself.     —Mao Zedong

1.

From “An Opportunity for Wall St. in China’s Surveillance Boom” in the September 11 New York Times:

Li Runsen, the powerful technology director of China’s ministry of public security, is best known for leading Project Golden Shield, China’s intensive effort to strengthen police control over the Internet.

But last month Mr. Li took an additional title: director for China Security and Surveillance Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies, jails and banks, among other customers. The company has just been approved for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company’s listing and Mr. Li’s membership on its board are just the latest signs of ever-closer ties among Wall Street, surveillance companies and the Chinese government’s security apparatus.

Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police.

According to Terence Yap, vice chairman and chief financial officer of China Security and Surveillance Technology:

his company’s software made it possible for security cameras to count the number of people in crosswalks and alert the police if a crowd forms at an unusual hour, a possible sign of an unsanctioned protest.

2.

The New York Stock Exchange Foundation supports programs that:

help to achieve equality for all people by promoting civil rights, inclusiveness and respect for people’s differences …

It’s a good thing the Foundation only funds these programs in New York.

_____

Image source: The Age

Dixie’s Science Roundup: Artificial Life, Artificial Societies, and Poverty Traps

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The Associated Press reported recently that we’re three to ten years from creating artificial life.  Science writer Seth Borenstein cites three major hurdles that we must first overcome:

A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

If I may be permitted to paraphrase, what stands in the way of creating an artificial cell that can transport materials in and out of its cell wall, reproduce, and metabolize is the creation of a cell that can transport materials in and out of its cell wall, reproduce, and metabolize.

Not to worry Seth: we’ve all had to write under deadline.  At least your article has the ring of scientific truth.

Seth didn’t tell us that scientists plan to introduce these artificial cells into a synthetic Earth currently under development outside Los Alamos.  By adding special growth factors, they hope to coax these cells to quickly evolve into higher life forms that will understand the “impracticality” of banning Islam.

While biologists are pondering Seth’s tautologies, Joshua Epstein is busy modeling societies in silico.  Epstein has shown that by using colored dots on a grid to represent various human agents, and programming these agents with a few very simple rules, he can model complicated social phenomena like rebellion against a central authority and ethnic cleansing.

Epstein is currently modeling a community of nonprofit consultants who turn on one another during an especially severe shortage of flipchart paper.

Finally, in a recent Scientific American opinion piece, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, asks what we can learn from the geographic distribution of poverty.

Poverty is most strongly correlated with areas of the globe that struggle with low food production because of irregular rainfall, degraded land, and other factors.  Some parts of the world, like the tropics, are home to diseases more easily controlled in temperate areas.  A region’s physical isolation can also abet poverty by limiting access to sea-based trade.

According to Sachs, these geographic deficits produce “poverty traps,” areas in which humans struggle to subsist.  While these poverty traps tax human endurance, Sachs is convinced targeted investments can overcome them, and at “surprisingly low cost.”

Clearly Dr. Sachs is convinced that wealth is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.*

_____

* Thanks to Woody Allen for this conceit.

Clergy Response Teams Render Unto Caesar

WCT roving reporter Rachel Tension is covering this late-breaking item about the federal government’s training of clergy to quell dissent by citing Romans 13 during martial law.  Blogger Sally Wilde is following the story from WCT’s Colorado office …

Sally:  What’s the mood in Shreveport, Rachel?

Rachel:  It’s business as usual, Sally, people are shopping mostly.  Earlier today I interviewed John Blanchard, chief minister at Saint Eulalia’s here in Shreveport.  Father Blanchard told me he had trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, with a group of clergy who were subsequently deployed to secret CIA camps to (quote) help the faithful find solace in the moments before they experienced an accidental death.  I’ll have more on that later.  Back to you, Sally …

_____

Image source: No Utopia

Many thanks to bUM fREE for the tip.

Highway Robbery: Notes on the RS 2477 Land Grab

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I.  Enemies of the Motoring Public

As I drag my way out of a week in the Sierras and crawl up the nearest magazine rack, my vision obscured by hovering midges, I discover in the July/August issue of Mother Jones that I’ve been framed as an elitist enemy of the motoring public, a bugbear of the “non-hiking people.”*

A little known law, Revised Statute 2477, passed in 1866 to encourage development by granting rights-of-way on publicly owned lands, is being used by Washington-hating local officials and big industry lobbyists to stake road claims all over the western states.  Trails inside of wilderness areas and national parks are not exempt.

According to San Juan County (Utah) commissioner Lynn Stevens, who is championing an RS 2477 claim on a canyon leading to scenic Angel Arch, “These are cherished, beloved places among [local residents]. … It’s elitist to say if you can’t hike, you’re not entitled to have that beauty.”

The Bush administration is supporting many local claims, despite the fact that the feds are technically the defendants in these cases.

II.  The Big Gubmint Lockout

Last year, according to the Mother Jones article, the Blue Ribbon Coalition, “the voice of the American off-road rider,” sponsored an ad

featuring a trio of cigar-chomping gangsters aiming Tommy guns and wearing slouch hats labeled “Sierra Club” and “Wilderness Society.”  The headline read, “These guys wanna rub you out!  Their racket is to lock you out of YOUR public lands.”

This is a sobering reminder of the value-neutrality of the Third Sector, where one man’s tax deductible donation supports another man’s environmental nightmare.

Mr. Rumsfeld Insists on Giving Us More of Himself

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Via onPhilanthopy: AP News reports that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will be setting up a foundation to attract people to public service.  Here’s an excerpt from the foundation’s newly-published funding guidelines:

Projects that demonstrate that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to the Rumsfeld Foundation.  There are known knowns we’ll fund; there are things we know we know we’ll fund. We also know there are known unknowns we’ll fund; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know we’ll fund.  Please attach a Form 990 to your proposal.

Trained hermeneuticists are standing by.

Great Communications Disasters of Our Time: Like, Dude, That Wasn't Weed

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I was in a movie theater recently to watch a summer blockbuster when this public service ad appeared.  It was prepared for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a program of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.  It elicited snickering and hooting from the mostly young crowd.

Were these ads tested on focus groups?  If so, were they on drugs?

Lindsay: “Like, oh wow, a talking dog.”

Second-Lifer Issues Fatwa on First-Lifer

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Some moll goes by the handle “Glitteractica_Cookie” put a contract on my good friend Albert’s bona fides, calling him “a voice of the anti-SL backlash” for his post on Second Life, that virtual world everyone’s talking about.

All right, all right, he brought this pile of bricks on himself.  Last time he went virtual, he was run out of the eleventh dimension for claiming a duck with wax lips was more whimsical than a goose in a bonnet. People who share personal reflections on their experiences in Second Life and are “very critical” deserve to get sapped, I say. Suck it up.

But I owe Albert a debt: he once gave my mudder a picture of Valentino in the altogether.  She died last year—very, very happy.  Mama mia!

If you wanna write Albert, he’s laying low.  Last I heard, he was in the Sims’ Virtual Witness Protection Program. 

Smoky Joe, Scruggs, you out there?

Darfur Hunger Striker Speaks Out on Nonprofits, Spirit, and Abundant Life

We first reported on Darfur hunger striker Start Loving this past April 6th.  According to recent a post on his Dying for Heroes blog, June 10th was the 102nd day of his vigil in front of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC.  He spends 9-12 hours a day marching back and forth along the sidewalk with posters designed to awaken the consciences of passing motorists and pedestrians.  You can read more about his vigil and his philosophy here and here .

Roving WCT reporter Albert Ruesga interviewed Start Loving this past June 11th.  We post excerpts from that interview below.

WHITE COURTESY TELEPHONE: What kind of responses have you gotten to your blogging?

START LOVING: Very little.  There are probably about 50 hits a day.  I’m here all week so there’s no way I can promote it.  Very few comments per se. …

WHITE COURTESY TELEPHONE:  Several weeks back there was a Darfur demonstration here in front of the Sudanese embassy involving Save Darfur, church groups, and other advocacy and civic organizations.  How do you feel about those efforts?

START LOVING: … [T]he Save Darfur movement has nothing to do with me, I believe, because they’re horrified by the idea of paying a big price.  This is not why people come to them.  They come to them because they want to feel good for having done something about the genocide, and maybe that’s paying two dollars for a green wrist-band, or maybe it’s sending in $100, putting a jar in their mother’s office so that people contribute.  Well, you know, a friend the other day said there’s a place for everything.  … Thanks to Save Darfur and the people who were here, close to 70 percent of the people in this country and roughly that many Muslims and Arabs around the world according to recent polls know about and are concerned about Darfur.  But they’re not ignited.  They can’t even conceive of “Hey, gee, whatever price it takes to stop the genocide.” …

WHITE COURTESY TELEPHONE: What would your advice be to these groups?  What would you change about the way they work?

START LOVING: … Ultimately, we can’t escape selfishness.  So, am I going to indulge myself with trivial passions, or am I going to satisfy the part of myself that wants to make a difference in the world?  I’ve chosen the latter.  Even there, am I going to do half-measures, or do I want to eliminate regrets—“By God, I did everything I could.”  So out of love for my brothers and sisters in Save Darfur or Stand Now or anyone that’s watching, you know what, think about where you’re headed right now.  When your grandchild says, “Gee, I heard about this Darfur thing—what did you do?”  “Well, I went to a rally on September 30th.”  Is that going to satisfy that grandchild?  “I understand that there were half a million people exterminated in brutal ways, Grandma, and that there were two and a half million people in camps, and you and the powerful United States–you went to a rally?  You wore green armbands?  …  This is what ‘never again’ means?”  You know, none of us are going to be happy with that.  But this is what we’re doing.  It’s madness.  It’s clinical madness.

I take no credit.  I did nothing in my teens and twenties to stop the Vietnam War or to bring civil rights.  I did nothing.  I did nothing to stop Cambodia or Rwanda, or the Balkans, although I knew about them going on.  You know, I’ve got nothing to be proud of.  I simply lost my tolerance for being that inhumane.  I just can’t do it anymore.  I don’t want those regrets.

All of us have experienced at one time or another—maybe with that silly Coke commercial, maybe at the ball game, or maybe watching the Olympics—my gosh, we’re all just one human family.  Most of us have had that experience.  I have come to the wisdom that that’s where being fully alive comes from.  It’s indulging that side of it.  We can’t indulge our whole nervous system, it’s too big.  We’ve got to pick and choose.

Based on studying King, Gandhi—a fascination with them—Jesus, Teresa, Romero, Diane Wilson, all our great literature, even our trivial movies—Star Wars—they all point to the direction of self-sacrificing for a greater good.  I finally realized, you know, they weren’t kidding, they were on to something.  This is where joy comes from.  ... You sacrifice pleasure for the common good.  But the joy that comes trumps everything I had in my privileged background.  It’s just better.  It’s why these people have done what they did.  You know, Gandhi didn’t do this because, “Oh, jeez, this life really stinks, but I’m helping others.”  No, it’s like “Jeez, I’m part of the human race!”  This is what life is like.  I mean this is what life feels like.

The Democrats Dance a Box Step Around Lobbying Reform

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Remember how, during the 2006 elections, exit pollsters reported significant voter frustration with corruption in politics?  Nancy Pelosi, then soon-to-be Speaker of the House, promised a shakedown in Congress.  “The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history,” she said in an apparently unguarded moment.

As many predicted, the Democrats have already started back-pedaling on meaningful lobbying reform, moving to strike provisions that would:

• Require lobbyists to disclose details about large donations they arrange for politicians.
• Make former lawmakers wait two years, instead of one, before lobbying Congress.
• Bar lobbyists from throwing large parties for lawmakers at national political conventions.

Apparently if it pays, it plays. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers continue their periodic assaults on nonprofit advocacy rights.  Our colleagues at the Alliance for Justice need to be ever-vigilant for legislation that would erode the ability of Third Sector organizations to speak out for or against legislation, register voters, and, in general, engage a wider spectrum of the American public in civic deliberation.

Nonprofit advocacy organizations provide a voice for low-income and other aggrieved communities.  They’re a great democratizing force, frequently challenging government and big industries on a range of issues.

Apparently in politics as in other domains, the squeaky wheel gets the grief—especially if that wheel doesn’t offer you a golf junket to Scotland.