This past Saturday, at the invitation of the brilliant poet, professor and activist Mark Nowak, I had the pleasure of attending and participating in this year's "Fall Open House," a series of mini-workshops, conversations, and readings, which the Worker Writers School organized in collaboration with PEN America. The half-day event took place at Nolan Park House #11 on Governors Island (which I'd never before visited), and brought together participants from a range of labor unions and social action organizations, ranging from the Domestic Workers United, the Taxi Workers Alliance, and the Street Vendor Project to Picture the Homeless and the Retail Action Project. Though a swelter descended in the early morning, transforming the Nolan Park house into a kiln, participants (including one of our new Rutgers-Newark MFA students) kept dropping in, and though I had to head back before the final session, Mark noted that many participants stayed even into the early evening.
The sessions included Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin, speaking about socialism and organizing; a panel on Vocabularies of Resistance, featuring scholar, author, activist and Williams College professor Joy James, political scientist and founding member of Lower East Side Community Labor Organization Immanuel Ness, and investigative reporter and author Anjali Kamat; a writing session led by the stellar poet and professor Patricia Smith, entitled "Giving the Stories Room"; Pulitzer Prize-winner Dale Maharidge speaking on "Someplace Like America"; and a concluding reading by the Worker Writers’ School participants. I followed Bhaskar and talked not only about my own Counternarratives, but about the necessity of counternarratives and stories of resistance more broadly in transforming the guiding narratives in this and other societies.
In addition to the speaking and writing sessions, the Fall Open House also included the U.S. film premiere of Vienna-based artist and filmmaker Oliver Ressler's Emergency Turned Upside Down, which ran several times during the day, and, in the darkroom at the rear of the building, photographer Daniel Johnson created a Proletarian Nights Photo Booth, inspired by philosopher and critic Jacques Rancière, with both digital and Polaroid photos free of charge. Many thanks to Mark again, and to all the presenters and participants for an enlightening, invigorating day--and perfect reason finally to venture over to Governor's Island.
Some photos:
The bookselling table
Mark (at left) and some of
the participants
The Proletarian Nights Photo
Booth, pre-set up
Bhaskar Sunkara, at center, before
his presentation
During the first session
Marian, Joy James, and Immanuel Ness
Immanuel Ness, about to speak
Immanuel Ness, Anjali Kamat
and Patricia Smith
Patricia Smith fanning herself
(it was hot!) as she got everyone
thinking, dreaming and writing
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…” –Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.
Juan Gelman, the politically committed and supremely inventive and talented Argentinian poet and winner of the Cervantes Prize, one of the highest for Spanish-language literature, passed away yesterday in Mexico City at the age of 83. Here are two poems by him, the first in translation, the second in Spanish and, according to the Spanish newspaper El país, the last poem he wrote. RIP.
Juan Gelman (from Coffee and Saturday: Cultura y arte)
SAINT THERESA
and with many birds and their songs in the /
highest part of the mind or head / and rumblings
in it like the sea / or laments /
or winds or movements / suns
that clash / go out / then burn again / or powers
like thousands of animals that track
up the suburbs of the soul / suffering
terrible ordeals i mean / even so
the soul goes on whole in its quiet state /
or desire / or clear light untouched
by sorrow / scorn / misery /
suffering or ruin / so
what is this peace without vengeance / or memory
of a future heaven / or tenderness
coming down from your hands / spring water
where birds in the highest part of the mind
rally to drink / sing sweetly / or are silent
like light issuing from you / wing
flying softly above war and fatigue
like the flight of passion itself?
Cada día
me acerco más a mi esqueleto.
Se está asomando con razón.
Lo metí en buenas y en feas sin preguntarle nada,
él siempre preguntándome, sin ver
cómo era la dicha o la desdicha,
sin quejarse, sin
distancias efímeras de mí.
At various points over the last three years, popular uprisings, often arising out of the aftermath of the 2008 Global Economic Crisis and centering on economic inequality and neoliberal and libertarian policies, but sometimes focused necessary local and national political and social transformations, have arisen all over the world. The Arab Spring revolutions, still unfolding, garnered considerable attention, as did the Fall 2011 Occupy Movements across the US and in other developed countries, and most recently, there have been the protests in Istanbul's Gezi Park and Taksim Square, in response to plans by Turkey's conservative-neoliberal government, led by Recip Tayyep Erdogan, to build a shopping mall and mosque in one of Turkey's capital's few remaining public green spaces. Brazil had not evaded such events, but with one of the globe's actual leftist-Socialist parties, the Worker's Party (PT), holding the presidency for a third term as a result of popular democracy, with its economy and industries until recently growing at a significant rate, and with its social and economic policies helping to boost the fortunes of the poor and working class, and expand its middle class, the Country of the Future appeared to have found the door to a new moment in its history and created the kind of foundations that protests of the sort seen everywhere else were hoping to realize. Brazil, one of the world's soccer powerhouses, will host the World Cup next year, and Summer Olympics in 2016.
Yet a closer look shows that things are not as rosy as the media and distant observation may portray. Brazil's economy has slowed; economic inequality is again rising; the PT's repeated corruption scandals have worn thin; its coalition politics (a hyper-bipartisanship of the kind fetishized in Washington, and by US media) also have not resulted in the goals set out by President Dilma Rousseff, a former political revolutionary and victim of the dictatorship; the high costs and overruns with the soccer stadiums in major Brazilian cities has provoked widespread condemnation and disgust; and a sizable swath of the Brazilian 99%, especially its youth, are just fed up. And so, last week, mass rallies in São Paulo and Rio, the country's two largest cities, against transportation fare increases, sparked not only violent police responses (including their use of tear gas and rubber bullets), but even more mass rallies, all over Brazil, from the far north (in Macapá, at the mouth of the Amazon River), to the federal capital of Brasília, to the country's far south, in Rio Grande do Sul, on the border with Uruguay. Hardly a state capital, or many of the country's other large cities avoided protest. A New York Times Op-Ed writer, Brazilian Vanessa Barbara, labeled it the "Vinegar Uprising." As with the Occupy rallies and protests in the US, the criticisms have ranged across an array of pressing problems, but the fare and fee hikes, the lack of public services and poor infrastructure, the slowing economy, and continuing political corruption, as the country spends billions on those stadiums, have struck a consistent nerve. A version of a popular chant has gone, "Vamos acordar; um professor vale mais que o Neymar" (Let's wake up, Brazil: a teacher is worth more than Neymar," one of the young stars of Brazil's Seleção (National Team). So far there have been irruptions of violence among a sliver of the protesters, a number have been injured, and four people have died.
Today, in an effort to stem the protests and address the concerns of the populace, Rousseff proposed changes to Brazil's political and social system. They include multibillion-dollar upgrades to the transportation system across the country; hiring foreign doctors to work at public hospitals, thus filling the gap in medical services; harsher penalties for political corruption, which until recently have often gone unpublished; better pay for teachers, a perennial chestnut there as in the US; and a constituent assembly to overhaul the factionalized Brazilian Congress, as well as reforms to the campaign finance, which has been riddled with corruption since the country's return to democracy in the late 1980s. Some of these policies are among ones the PT has proposed before, without success, as it does not control a majority in either house of Brazil's Congress, which like the US is bicameral and includes a Federal Senate (with 3 senators for each of Brazil's 26 states and the federal district) and a Chamber of Deputies (or lower house, with 513 seats, elected by a proportional representation of votes and allocated proportionally by state size). In both houses, though the PT won the most votes, 22 or 23 parties on the ballot received enough votes to merit seats in one or both houses, and members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), a big tent centrist party, virtual hold the power as well as chairs of both, and the third largest party, the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), once center-left but now also mostly centrist, serves as the PT's main opposition. PT has a better stake in the state legislatures and state executive posts, controlling 13 of Brazil's 27 state and federal district executive posts, but even where it does, the results have not been inspiring. The PT mayor of São Paulo City, Brazil's (and Latin America's) most populous and its economic powerhouse, Fernando Haddad, was not even in the country; he was busy trying to drum up his city's bid to host the 2020 World's Fair.
Some activists have begun calling for a global boycott of the World Cup next year, and wealthy international soccer stars like Pelé and Ronaldo, who have urged a focus on national unity under the rubric of enthusiasm for the upcoming tournament, have met with scorn and condemnation. I imagine that the country's somewhat wobbly performance hosting the Confederations Cup matches, a run-up to next year's World Cup, along with the protests, will occasion some cosmetic changes and perhaps even a few of Dilma's proposed policies at least being taken up in pro-forma fashion. But whether the rallies and protests can result in real changes is an open question; as the Occupy movements in the US showed, they can provoke at least some reflection among some politicians and scare the daylights out of the plutocracy, and they provide a template for further protests and policy formations (and a target for the state-private security complex-nexus), but they may not lead to the changes that would really benefit a large portion of the population, including those who aren't out rallying but might be chief beneficiaries. Yet by voting with their bodies, Brazilians are rattling, and perhaps unraveling, the status quo.
Rising costs of living, Brazil, 2000-2013 (New York Times, source: Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics)
New French President François Hollande
with his partner, journalist Valérie Trierweiler (AP)
Leave it to France to show the world how it's done. Today, after 5 years of right-wing governance that helped to solidify the pro-austerity approach now ravaging Europe, the French people began the process of revolt, voting in their presidential contest's second round to send their globe-trotting, pro-US, plutocrat-enabling head of state, Nicolas Sarkozy, back to the wealthy suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. In his place they elected the former First Secretary of the Socialist Party, François Hollande, as the 24th President of the French Republic (and Co-Prince of Andorra), with a vote of 52% to 48%. Sarkozy becomes only the second French President to serve one term in the last 40 years.
Where Sarkozy has maintained a non-stop narcissistic show and meddlesome razzle-dazzle within France and globally, punctuating it with extremist rhetoric and policies at times, Hollande has suggested he will remain "M. Normal," and has promised to take a more measured approach politically. But he has proposed measures such as raising the federal marginal tax rates to 75%; reducing France's dependence on nuclear power in favor of renewable sources; recruiting 60,000 more teachers, as well as judges and police officers; push for full marriage equality; restoring the retirement age to 60 for workers who have contributed more than 41 years of labor; and building more public housing. These policies, as well as more centrist ones such as lowering the corporate and small-business tax rates and creating a public investment bank, while not going as far as his last Socialist predecessor François Mitterand (whose radical, nationalizing, pro-worker policies in 1981 sent shockwaves throughout the country and continent), are all to the left of Sarkozy (or most of the leaders of Europe, the United States, or even Canada, for that matter).
Light in touch as he may hope to be, Hollande cannot proceed too slowly or at too far a remove on the global stage, for the Eurozone, especially the countries (Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and certainly Greece) on its periphery, its ill. As President he has the power and platform to rethink the German-led fiscal and monetary approach that is strangling the periphery nations; whether he can persuade Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel to adopt a different approach or pressure the European Common Bank toward more effective monetary policies remains to be seen. Too, his election, is only the first step; French voters next have the opportunity to elect their parliament, which has been under the control of the combined conservative parties, led by Sarkozy's UMAP party, but which will likely shift to the left, giving President Hollande a Prime Minister he can work with, and legislative power. On economic issues his power could increase as well if if Marine LePen's extreme-right National Front party, which now has no representatives either in the National Assembly (Lower House) or Senate (Upper House), cannibalizes seats at the expense of Sarkozy's UMAP.
As an aside or adjunct, it struck me that most of Europe, like many of the major industrialized countries across the globe, save in Latin America, either has been under the control of center-right or right parties or has fallen under their control, so France's shift is a dramatic one. But I also realized--and perhaps I am making too much of this--that the United States, having been under truly far-right control for 8 years, under George W. Bush, began the shift in 2006 by handing control of Congress to the Democrats, and cemented the shift in 2008 by electing Barack Obama by a 53%-47% margin over John McCain and returning the Democrats to power in both houses. Though the president, who has governed along the lines of Dwight Eisenhower, with an interventionist foreign policy and mini-wars, and phantasmally liberal social and economic policies adopted by his predecessors, has been repeatedly deamed a "socialist" by his opponents, the American voters, seeking changes in direction on the social, economic and political fronts in 2008 have gotten more continuity than they sought, which has meant a slow and stuttering economic recovery crippled to a great degree by de facto fiscal austerity, a glacial deescalation of the foreign wars, and increasing assualts on civil liberties. One might then say that US voters, having lived through the worst of the worst--though certainly Silvio Berlusconi ranks up there, and Jacques Chirac, another rightist politician, was no dance in a nightclub--sought but did not get what the French voters think they've achieved now. One can only hope that Hollande can secure a National Assembly (the more powerful of France's two houses) to support his vision and push it, and that President Obama, who looks like he will be reelected, and the Democrats in Congress, even if they only retain control of the Senate, as well as whatever remains of the moderate elements of the GOP, pay attention. Forward, yes, but change, absolutely!
Also: Here's Professor Paul Krugman on François Hollande's win, and the elections in Greece, in which voters drubbed the two major parties, the center-right New Democracy (Conservative) party and center-left Pasok (Socialist), selecting legislators from much farther to the left (Syriza--Coalition of the Radical Left, which finished second, after ND, and the Democratic Left) and to the right (the Independent Greek Party and the ultra-rightwing neo-NaziGolden Dawn). An anti-austerity, anti-bailout coalition, led by Syriza, with rightist elements, very well could take power, sending the markets tanking and Greece out of the eurozone....
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Robert G. sent this link to Cyd Ziegler Jr.'s article today on the Outsportssite, which reported that the United States very well could, for the first time ever, have an out, gay gymnast on its Olympic men's gymnastic team. Who is he? Josh Dixon, a 2011 Stanford University graduate and seven-time All American, who yesterday finished second out of 72 competitors at the US men's qualifiers in Colorado Springs, Colorado, also tying for the top spot in two events, the floor exercise and the high bar. Oh, and Dixon is an African-American and Japanese-American adoptee who grew up in a multiracial, accepting home, which led him to feel comfortable coming out, an experience that his Stanford teammates, and fellow students, as well as gymnastic competitors, have nurtured through their support over the last few years.
According to Ziegler, his next challenge is the Visa Championships in June (7-10) in St. Louis; the top 15 finishers at that meet will proceed to the Olympic Trials, which run June 28 to July 1, in Dixon's hometown of San Jose, and he very well could be one of the 6 young men to compete for the USA. I just knocked on wood, and am wishing him the best.
Here's a YouTube video of Dixon during his sophomore year, in 2009, competing for the Cardinal in the floor exercises:
