There are many stories to tell in this naked city and I am determined to tell them all.  Here’s one of those stories — about my recent resounding defeat in small claims court.

I was prepared to be the plaintiff in a small claims court trial — at least that was the plan.  But according to a judge who recently spoke before the Berkeley-Albany Bar Association, there was a rather good chance that I might show up for the trial but there might not be a courtroom left to hold it in.

Over a delicious luncheon menu of pan-seared salmon, sauteed asparagus, fruit tarts and Peet’s coffee at La Rose Bistro on Shattuck Avenue, a judge from the Alameda County court system spent an hour and a half laying out a series of hard facts and cold realities with regard to courtroom availability in California in general and in Alameda County in particular.  “Currently,” said the judge, “we are even considering holding trials in broom closets.”  I think she was joking, er, at least I’m hoping that she was.

“The status of Alameda County’s courtrooms is abysmal,” stated the judge.  “The search for courtrooms has become desperate here.  They are currently using the grand jury room, which has posts running down the middle of it.  They’ve also been looking at hallways, a library and the probate examiner’s office since the Broussard building has been mostly shut down.  They are even moving people from Oakland courthouses down to Fremont and Hayward.  There have been 23 moves in all.” Fremont is a long freaking distance away from Oakland.  It’s closer to San Jose than it is Berkeley.

Courtrooms aren’t the only thing now being 86ed in the CA court system.  People are disappearing too.  “As for money, 72 people have been laid off.  Statewide, court personnel funding has just taken a 100 million dollar hit.  There was a 2.6 million dollar budget hit for Alameda County alone.  Courts are now being closed on the third Wednesday of every month.  That’s twelve days a year that we can never make up.”

Then there’s the mandatory furlough days.  “In order to avoid more lay-offs, we’ve had to cut down people’s hours.  And next year’s state and county budgets will be worse that this year’s.  Judges are considering voluntary salary cuts.”

And California’s court security needs are being effected as well.  “We are trying to get enough sheriff’s deputies to cover the courts.  By consolidating courts, we have managed to free up two deputies however.  But the Sheriff’s office has also been financially hit.  And then there was the cost of the Oscar Grant trial.  And that has taken up a lot of sheriff’s deputies as well.”

So far, the number of judges has not been effected by the budget cuts, but who knows how long that will last.  “And we need more self-help centers, not less.  As the economy goes down, there will be a much greater need for self-help centers,” and that need will not be met either.  “California’s unemployment is currently the highest in the nation.”

By this time in the presentation, I had finished my salmon and was starting to hanker for dessert — while the judge continued her sad litany of judicial wants and needs that were not going to get met.  “We need more courtrooms.  We’re not going to get them.  And we’re not going to get any more judges either.  And small claims court commissioners are being reduced for 16 to ten.  Plus filing fees are going to be increased because we can’t increase taxes.”

As I finished up my berry tart and was vaguely considering the etiquette-related pros and cons of licking my plate, the judge continued.  “This county’s judicial system is definitely economy-driven.  We want a courthouse out in the Pleasanton-Dublin area but realistically we don’t have the money.  We need more judges and more support staff.  We are looking at every single dime being spent.  Alameda County saw this coming and prepared for it but we are still running tight.”  Then the waiter served coffee.  Yummers!

“We may be forced to move toward having regional courts instead of county courts,” the judge concluded.  “We’ve already consolidated the municipal courts with the superior courts.  And court administration has already been centralized — even its janitorial services.”

So.  What will be the answer to this immense problem?  I wanted to suggest to the speaker that we might be able to use Judge Judy’s courtroom when her court wasn’t in session, but that probably wouldn’t work out so well for her.

It appears that a goodly amount of taxpayer money that used to fund Alameda County’s court and prison systems is being used to fund cool new court and prison systems in places like Baghdad, Kabul and Tel Aviv instead of here in Berkeley.  Does this mean that the Middle East has all the money they want for their courtrooms — whereas California courtrooms have become neglected and derelict?  Yeah.

You cannot fund a trillion dollars worth of war in the Middle East and expect that money to come out of nowhere.  And as a result of short-sighted congressional decisions to spend our taxes on the luxury of war in the Middle East instead of here in America for the last ten years, we no longer can afford to buy basic necessities here at home — such as courtrooms.

It appears that the criminals of Baghdad, Kabul and Tel Aviv have a pretty good ride — while the criminals of Oakland and Berkeley, due to our sad lack of courtrooms and judiciary personnel, are either having to wait for their trials in overcrowded jails that taxpayers must pay for or else are running around free in the streets.

I’d much rather spend our hard-earned money here at home and have criminals running free in the streets of Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine — instead of having criminals running free in the streets of Oakland and Berkeley.

It just seems such a shame to spend a trillion dollars to tinker around with the Rule of Law in the Middle East — at the risk of losing the Rule of Law here at home.

But enough about lamenting the loss of our courtrooms into the money pit of the Middle East.  Let’s think about other places where all our court-funding money has been drained off to in the last ten years — into the pockets of bankers, Wall Street gamblers, global out-sourcers who have systematically destroyed America’s manufacturing base, and, of course, those ever-present and greedy weapons manufacturers who trick us into paying them to kill strangers by the millions.  Isn’t it time to plug up those money sink-holes as well?

Back to the story.  I loaned someone some money.  She promised to pay me back but then later claimed that she had never made such a promise. So,  I took her to small claims court.

“If you can’t even win a case in small claims court, then you must really be a loser,” a small (but very mean) voice inside my brain keeps repeating.  Hey, that’s me — the one with the big “L” on my forehead.

This once upon a time friend had married a fancy-pants lawyer.  Her new fancy-pants lawyer/husband took over the case.  “Can he DO that?” I asked.  Apparently he can.

Apparently there’s a law that says that a husband can substitute in for a wife — with the judge’s permission.  But later, when I was reading the minutes of my trial, it didn’t say anything about the judge having approved the substitution of the fancy-pants attorney/husband in place of the missing defendant.  It didn’t even mention the fancy-pants husband at all.

By law, the judge has to approve this substitution — and, according to the trial’s minutes, she didn’t.  But where the freak can I go to appeal this, er, oversight?  Nowhere.  From what I have been told, plaintiffs have no right to appeal a small claims court decision.  Ever.  Sorry, no Supreme Court rulings for us.

Meanwhile, back in the courtroom, the dude in the fancy suit wiped the floor with me — by offering his infamous “Judge Judy” defense.  Apparently, according to the fancy-pants lawyer-husband, the main purpose of me filing this claim was to allow me to get on the Judge Judy show!  How can one even begin to fight a charge as bizarre as that one?

But, sadly, our small claims court judge bought the missing defendant’s husband’s whole package — fancy suit, big words, irrelevant exhibits and all.  “Claim of plaintiff denied.”  And now I’m a loser.

I did, however, learn one very important thing from this trial — which I would like to pass on to all the rest of you big-time fancy-pants lawyers out there.  Whenever you are arguing a case and you really really want to win it, just offer up the “Judge Judy” defense.  Apparently it works like a charm.

For instance, if that recent California anti-Proposition 8 decision, the one that now makes gay marriages in California legal, ever gets appealed before the Supreme Court, all that the attorneys speaking against the repeal verdict have to do is to say, “But Your Honors, you can clearly see here that these Californians are only trying to repeal Prop. 8 so that they can get on Judge Judy!”

Then you’ll win your case for sure.

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“I would stop if I could.  It’s not like there’s any real money in writing, unless through some miracle, you know the right connections, can pull some strings, or you’ve resigned yourself to a subject matter for hire type job.  In the new computer Internet world, everyone loves to write; blurbs, slogans, quotes, cozy friendly letters for the down home friends style connections.  There’s so much noise, so much chatter and information being passed around, it’s difficult to stand out as an individual voice.  It seems pointless, yet if I don’t write, the words build up inside and I can’t sleep.  They manufacture a confusing racket in my dreams if I do sleep.  I have no choice.  Every day, I pound out a few thousand words and wonder why I do this; allow them to stand in loneliness on my page.”

Every time I hear or read this complaint, I thank my lucky stars, because this is the complaint of a true writer.  A writer could no more stop composing than a musician could stop playing his instrument or the artist stretch her paints over a canvas.  It is a compulsion, a fever that guarantee’s the laborer to the written word will not abandon his or her craft.  While it’s not unusual to find people who are able to complete a scene in exquisite words, to reveal a instant and hang it in your mind like a suspended moment, it’s far more difficult to find the prolific writer.  The occasional writer works from inspiration.  An idea comes, or an experience, or a compelling issue, and the words rattle out joyfully, uninhibited and musical.  The prolific writer works from perspiration.  The short bursts aren’t enough.  An idea becomes an outline.  An experience becomes a story.  An issue becomes something to research and weigh.

It’s the prolific writer who builds the foundation to a magazine.  Readers begin to search for these regular meetings between the creative mind and the public.  They develop an expectancy of the delivery, whether it’s documentary style non-fiction, a review, commentary, fiction or humor.  Publishers prefer to know the writer is prolific.  They want to see a solid base.  They want to know that the work they are about to publish isn’t a one time wonder but that the writer can deliver again and again.

Two years ago, a few prolific writers stretched their muscles and said, “I’m not really a blog writer.  I’m not really the kind of person who likes to take writing assignments.  I want to be able to put my best work out there without fear of it being stolen, and I want to write what I please; articles, humor, fiction.  I want to work on a magazine.”  On that day, Subversify was born.

Subversify has gone through a lot of changes over those last two years.  From an initial staff of four, it has acquired over a dozen regular contributors, and numerous guest writers.  We featured four boxes that shifted randomly as it occurred to someone to post a story.  Sometimes a headline would disappear from sight within a few days.  Other times, the page would go unchanged for two or three weeks.  We celebrated the first time we received a hundred hits in one day.  Now it depresses us if the daily hits drop below two hundred.  We change our entire page once a week, and work hard to maintain a variety of news articles, science, history, travelogues, reviews, fiction, humor and commentaries.  We have become a magazine.

To help maintain a sense of organization, Subversify chooses a new theme for featured articles and stories every three months.  Since its inception, we’ve concentrated on a number of stimulating topics for theme based articles; education, spirituality, economics, minority rights.  For our summer, we chose the theme, “freaks, geeks, carnies and cowboys”, which we expanded to include anyone who travels and makes money through entertainment.  To make the theme more stimulating for the participants, we included a contest; a box of Alaskan chocolate wild berry products to the winner.  To those who think this might be a small thing; let me tell you.  Alaskan chocolate is the kind the Swiss would kill for and those sparkling wild berries inside just can’t be found anywhere else.  However, since nobody is paying me to expand on the virtues of these wonderful chocolates, I’ll return to the original subject; the results of the contest.

It was very difficult for me to pick a winner, primarily because I see anyone who puts out effort as a winner.  However, there were two stories that captured by interest for their tenderness of expression and I can’t separate a preference for either, so I have two winners.

The first is our very prolific writer and staff member, Grainne Rhaud, for her wonderful story, “Ballyhoo Baby”, in which she describes her early carnival life, her one “magic trick” and her reflections on what she calls the “watered down” carnivals of today.  She wraps the story joyfully with an introduction of a new generation of carnie lovers who are fascinated by the weird.

The other winner is our photographer, Rocky Brown, with his biographical story, “Old School.”  Set in Perkins, Oklahoma, he uses the dialectic voice of his region to relate the history of his home town and how it shaped him into the life of a modern day motorcycle cowboy.  He paints a picture of old wooden store fronts, young boys and their grandfathers going fishing, and that strong, incurable taste of wanderlust.  Congratulations to both Rocky and Grainne, and my appreciation to everyone who joined the contest.

Although it was fun, Subversify will probably not sponsor another contest any time soon.  Counter-cultural in everything we do, we feel a great deal of disagreement with the importance placed on “winning”.  The competitive spirit has become so great, it even extends to long conversations on who has had the most operations, the most troublesome children, and we must not forget those who must have the last word.  As a writer, the only person one should be competing against is him or her self.  The drive should be like that of a long distance runner.  Having clocked seven minutes for the mile run, the next ambition is to whittle it down to six; to beat your own record.

As a magazine competing against itself to constantly improve its quality and format, we have pledged this year to sponsor one to two fiction stories per week.  Nearly all non-fiction writers are at heart, fiction writers.  While non-fiction is the process of delivering information, fiction is the process of digesting it and creating situations with believable characters, conflicting personalities and the consequences for actions.  Fiction removes the formal language and barriers placed on documentary writing, allowing the writer to create the human situation, a plot, a conclusion and sometimes even the redemption.  Fiction is the mirror images of ourselves, our society and our circumstances.  It’s because of this that fiction remains immortalized in memory long after the documentation of an era has faded from the collective mind.

An exciting project our prolific writers have been working on is a paperback anthology of fantasy and science fiction.  Although we’re still in the planning stages, we have some great stories lined up, guaranteed to catapult you into worlds of imagination and possibilities. Some of these chapter stories we’ve already published in part at the magazine, but in order to read at your leisure, without interruptions or waiting, you’ll just have to wait for the paper back anthology to come out and become among the first to buy into the company of our new twenty-first century writers.  Don’t let the times leave you behind.  Step into a future with all the complexities, promises, ideals and changing climate of a new era.  Step into the rapidly changing world of Subversify productions.

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“Applying contemporary standards of tolerance to medieval Muslim history and policy does a disservice to the prospects of reconciliation in our times. The assumption by some that an inherent medieval Islamic intolerance prevailed and that it underlies present-day Muslim terrorism is a distortion of reality. On the other side, the self-ascribed mission of the small minority of “card-carrying” Islamist fundamentalists to revive the pristine Islam of the Qur’an is itself a distortion that conveniently overlooks the pluralism of medieval Islam and the promise of freedom of religion embedded in the Qur’an and in other foundational Islamic texts. Until non-Muslims begin to understand Islam in all its facets, we will be destined to live in ignorance of the “real” Islam and to act out of fear. The presence of Muslims in our midst and of mosques like the one planned near Ground Zero, which will be an educational center as well as a place of prayer, is one good way of transcending this ignorance.”- Mark R. Cohen

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the hullabaloo surrounding plans to build a Mosque two blocks away from the site of “ground zero” of the World Trade Center at 45-47 Park Place in Lower Manhattan.

The property is privately owned and the project is being managed by Sharif El-Gamal, chief executive of SoHo Properties.  The group funding the project: The Cordoba Initiative has been under fire and found itself a political target with people up for election on both sides of the fence calling for investigation into their funding.  As if a 15 storey recreation and education center which also houses a house of worship were somehow going to unravel the fabric of America.

But this is apparently just what Rick A. Lazio, a Republican candidate for governor, appeared at the vote, in an auditorium at Pace University near City Hall, to oppose the project, was thinking.  Calling on his rival Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, to (ask for) “transparency,” Mr. Lazio said. “If they’re foreign governments, we ought to know about it. If they’re radical organizations, we ought to know about it.”

He added, “This is not about religion. It’s about this particular mosque.”

This seems like it is less and less about religion or this particular mosque which in fact is much more than a mosque, it will be modeled after other cultural centers throughout cities all over the United States as a refuge, a place of learning and a place to come and understand one another.  It really shouldn’t be an issue given that the building currently occupying the space is already an Islamic place of prayer and worship.   It is only the reconstruction and political posturing that has made it stand out so starkly to people who feed off the evening news.

People are firing up their blogs and painting their placards claiming shock, disgust and downright hatred toward Muslims who would build a house of worship in a place that Christian America has claimed for itself as sacred…to Christians that is.

The planned structure which has already been approved is to be called Cordoba House, named for the Spanish city where Muslims, Jews, and Christians together created one of the most fertile and creative civilizations in the world. And just in case that in itself is in question let’s remember the Byzantine era is often described as the “Golden Age” of learning in which Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in relative peace.  Enough peace that the building of libraries and Academies became more important than the building of defensive structures.  Literature, poetry, mathematics and science flourished during this time.

Daisy Khan and Imam Feisal the husband and wife duo who envisioned this community center meant it to be a place where people can come and learn about Islam.  Daisy Khan expressed concern that critics of the Islamic cultural center have misunderstood its creators’ purpose.  The center will not function primarily as a mosque; New York City is already home to more than 200 mosques. Instead it is modeled on other religiously based establishments like YMCAs and Jewish Community Centers.  The Islamic center will serve the larger community to become an institution for learning, collaborating, and sharing knowledge across faiths and cultures.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg shares his concerns.  He backs the project and also states that “Government should never – never – be in the business of telling people how they should pray, or where they can pray.”

Many people in blogs, on the air and television have stated that a mosque at ground zero would serve as a sort of “trophy” to Muslims everywhere.” This thought process misses the point of a community center.  Muslims as a whole are as appalled by the actions of a few radicals.  They are Americans, They want to connect with their country and give back as well.  Undoubtedly people of the Muslim faith lost lives in the 9/11 attack as well.

A blog comment posted by someone identified as @mr9376 states: “Nobody’s got exclusive rights to Ground Zero? Wrong. We’ve got exclusive rights. The loved ones of the victims-nice to meet you. Our loved ones paid for those exclusive rights when they died. When all is said and done, it’s the victims’ families and friends who’re gonna have to live for the rest of their lives with the question I have to live with. Did… die quick or did she have to jump to avoid being burned alive? There is no answer to that question as there are no graves, just the Ground Zero site. It’s a cemetery, friends, and I hope you all have enough sense to respect that.”

Lest the impression is given that only right wingers are behind the blocking this statement came recently from the Anti-Defamation League : “building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.”

But then we should not be surprised by seemingly nice religious folks taking sides.  We’ve seen a lot of it lately.  It has become a matter of course, our Gods all seem to be angry and all seem to be intolerant. Perhaps we do need to begin thinking in directions of behaving better than these ancestors of the Goode Book. (s)

Should the voices of Muslims who lost their lives in this attack be silenced simply because some fringe elements took it upon themselves to stage an act of terrorism?

There is a president for this mistreatment and we would do well to remember it.  During WWII thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in camps for the “safety” of our nation.  Their land was taken, their lives disrupted and it wasn’t until the 1989 when then President Bush issued a formal recognition along with apology from the United States Government. Do we really want to go there again?

It seems to me that an Islamic community center is exactly what is needed at this time.  Many Americans are still greatly misunderstanding the message and teachings of Islam one blog commenter posted the following:

“Do you know that Muslims are allowed to lie to infidels so they can spread the cause of Islam? It is a doctrine called Taqqiya and is to be spread in lands that do not have a Muslim majority like the USA.

Compare Muhammad and Jesus. One advised that you give the other cheek and even forgave his crucifiers. The other beheaded people and was a pedophile. Is there a religion more foolish than Islam?

Also wherever Islam has been victorious, it has decimated the most important religious sites of other religions. Cordoba? Do you know about the jizziya tax? That is what Christians and Jews had to pay for living in Cordoba as infidels. The Hindus had to do the same in India.

There may be moderate Muslims but there is no moderate Islam. Islam teaches hate about infidels. Instructs its followers to kill them. Of course there is violence in other religions but no other religion challenges Western values like Islam does. Freedom of speech, freedom of women, freedom of religion are all ‘haram’ under Islam. It is a hateful ideology. Please open your eyes before it is too late.” [@brian_geo]

This sort of antilocution reminds one of, well…every fear based propaganda that human kind has disseminated throughout history in order to sway weak minded people to their sides.

This argument has not been limited to the Tri-State area, as everyone knows the political glitz brought out former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin who upped an already raucous debate when on Twitter she called on “peaceful” Muslims to “refudiate” the plan, calling it “a stab in the heart” for America.

Actual Palin Tweets:

“Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate,” Palin said via Twitter.

She subsequently deleted her “tweet” and published a new message, which did not include the made-up word “refudiate”: “Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.”

What we need as a nation is to heal. We need to leave the political grandstanding behind for a moment and think about the realness of the people involved on both sides.  We really haven’t dealt with our feelings on a deeper and spiritual level.  Yes we have gone to war against the “bad guys” and yes we see rants galore regarding immigrants, supposed security risks and darker folks in general.  But we have not taken the opportunity to allow for those Americans who are Muslims to feel their pain.  Christian America seems to think they have a corner on Pain Avenue.  To disregard the feelings and sorrow of our Islamic brethren is to disenfranchise a portion of our own people.  And isn’t it disenfranchisement that causes such problems to begin with?

American citizens could take this opportunity to begin healing themselves and the land around ground zero by accepting the sacred nature of a mosque set up at the site.  A mosque is less about a trophy as some westerners seem to see the setting up of religious structures and more about a place to sanctify the spirit and the land together as one.

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Last week I caught a report on NPR regarding hunger in America.  The family highlighted was well below the poverty level making $18,000.00 a year with a household of six people.  The father worked when he could and the mother was disabled.  They live in Pennsylvania.

What caught my attention was the food stamp allowance.  It was reported that they received $600 a month in food stamps.  In addition they made weekly trips to the local food pantry and claimed to have a garden.  Still this family reported being hungry and not having enough to get by.

This situation boggled me.  When I checked NPR’s website and saw the pictures of the family I was further confused.  This family was overweight.

One cannot dispute that $18,000.00 is hard to live on.  Basic needs probably aren’t getting met.  Electricity and natural gas are probably hard to pay for.  Clothing, rent, transportation, school supplies and medical care are probably a hardship on this family and other families like it.  However it seemed to me that their food allowance which combined factors out to about the same as their cash income is adequate to provide.

I posted the link to the story and received a great deal of response from it.  It seems that other people are of the same opinion as me.  In fact I myself have a household of six souls and feed them for less than $600.00 a month.  Our monthly food budget hovers somewhere around $500.00 and that includes eating out.

So I began to wonder, is this a regional issue? After all as a Californian I may be completely out of it.  I am blessed to live in an area where the growing season is good for most everything from rice to almonds.  We have vegetables fresh year-round, and game and fish are pretty plentiful.

Regional Differences

There are in fact some regional differences.  While a lot of us have access to farmer’s markets, and roadside stands as well as good grocers, cities that consist of urban sprawl like Los Angeles seem to have a unique problem.  It is often too far to travel to get to a store that has reasonable prices and when you are living below the poverty level transportation is tricky.  Bus and rail systems in the United States are downright bad.  They are either expensive or non-existent.  Therefore people who are poor are stuck with whatever small market is in their neighborhood. These small markets very often don’t see themselves as grocers and mainly stock their shelves with snack foods and instant food, the type of stuff you would find at a 7-11.  This situation makes it both expensive and unhealthy for consumers.

Reports from the USDA pointed out people in urban areas are more likely to be hungry for just this reason.

However in a city like Carlisle, PA there’s ample opportunity for farmer’s markets and good grocery stores.  In fact there is a farmer’s market held two times a week.  There are also at least eight lower cost grocery stores.  So why is this family unable to make their food budget stretch?

Poor Nutrition

The answer lies in poor nutrition.  This family in their interview freely admitted that they cater to their children’s likes and those likes were bad nutritional choices.

When people eat mostly processed and ready to eat food, they are taking in a higher amount of calories while at the same time not getting the nutrients needed for daily life.  Instead of reaching for pop when thirsty, which granted is cheaper nowadays than milk; a person could and should be reaching for water.  Our bodies need it and it is obviously better than the sugar or sugar substitutes used in pop; some of which are cancer causing agents.

A real problem our nation seems to have is an inability or unwillingness to cook from scratch.  Whole foods, whether vegetarian or not are always going to be cheaper and better for you.  The problem is people have grown into believing it is harder to cook from scratch than it is.

This problem is compounded with the lack of education.  In previous years government help agencies like Women Infants and Children (WIC) that helped supplement food provided counseling and teaching around good nutrition and food preparation.  With deep cuts to low income supports there just isn’t the staff to provide this training anymore.

The same is true at school levels.  Where home economics was offered at every Jr. High and High School in America, now it is a hard to get elective and very often our youth have no room for electives.

In addition many food programs like the school lunch programs serve high calorie, high fat, highly processed food.  So while the government is providing food to children and families it is of such a poor quality that it is actually robbing them of health.  The result of this is an increase in diabetes, obesity, allergies and other health problems.

Bread.org reports that:

–36.3 million people–including 13 million children–live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in ten 0households in the United States (11.2 percent). This is an increase of 1.4 million, from 34.9, million in 2002.

–3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million People, including 3 million children, live in these homes.

–7.7 percent of U.S. households are at risk of hunger. Members of these households have lower quality diets or must resort to seeking emergency food because they cannot always afford the food they need. 26.6 million People, including 10.3 million children, live in these homes.

However they go on to state that “two further points are important:

–First, this is really “experience hunger at some time during the year.” A majority of the people who were hungry at some time during the year were hungry in several different months, but only for a few times each month. So that daily statistics for hunger would be smaller.

–Secondly, the number of children that experience hunger would be smaller, as adults usually try to shield children from hunger. The first people to be hungry are usually adults.”

Organic Food

As Penn and Teller pointed out in their Showtime show last season, organic food is bullshit. In recent times we have been sold on the idea that to eat optimally we must buy organic food.  It is this perception that contributes to people reporting that they cannot afford to eat well.  Technically speaking all food is ‘organic’.  It’s an organism.  It grows.  But in blind taste and sight tests subjects generally cannot tell the difference between organic food and non-organic food.  Your body as it processes it cannot tell the difference.  It uses the calories and nutrients in exactly the same way as non-organic food.

In addition ‘organic’ food is more expensive.  This is mostly due to the fact that in order to be certified organic you have to submit your farm to rigorous testing for a minimum of three years.  Organic farmers also have a more labor intensive farming operation than non-organic farmers.  I’m not advocating for dumping a load of pesticides on food, however there are many small and local farmers who don’t meet the FDA’s definition of organic simply because they cannot afford to put the money into certification.

My advice, buy fresh produce that you can afford and wash it, it is going to be better for you than a $.99 hamburger whether it’s organic or not.

The bottom line is yes, many people in the United States are hungry and many of them are obese and still hungry.  However, in a lot of cases they are already receiving enough assistance to remedy this.  What we as a nation need to improve upon is education and nutrition.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128621057

http://feedingamerica.org/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/opinion/27herbert.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28300393/

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/

http://www.worldhunger.org/

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@copyright 2010, Karla Fetrow

Editor’s note:  The David is a regular contributor whose commentaries sometimes strikes home with me in some very sensitive areas.  One of those sensitivities is racism.  With a thriving indigenous population, I often find it difficult to imagine the stagnancy of  a social complex that still indulges in racial discrimination.  While still in the throes of this indignation, I commented on The David’s submission with the above photograph, and asked the question: is the young bride to the left Mexican, Hispanic by other descent or Mid-Eastern?

She is none of the above.  Ardis Minter is half-white, half Northern American Native.  Her ancestors have been here far longer than those who proudly wave the flag of American Colonialism.  She tells me that in a visit to the Continental United States, she was asked if she was Mexican, Hispanic, Muslim, even Japanese, but never once was she asked if she was Native American.  This leaves me to wonder about the state of affairs for the Native community in the Continental US.  Are they ignored, unseen, classified and dismissed as immigrants?  Do they really need proof of their citizenship and residency in the United States?  How will this effect naturalized citizens; children born out of the US but by American citizens?  Will they be next on the list of unacceptable patriots?

I think there can be nothing more disturbing in the current social trends than the tendency to begin racial profiling.  I’d like to thank The David very much for his commentary.  What is beautiful should never be defined by color.  What is human should never be associated with race.

By The David

Another step has been taken in Arizona’s quest to become the most bigoted State in this Union of ours. The Governor, Jan Brewer, as most of us know, supported and signed into law a piece of legislation that for the first time in modern memory allows the police in a North American State to ask for and check a person’s “papers.” In other words, if you are stopped for a traffic violation, the police might not only ask for your driver’s license and registration, but without cause they would be able to ask for your proof of citizenship or legal residency. This can be done without cause and on just the officer’s suspicion.

If you are Caucasian, you need not worry because the chances are very good that you will not be “suspected” unless your surname is Hispanic in origin. But if you are brown, or are a person of color you would have every reason to be concerned.

This is a law that we have all become familiar with, and it is another beam in the political structure that so badly polarizes citizens of the United States. It is, in my opinion an odious law, and I cringe when I hear people campaigning for the nomination for Governor or the Senate in other States saying that they want to import this law into their home states, and using scare tactics to justify their stance. I cringe.

Apparently there are those in Washington who have also done some cringing, and are seeking an injunction that would prevent this law from being enforced on the grounds that Immigration Laws are the responsibility of the Federal Government…. not the State Governments. If all goes well, this may put that law away, at least until those behind it can think of a new method that will be justified by the demonization of immigrants… both those who have gone through legal channels and those that have entered without papers.

Even if the law is deemed to be null and void, it will not close the door on a very real problem that has reared its monstrous head. In vilifying the immigrant, Arizona has opened a portal for the hate groups to not only assemble, but to become a force in their State. Patrols by “citizen” groups have been on the increase. These groups are made up of people who are, for the most part, untrained. They are also heavily armed.The prevalence of these groups and, to some degree their acceptance has led to the further degradation of our society in the form of one or more Neo-Nazi groups whose presence has been made more respectable by the passage and, it seems, popularity in some quarters, of the law in question.

A particularly offensive group that is gaining strength in Arizona is known to follow the political line of the National Socialist Party. They are heavily armed and supervised by a person who boasts of his belief that only white, heterosexual Christians have the right to be citizens and share in the promise of these golden shores, and all others should leave willingly or be deported by force. One wonders if boxcars are a part of this group’s “solution” to what they perceive as the problem.

The open sore, represented by these people is being allowed to suppurate and fester on the borderland between Arizona and Mexico. Law enforcement is aware of them, but so far the word is that they have not “broken any laws.” There is no prohibition for the wearing of fatigues, gas masks and body armor. There is no law against assault weapons. Assault weapons are protected by the Constitution…. the right to bear arms. Just ask the NRA.

Can a movement of this kind be stopped, or is it too late? All people have a right to their beliefs, but is the demonization of any group, be they immigrants , Jewish, persons of color, or homosexuals any better than shouting fire in a crowded theatre? Does not such demonization lead to hate and fear, and those emotions to violence against the demonized?

Is it not the responsibility of all of those who still believe in the equality and the worth of all peoples to take a stand against what is happening in Arizona, and to protest its incursion when candidates introduce this harbingers of hate into their campaigns for our votes? Can we stop it? Or, do we wait for the next shoe to drop?

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By:  Jane Stillwater

Back in approximately 1528, when the very first black man was snatched from a village in Africa and shoved onto a slave ship, somehow a ball got rolling that has consequences even down to this day.  That single act of brutality began a long, slow process that eventually resulted in the proliferation of violence and crime in America’s inner cities four centuries later.

Cruelty always gets the ball rolling, gets the party started — but in a bad way.

So.  What cruelties, exactly, got the Islamic terrorist ball rolling?  Was it when Mohammad (PBUH) wrote the Qu’ran?  And if it was, then why aren’t most American Muslims terrorists now too?  And why don’t their teenagers run in violent gangs like so many Christian teenagers here do? Dearborn, in Michigan, for instance, has a very large Muslim population and the largest mosque in America.  So why aren’t the Muslims of Dearborn all terrorists? Obviously it’s not their religion per se that is turning Muslims into terrorists.  So it must be something else.

“But what could it be?” you might ask.  I think you could get an answer to that question from any competent psychologist since Freud.  Terrorists aren’t shaped by their religion.  And terrorist aren’t just born that way either. Terrorists are created by their childhood experiences.  Terrorists are created by cruelty.

Take Afghanistan for instance — a country that’s known for its terrorists.  Those terrorists didn’t just suddenly spring full-grown from the head of Zeus.  No, they were systematically created by centuries of systematic cruelty.

First the Brits brutally invaded Afghanistan.  Then the Russians brutally invaded Afghanistan.  Then the Americans brutally invaded Afghanistan.  Brutality.  Cruelty.  Injustice.  And now we wonder why that poor country is overrun with terrorists?  Duh.

And then there’s Iraq.  The Brits systematically destroyed democracy in Iraq.  And Americans gave Iraq three gifts that kept on giving: Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe and Abu Ghraib.  In Iraq, Brits, Americans and their European allies created a Frankenstein monster — step by step, day by day.

And during approximately the last 90 years, Palestine has been systematically invaded by various forms of Europeans — not to mention the Crusades.  Whether it was Lord Balfour, King Richard or David Ben Gurion who invaded the Holy Land, these Europeans have all worked really hard to create Frankenstein monsters in Palestine too — and America to this day still keeps footing these invaders’ bills.

Sure, a few Palestinians have hijacked some airplanes in protest — but Europeans and Americans have hijacked their entire region.

And remember how British Petroleum and the CIA worked in tandem to violently destroy democracy in Iran and to replace it with the West’s own bloody Shah, king of torture?

Face it, guys.  The whole Middle East has been under the jackboots of American and European colonialism, imperialism and cruelty for a long, long, long time.  And, keeping that thought in mind, you might also consider the suggestion that perhaps we are looking at Islamic terrorists from the wrong perspective.  Perhaps if it hadn’t been for the calming and civilizing influences of Islam, all these Frankenstein monsters that the West has cheerfully created in the Middle East might have turned out even worse.

Consider what happened when Europe and America unleashed their cruelty on the Congo, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.  At least the Middle East didn’t turn out as badly as all that. Maybe Islam actually helped give Muslims something hopeful to cling to in the face of all that Shock and Awe.

As you may have already noticed unless you’re brain-dead or watch Fox News, the military-corporatist structure that brought us Rwanda, Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib is still in the driver’s seat in Washington now and still happily doing all its usual cruel nasty stuff.  Which can only make me wonder — as our democracy dies and so does our economy — what kind of Frankenstein monsters are they happily creating here at home too?

The million dollar question that won’t get you two cents  is, exactly what is the justification for all this cruelty?  Apparently the justification is greed.  Geez Louise!  Just how many extra yachts do you guys need?  Is it true that Dick Cheney is the world’s first trillionaire?  And has all this endless supply of big bucks flowing seamlessly into his coffers from faulty oil platforms and endless wars made HIM happy?  Yeah right.

I am assuming that you do know that the oil spill in the Gulf could be worse than anything even the most fiendish terrorists could ever have done to us, right?

I just read somewhere that there are billions of teeny-tiny little crustaceans in our oceans and they are using all that excess carbon dioxide in sea water (which would otherwise be harmful to us) to build their sweet little teeny-tiny shells.  And if they didn’t build these shells, there would be too much carbon dioxide in the oceans, it would be released into the air and we would all die.  So if the oil spill kills off all these cute little guys in the same way that it is now killing off dolphins and turtles, we will be doomed.

To quote Wilbur the talking pig, “I don’t wanna die!”

And speaking of pigs at county fairs, me and my family are going off to the Alameda County Fair next Wednesday.  Joe and Ashley are going to buy me a chicken — to eat all the snails in my postage-stamp-sized yard so that I can plant a victory garden.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

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Want something good to read? Buy my book!  ”Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today’s Middle East,” available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Your-Own-Flak-Jacket/dp/0978615719/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_title_1

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Please sign my petition to create a Constitutional amendment to stop lobbyists from buying our country: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/constitutional-amendment-to-stop-lobbyists

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“Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World peace in one generation!”

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Life is a competition. The winners are the ones who do the most good deeds.

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I’ve forgotten my book so this week while I’m waiting at one of the many places that require me to wait, I am thumbing through the local free weekly.

I really haven’t gone cover to cover through this thing in a while.  It’s because the last editor they had was a dick.  Seriously.  Not only was he a dick but he was a dick with a hard-on for himself.  A selfish dick is nothing to be proud of no matter what your persuasion.

But this is not about him, or even about our sometimes stellar free weekly.  This is about four pages of advertisement in the back.  Four pages of fancy, expensive advertisement.  All of it promoting Pot.

I’m talking Marijuana people, Mary Jane, Ganja, Pakalolo.  Pot sales gone corporate.  It’s disgusting.

Before everyone gets pissy about me not being super-subversive in a super-hero pot smoking way, the way you always dreamed your local subversive would be, let me fill you in on how I feel about Pot, really.

I couldn’t give a shit.  It never did anything for me and although I smoked it as a teen as did everyone who isn’t lying, I had no problem putting it down.  It was expensive and made people behave stupidly.  The people around me at least, ceased to be able to do anything beyond devour tacos and watch “Headbanger’s Ball. “

I have never begrudged anyone else their sticky green communion though, I have always seen it as largely harmless, certainly better than someone who downs a liquid lunch and drives to work.  Although I will admit pot smokers in general come across as slightly misinformed.  There are always heath risks to inhaling smoke into your lungs, whether it’s pot or frankincense, it’s probably not a good idea to inhale it all the live long day, you’re lungs are gonna be affected.

I well understand the health benefits particularly for those with cancer and HIV related problems.  THC helps with appetite and calms pain receptors.

On the several occasions it came up for a vote on my state’s ballot I voted in favour of legalizing it.  However most of the bills were shortsighted in my opinion.  Making something legal is not the same as making something legal with medical restrictions.  It was the medical restrictions that I thought were the problem, and it seems to be playing out that way.

In the state of California in order to legally purchase and use marijuana you must have a prescription from a medical doctor.  When this law originally passed in 1996, it was a little bit more difficult.  Doctors were skeptical and not just about the usefulness of marijuana and THC but the effect of their licensure if they began handing out prescriptions for the herb.  As a result, it was slow going at first; one had to find a doctor willing to put their license on the line sometimes travelling several hours to cities and towns to find these Doctors.

In addition law enforcement did not relish having to discern whether or not someone actually had a medical issue.  Most pot smokers queued up a ready list of things wrong with them to recite but it was difficult to tell if the operation in the back garden was for medical use or if unscrupulous pot-heads were padding their wallet with the excuse of glaucoma.

Some counties made it simpler for themselves passing laws and ordinances effectively making the state law null and void in their county or township.

All of this worked for a while but what law enforcement and raging anti-drug activists forget is pot smokers like to hang out together.  They know a lot of people, not many people like getting stoned alone so it wasn’t a huge surprise when marijuana clubs and collectives began to pop up and organize, advocating for a law that was already in place that allowed them to use the herbal remedy for certain maladies.

This was effective in a huge and quick way.  Even die-hard sheriffs could see where having a good relationship with a collective would make their job easier.  They would know where folks were getting their weed from and have easy access to who was supposed to be getting weed and why and even how much.

With law enforcement backing off doctors began to breathe a little.  For those who believed in the curative powers of pot they could rest a little easier at night writing prescriptions Okaying its use.  But this is where things begin to get dicey too.  Some medical practitioners very quickly recognized a way to build an excellent practice, bringing in a lot of cash payments.  Cash payment is much to be desired by medical practitioners as everyone knows, insurance companies are giant pits of doom and despair.  Nobody gets paid from them.  So some medical practioners began to open clinics only to work with the patients looking for weed.

My biggest concern and the thing I didn’t anticipate in this number is the amount of ailments that all of a sudden necessitate smoking the herb.  From tinnitus all the way to anxiety, all have and continue to qualify a person for medical marijuana.  I have known nobody whose ear ringing has disappeared due to sparking a spliff and it is a scientific fact that chemical compounds in marijuana work in your brain to produce more anxiety firing brain storms, not reduce them.  And yet here we are with people walking around with their marijuana green cards for anxiety.

This also brings me back to my local free weekly.  I remember in the late 90’s when the community got bent out of shape when the then management decided to sell ad space to beer companies.  The revenue generated was too big a draw for the struggling paper to pass up, but the community was pissed.  Letters to the editor poured in decrying the decision, promising to never read the paper again, “don’t you know our kids read this stuff?”

The paper did actually lose some readers over it and quite a few writers started their own weekly in response.  However as the back pages of the paper fill up with Cannabis clubs advertising free trials of your choice of “Purple Haze” or “Lowryder” nobody is saying a word.  This seems odd to me particularly since these ads are so expensive.

The price of a quarter page illustrated add in the weekly begins at $500.00 a week which tells me people are making money off of these clubs.  They have left the realm of compassionate kindness and backyard growing and become consumer driven ventures.

Add to the free trials, the swank and ambiance of some of the clubs which vary from Turkish styled smoke lounges to pharmacy style counters, depending on how you want to feel about your medicine, it begins to become clear that our medical business culture is moving forward in its capitalistic greed to suck up what it can from the smoke trade.

Which somehow seems plain wrong to my sensibilities.  If I were a pot smoker I would much rather hide my pot plants in the tomato patch and be able to raise my fist at the man with pride.  Not charge my weed to my visa card and settle in next to the anesthesiologist who is smoking pot for his Tourette’s syndrome.  But that’s just me.

I’m thinking I’m not alone in my feelings, a lot of people never intended it to look cool to have social and physical maladies in order to smoke pot at the local hookah shop.  Personally, I had only intended to make an unreasonably illegal herb available for those who needed it.  Maybe make the earth an overall better place by encouraging people to garden.  But then, I should have known, Americans, even humans in general are greedy and if they see a way to addict more people to something and make money off it they will.

There is a growing contingent of folks that want to tax cannabis and it will most likely end up on our ballot in California in November 2010.  While I am all for generating revenue, the behavior around this sometimes helpful, sometimes harmful herb has me really thinking about whether or not to back the taxation of something that grows, well…like a weed.

http://www.canorml.org/

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Marijuana_Legalization_Initiative_(2010)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127477038

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Photography by Virginia Lee Hunter

By: Grainne Rhuad

Ballyhoo – bal·ly·hoo (bāl’ē-hōō’) n. pl. bal·ly·hoos-

1.Sensational or clamorous advertising or publicity.

2.Noisy shouting or uproar.

I have the attention of a dozen sets of 11 year old eyes.  They are rapt, in awe at my skills.  This doesn’t happen very often, that I amaze to the point of silence so many young people, but today I have a trick up my sleeve.  A trick learned at the breast.  The incredible trick of bouncing a ping pong ball from any point and landing it directly into a gold fish bowl.  Every time.  From a corner position, no problem.  Over the shoulder without looking?  Piece of cake.  I naturally fall into the intonations of a pitch-person while I’m explaining the game rules to the children gathered on this summer afternoon for a birthday party.  I have to stop myself when they start to look in their pockets for change.  I don’t mean to, but somehow I bring out the money whenever I get a ping pong ball and a stack of fishbowls around me.

It’s something I come by honestly.  I was born with this skill.  It probably comes from the fact that while floating comfortably in amniotic fluid my mother was running the goldfish pond with a family carnival.  She also ran the duck shoot, but not if she could get out of it, she didn’t like the sound of the pop guns and always felt like she was being shot at.

It was the summer of 1970 somewhere between Oregon and Florida when my mother noticed she was pregnant.  Travelling with a carnival and working the duck pond, she had set out to see the world.  Joining a carnival was an inexpensive way to travel in this time, and she wanted to get out of the family home in California and see the world.  She hadn’t counted on meeting someone while on the road and growing a family but that’s how it happened.

She did finish out the summer season with the carnival and returned home to Santa Cruz to give birth to me.  When the next season came around she took me with her, setting me in a Moses basket behind the booth counter.  It wasn’t until I suffered terrible sunburn in August that she finally gave in and returned home.

I like to think it was this early travelling that made me so enamored of carnivals, circuses, freaks and geeks.  However I really cannot say for sure that this is so.  What I do know is I have always been intrigued by fringe communities of all sorts.

Somewhere around four my mother in exasperation threatened to sell me to the Gypsies the next time they came through town.  Two weeks later she had to take it back when I wouldn’t stop asking when the Gypsies were coming.  Her strategy of fear had not worked.  I wanted to go with the Gypsies.  I wanted to be snug at night in a trailer made for travel, safe in the knowledge that those that mattered to me were all around.  I wanted to see exotic places, meet people while being protected.  I even wanted to work.  It was with some sadness that I listened to her explain that Gypsies don’t actually buy children.

Yes, all my life I have been in love with travelling groups of people.  I wistfully wished that I had been alive to see Coney Island as it was at the turn of the century.  A haven with Strong Men, Snake Dancers, Sword swallowers and fortune tellers.  I reached early adulthood at a time when places like Coney Island were rundown and nearly abandoned.  Do-gooders who felt it was their duty to “protect” the infirm and disabled seemingly had won a war against carnivals both travelling and stationary.  It was not en vogue to have midgets or “little people” as they were now supposed to be called as primary entertainers.  Conjoined twins were being separated as a matter of course thanks to advances in science.  It was impolite to stare at wolf-boys; those with hypertrichosis. It was impolite to mention differences at all, let alone regale in them.

Watered down carnivals could still be found at your state and local fairs.  You could play games, after you received strict instruction from the grown-ups in charge of you that day not to talk to the “dirty carnies” and “please don’t risk your lives on those unsafe rides.  Those people are drunk when they put them up.”

Of course as a youth none of us listened to this at all.  The carnies were exciting, they had tales to tell if you wanted to listen of alligators and swamps; of beautiful women who had stolen their hearts; of worlds we never saw in suburbia full of music and strangeness.    Why on earth would one avoid talking to someone with so many stories I wondered?  Of course my own mother was not one to caution me in the normal way.  She would tell me to be wary of the carnies wanting to give you something; the other ones are usually fine.  As a result I would spend hours observing who acted what way with the shills, approaching the workers who looked the most interesting.  This ultimately got me banned from going to the fair with a lot of my friends.

Artwork by Lino M.

When I was a teenager, I ran a scam of my own to get into the carnival while it was in town. I very carefully lifted the daily stamp from the ticket office.  These stamps were used to identify who had paid and for how much.  You received a stamp of a certain kind for just paying entry, and a stamp of a separate kind if you had bought an all access pass.  These stamps I was not foolish enough to keep, instead I quickly stamped both of my arms in their entirety.  Once home I got them slightly wet and made an impression so as to copy them.  A born game runner was I and I was not about to pay full price for anything.

The following year our Carnival got wise and tried to randomly change the color of the stamp pad.  To combat this we cut a section out of the fence near the rabbit hutches.  Our skinniest, most innocent was sent in with all our collective money daily and stamp bought they came out and transference commenced.   I don’t know how kids do it nowadays with the prefab bracelets they use instead.  It may be that the magic of the carnival is something they have to pay for.

I did make up for my stolen summer days at the carnival.  I never played the games; it would have been unsporting of me as I knew how to beat most of them.  Instead I just watched people.  The midway is a delicious slice of the human comedy.  You see young men and women trying to impress their dates.  You see couples tired out and see which ones are still in love and which ones are holding it together for the kids.  You see kids who tell you all you need to know about the parents, from Veruca Salt’s who get whatever they want so their uninterested parents can stare at teenage booty to over-involved mums who are making up for childhood lost with their own kids.

And of course there are still the Carnival folk themselves with their stories.  Love lost, love thrown away, adventure found, disillusionment with America, Mexico, Norway, Greece.  They come from everywhere these workers and they end up on the midway for so many reasons.

Most commonly however you will find that carnies have an abiding love for the world.  The sites, the people the sounds the differences in dialects and foods.  They tend to be people who would live on the outskirts anyway, but nevertheless they love to see and know people.  This I can relate to.

This too may be something that was nurtured in utereo.  The need to know people.  The small stories, that are anything but, the cultures that change as you travel day to night.  A habit I have that annoys some people and sometimes makes me blush is I naturally modulate my voice to whatever linguistics I am around.  I will speak like an Aussie, mimic a southern drawl, and speak like I walked out of South Central, L.A.  Sometimes people think I’m making fun of them, but I’m not, I simply cannot help but match their cadence.

It is this ability to blend in, to taste for a minute a community, to appreciate it to its fullness and then move on to another that is the hallmark of the wanderer, the troubadour, the carnie.

More recently I have noticed a new generation finding the weird.  Stage shows that include flame dancing and swords swallowing along with other flagrant acts of self abuse have experienced resurgence in popularity.   Very often they are opening shows for rock concerts or side shows to festivals like Lollapalooza or Ozzfest.  The Aforementioned Coney Island is experiencing a renewal.  Sideshows are becoming a pop-culture go-to from literature to film.  Even comics are tipping a hat to sideshows with series’ like Golly , by Phil Hester (Phil also penned The Crow, Swamp Thing and Brave New World) Golly features a hardworking carnie who finds himself the champion of mankind in the war between heaven and hell.

Artwork by Phyllis Davidson

All in all I think it’s a good thing this return interest to the fringe, the weird.  It’s an inescapable part of human nature but it also serves to remind us all that we are and can be what we want to be.  Society only has as much claim on us as we chose to give it.

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I am talking on the phone with an acquaintance who is telling me about a vegetable co-op they are heading up.  When I ask where they are getting the vegetables they say Arizona.

“But why?”  I ask, “When produce is fresh and cheap where you are?”

“Because,” they answer, “It is cheaper to get it from Arizona.  They have more laborers.”

This person then goes on to extol the virtues of the new Arizona immigration laws and my head starts to spin.

We are living in a time when people are afraid.  This fear has been nurtured by everyone from mums and dads who tell their kids to stay in sight to media that constantly warns us by video and ticker-tape that we must wash, tape, arm and be vigilant.  The results of this kind of fear are myriad but in Arizona the result has come to fruition in persecution.

On April 23, 2010 Governor Jan Brewer (R) signed into law SB1070.  The law would require the police “when practicable” to detain people they reasonably suspected were in the country without authorization. It would also allow the police to charge immigrants with a state crime for not carrying immigration documents. And it allows residents to sue cities if they believe the law is not being enforced.

The Arizona law is being passed in the context of federal programs, such as “Secure Communities,” which allow local and state law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law. They also serve to put Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) in charge of local law enforcement, with local and state agencies coming under their command in raids and other enforcement activities. The federal programs, like “Secure Communities” and “287g,” together with the ICE raids, have already unleashed the terrorizing and collective punishment of communities which a lot of people feel are themselves crimes by the government. They have also unleashed widespread racist government profiling, arrests and searches without probable cause, and mass deportations across the country. Indeed, while SB 1070 was being debated, a massive ICE raid using 800 agents terrorized four communities in Arizona, including Phoenix and Tucson.

The law specifically allows any Arizona resident to sue to force the police, or conceivably landlords, or school officials, to have people they “reasonably suspect” to be undocumented, arrested. It also forbids actions such as sanctuary cities. Out of state drivers are targeted as well. Officials in Phoenix, for example, say they will require out-of-state drivers to have a passport or visa or be subject to arrest.

This law addresses a range of issues relating to immigration. Some concerns are as follows:

•  It Prohibits state, city or county officials from limiting or restricting “the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law.” This means that local ordinances permitting sanctuary cities or towns are outlawed. The law also allows any person to “bring an action in Superior Court to challenge any official or agency” that “adopts or implements a policy that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws. This portion of the law is specifically directed at law enforcement agencies, as well as churches or others attempting to provide sanctuary. It anticipates that some police forces may attempt to simply not enforce the law. To counter this, anyone can bring suit demanding that police fully enforce SB1070.

• It Requires law enforcement to make a reasonable attempt “when practicable” to determine the immigration status of a person “where reasonable suspicion exists that the person” is “unlawfully present in the U.S.” The person does not have to be committing or even be suspicious of committing a crime. The term “reasonable suspicion” also requires even less than the usual “probable cause” to stop a person. Officers do not have to act “if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation.” The immigration status is to be verified by the federal government. Individuals determined to be in the country without documentation are turned over to the federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Local and state officials can also choose to take an individual to any federal facility in the state, including those outside of their jurisdiction.

• It Makes it a state crime to be an undocumented immigrant, by creating a state charge of “willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document.” The misdemeanor charge carries a $500 fine. A second offense automatically becomes a felony charge. For state residents, an Arizona driver’s license is considered proof of citizenship. A person without a license must carry their birth certificate or other government issued identification or immigration document, like a green card, to prove status. For people from out of state, a passport or visa is required. As Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski put it, police should request citizenship proof from everyone they stop in order to avoid charges of racial profiling. He added, “Anyone who drives in the city of Phoenix and gets pulled over better have a passport or a visa.”

• It Makes it a state crime of “trespassing” if a “person is present on any public or private land” in Arizona and is without documentation proving citizenship or residency. It is also a misdemeanor charge with a $500 fine that becomes a felony on a second offense.

• It Makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work or solicit work in Arizona.

• It Makes it a crime to pick up a day laborer for work if the vehicle impedes traffic while doing so. Make it a crime to be picked up as a day laborer if the vehicle they get into is impeding traffic.

• It Makes it a crime to “conceal, harbor or shield an undocumented immigrant if the person knows or recklessly disregards the immigrant’s status.” This means anyone who lives with an undocumented person, including spouses or children or other family members, is guilty of a crime. There is a legal defense for someone providing emergency, public-safety or public health services to undocumented immigrants. However, it is the state that determines if such services are being provided. Many churches, social service and health organizations are concerned they and the people they serve will be targeted.

• It Allows law-enforcement officials to arrest a person without a warrant if they have “probable cause to believe the person has committed a public offense that makes him or her removable from the U.S.” The federal government requires deportation for any conviction for an “aggravated felony,” even one from years ago. It has also included minor non-violent offenses like shoplifting, DUI, and possession of any quantity of any illegal drugs, under the category of “aggravated felony.” Many documented immigrants living 10 years and more in the U.S., are already being deported, with more than half of all deportations made from people detained in Arizona.

• It Allows law enforcement to stop a driver if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the driver is in violation of human-smuggling and any civil traffic law. “Smuggling of human beings” is defined as “the transportation, procurement of transportation or use of property or real property by a person or an entity that knows or has reason to know that the person or persons transported or to be transported are not U.S. citizens, permanent residents or persons otherwise lawfully in this state or have attempted to enter, entered or remained in the U.S. in violation of law.” This means a citizen whose spouse or children are undocumented is guilty of “smuggling,” as is someone driving fellow workers to work. A carload of people that look like immigrants can be stopped for no reason, or for traffic tickets or similar violations. If the driver or others in the car cannot prove citizenship or residency, all can be jailed and the car impounded.

• It Requires employers to keep E-Verify records of employees’ eligibility. E-verify is notoriously wrong concerning verification, with many people wrongly identified as without documentation. Employers who knowingly employ undocumented workers do not face criminal charges but can lose their licenses.

All of this was immediately met with action from those in favor of and those opposing the bill.  Boycotts on Arizona have been announced by truck drivers.  Businesses have withdrawn plans to hold conferences in Arizona.  Writers, artists and musicians who make annual pilgrimages to Arizona for inspiration have announced they will be staying away until this bill is reversed.   People from all over the nation have cancelled reservations to vacation there.  With Arizona depending in large part on tourism, this hits them especially hard.  And, on Wednesday, May 12, 2010, Los Angeles became the largetst city yet to boycot the state of Arizona. With the city council voting 13-1 to bar L.A. from conducting buisiness with Arizona unless the law is overturned.   It is estimated this boycott alone will cost Arizona approximately 8 million dollars in revenue.

President Obama strongly criticized it while speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden; he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.”

The Arizona law, he added, threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

The Mexican Embassy released the following statement:

“The Embassy of Mexico is deeply concerned by the potentially dire effects that the final enactment of legislative initiatives, such as SB 1070 currently under discussion in Arizona, may have for the civil rights of Mexican nationals. As it has been raised by national Latino and immigrant rights organizations, initiatives that exclusively criminalize immigration create opportunities for undue enforcement of the law through racial profiling.

Mexico also observes with concern the likelihood of negative effects that this measure, should it be approved, may have for the future development of tourism, commercial, friendship and cultural ties that have characterized the relationship between Mexico and Arizona for generations, particularly with the State of Sonora.

Through its vast consular network, the Government of Mexico will continue to provide any and all consular assistance required by our nationals in this country in order to guarantee the protection and full exercise of their fundamental rights regardless of their immigration status.”

The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police and several sheriffs have also come out against the law, calling it burdensome and an intrusion into a federal matter. With most police agencies already checking immigration status of those who come into custody, this new law seems unnecessary and indeed expands the powers of the police to the point that abuses are bound to occur.

Personally I have been on a waiting list for a timeshare in Arizona that is never available, this week I received a call with a tired sounding operator hoping that I would take the reservation.  I had to decline, when giving my reasons why I was told that this is hurting Arizonians and it is.

But it should be.  Arizonian voters passed this law, what they fail to recognize is the bulk of their income comes from migrant workers; in the fields, in the hotels and resorts, in the galleries and restaurants.

However what is less on people’s minds is how this law could affect all of us.  The law calls for what is in effect a police state, in which anyone who is suspected of being an immigrant can be hauled in.  Right now people are thinking in terms of Mexicans; however this could affect someone who seems Icelandic or Turkish.  Have you been playing your Celtic music too loud?  Your neighbor could sue to have the police come out and investigate if you are an illegal immigrant from Ireland.   Yelling for your children in your native tongue of Portuguese?  Someone could have you investigated for that.

The reality of this Bill is it sets precedence for harassment.  You don’t have to be doing anything extraordinary or even look a certain way to be pulled in to the station and hassled.   This is why even Texans have been speaking out against it.  Or perhaps they remember the Alamo and what could happen if you push a Mexican too far.

It is this sentiment, the grey zone of harassment that people who are against this law are so concerned with.  From civil rights groups to state senators there has been a general outcry against this law.  Sen. Paula Aboud, D-Tucson, stated, “This piece of legislation are tactics that were used in Nazi Germany,” Aboud said of the requirement that individuals be able to show paperwork.

But there are a lot of people who support this law.  The Phoenix police department for one, But then they also rounded up 800 immigrants in one day following the Bill being signed into law.  It is a huge income incentive for their county.

Hate groups are especially exuberant about this law.  People operating radio stations all over the country have been praising the Governor’s “brave move.”  However one wonders what will happen when the neo-Nazi practicing their new German phrases gets hauled in on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.

But probably one of the scarier supporters of this law is the same group that helped write it.  The Immigration Reform Law institute. (IRLI)  This group feels that our nation is not taking immigration (and by immigration they mean Mexican immigration) seriously enough.   To this end they have set about setting up an organization to promote, plan and help implement laws that are discriminatory and many feel unconstitutional.  IRLI has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Immigration Reform Law Institute calls itself, “America’s only public interest law organization working exclusively to protect the legal rights, privileges, and property of U.S. citizens and their communities from injuries and damages caused by unlawful immigration.” However, the Center for New Community (CNC) has a different slant on what IRLI stands for. According to CNC, IRLI’s “primary purpose is to push legal causes that unfairly target immigrant communities.”

IRLI has been behind most, if not every, local legislative immigration crackdown over the past few years.  IRLI has taken part in a class action suit against California educators for allowing immigrant students to attend school. They have been behind a series of initiatives to prohibit members of local communities from renting to undocumented immigrants and sued Secretary Michael Chertoff and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), despite his aggressive workplace raids. In California, the Immigration Reform Law Institute has also aligned itself with a state ballot initiative aimed at overturning the 14th Amendment citizenship requirements and ending pre-natal and non-emergency care and child welfare checks that benefit the U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants. IRLI lawyer Kris Kobach makes about $300 per hour to train Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s officers in immigration matters. Kobach is kept busy considering Arpaio is currently the subject of a racial profiling investigation by the Department of Justice and has 2,700 lawsuits sitting on his desk as a result of his immigration policing tactics. A recent documentary investigated the role IRLI played in an anti-immigrant ordinance proposed in Prince William County.

Back on the phone with my acquaintance when I find my words, I explain all this to them.  They are not impressed.   They spout the general rhetoric of “This is America” and “We need to police our borders.”  Mixed in with this is a new sentiment.  “Maybe now we can afford to move there.”

Ah, so the pioneering expansion emotion is never far from some of our minds.

New land, cheap.

Interesting.

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

http://www.usmlo.org/arch2010/2010-04/VR100421.htm

http://www.irli.org/index.html

http://www.splcenter.org/

http://www.aclu.org/

http://portal.sre.gob.mx/usa/

http://www.npr.org

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Nazi Pin Up Girls-Then...

Recent news coverage of E-list celebrity Jesse James engaging in a relationship with a possible Neo-Nazi/White Pride tattooed lady surprisingly had me contemplating.

Nazi Pin-Up Girl-Now...

The headlines read like a Fascists Gone Wild commercial.  Drugs, sex, pole dancing and Sieg Hiel!  In reality I was wondering is this where Neo-Nazi-ism is heading?  Mainstream media meltdown?  Have things gotten so bad that no room is available for this on Jerry Springer?  Where are all the real Neo- Fascists and what are they up to?

Which led me on a long and somewhat troubling search, a search to see if I could suss out what agendas the Neo-Fascists/Nazis/Skinheads are currently working on, after all they just might be sending out heavily inked Fem Bots to distract us.

First off let’s talk about the difference between being a fascist and a neo-fascist.  This is something that neo-fascists tend to get tripped up on, which is why you will sometimes hear the strange and discombobulating war cry “You Fascist Pig!” come flying out of their mouths.  It’s confusing and one wonders if they do it just for that reason, but no.

The word fascism comes from the Latin fasces, a group of tightly bundled rods with an axe head protruding from one end, a Roman symbol of power and unity. It is itself is hard to define but generally it is a philosophy or system of government that bears with it stringent social and economic control, a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator (elected or not), and often a policy of belligerent racism and nationalism.

Columbia University’s contribution to Answers-dot-com section on “fascism” notes:

While socialism (particularly Marxism) came into existence as a clearly formulated theory or program based on a specific interpretation of history, fascism introduced no systematic exposition of its ideology or purpose other than a negative reaction against socialist and democratic egalitarianism. The growth of democratic ideology and popular participation in politics in the 19th century was terrifying to some conservative elements in European society, and fascism grew out of the attempt to counter it by forming mass parties based largely on the middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie, exploiting their fear of political domination by the lower classes. [In the American South, this dread was aimed at blacks, and the bogeyman of black rule was repeatedly invoked, along with the black sexual satyr, to fuel anti-black pogroms.—S.G.]  Forerunners of fascism, such as Georges Boulanger in France and Adolf Stker and Karl Lueger in Germany and Austria, in their efforts to gain political power played on people’s fears of revolution with its subsequent chaos, anarchy, and general insecurity. They appealed to nationalist sentiments and prejudices, exploited anti-Semitism, and portrayed themselves as champions of law, order, Christian morality, and the sanctity of private property.

Unlike its forerunner fascism, neo-fascism can encompass almost anything a group is against.  However, it usually includes nationalism, anti-immigration policies or, where relevant, nativism anti-communism and opposition to the parliamentary system and liberal democracy.  While Centralized government is to be avoided and disdained on the agreed upon “outside” within neo-fascist groups there is a definite pecking order.  Neo-fascist are belligerent in their racism and nationalism.  Very often neo-fascists feel themselves to be Anarchist, however they are anything but as they usually proscribe to rules of behavior modeled on military codes.

This neo-fascism much like its predecessor, is highly attractive to the middle and blue collar classes; those who see themselves as the maligned and abused backbone of our country.   Gore Vidal put it well when he spoke to the case of Timothy McVeigh.  Stating that McVeigh “needed a self-consuming cause to define him [self].” (Vidal’s account, “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh,”)

That out of the way, let’s talk about just where these neo-fascists and their close relatives the neo-Nazis have been and what they have been up to.

Things fascists are doing to keep themselves busy:

• Joining the army and killing people in other countries- A very large portion of those who belong to neo-fascist groups joined the military when restrictions were relaxed due to our current continuing conflict.  A war against another nation is the perfect place to take out your belligerent supremacy.  But there is something more driving this as well. John Kifner, writing for the New York Times on July 7^th 2009 noted:  A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq allowed large numbers of “Neo Nazis and skinhead extremist” to infiltrate the military, according to watchdog information.  The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which track racial and right wing militia groups, estimated the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interview with defense department investigators and reports and postings on racist web sites and magazines.  “We’ve got Aryan Nation graffiti in Baghdad.” The group quoted a defense department investigator.

• Joining the Westboro Baptist Church-Baptist Church is perhaps one of the most dangerous churches in our nation.  When the KKK sites on their official website that they do not condone your actions and want nobody to misunderstand that, you have gone past all reason.  This church has been responsible for protests that very often get ugly.  They also have a handy dandy hell counter on their web page so all their followers can see how many people are going to hell today for belonging to other less radical churches.  They are the ones you see at Tea Parties with Guns, they are the ones who turn up in support of murderers when black teens are killed.  Heck they don’t even limit it to race; they also took a trip up to Salt Lake City and hassled the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by burning their sacred clothing in Temple Square.

• Joining Tea Parties-Recently attending tea parties as we all know has not just been for your Nanna and March Hares.  Radical Right supporters with no more information than a slogan have been turning out to question our government officials in the most obnoxious ways possible.  This had been a popular pass-time for neo-fascists until…

• Quitting Tea Parties- came into fashion.  That’s right when everyone showed up to these tea parties they just weren’t prepared for how many Nanna’s actually were there.  They wanted something stronger, more in your face with blood pumping action which is why they are now…

• Joining Coffee Parties- I kid you not.  Coffee is stronger than tea, everyone knows that.  So for a more in your face experience at thumbing your nose at health care you can go for coffee.  No sugar.

• Having keg parties (kidding)-this goes without saying doesn’t it? After all where else are you going to play all the Head banging “Oi!” music that neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups are sponsoring.  Real exciting bands with names like Rebel Yell and Death’s Head.

• Getting sent to jail mostly for methamphetamine use, production and distribution- Sad but true, nothing funds and fuels a revolution like speed and the Neo’s are no dummies, they learned how to cook and distribute from well set up groups like The Hell’s Angels.  As often happens some fool doesn’t follow the rules and winds up getting caught, but no worries, this simply provides an opportunity for recruiting.

• Becoming Minute Men to patrol the borders-As outlined neo-fascists and Nazi’s alike do not like other races, groups of people or incursions into what they feel is theirs.  The new Minute Men incarnation which patrols our borders (free of charge people) is a perfect match for those so inclined.  They get to practice all the paramilitary training they get at their retreats.

• Hosting paramilitary training-Well thought out retreats into secluded areas of woodland and desert is available for those who would like to learn paramilitary skills.  As I happen to know someone who attended one such training I can tell you they offer all kinds of good and useful information like how to pick a lock, hotwire a car and the love and care of your best bud…your gun.

• Hangin’ at gun shows- Gun shows are a mixed bag.  You will find a lot of weirdoes there, people with messed up ideas about first amendment rights, gun education and so on.   However it is a great way to travel and network with other neo-fascist/Nazi groups.  Want to know what’s goin’ down in Chi-town?  Get a handle on the White Pride movement in the ATL? Travelling to gun shows will help you network.

• Going to the box office- Everyone loves a blockbuster movie and what the neo-fascist fancies may be something you like as well. The best loved scripts are ones in which the fantasy of vigilantism comes into play. Favorites include movies like Watchmen, Sin City, Blade, Public Enemy and a slew of Western and War movies.

• Going Pimp Daddy on the video-yo! – Hand in hand with this love of fantasy goes video playing.  Neo-Fascist love to blow things up and shoot shit to Hell and back.  Grand Theft Auto, Full Metal Jacket and Splinter Cell are the types of games you will find.

• Hating on Kanye West- The new face of “The Man”- If there’s one thing a neo-fascist and neo-Nazi hate, Hate, HATE without fail it is an uppity Negro.  In fact this hate has given way to putting the Black man in the archetype of “The Man”, as in “The Man” is responsible for my downward turn.  “The Man” has more than he needs.  “The Man” needs his ass kicked.  Kanye West is far from perfect and he is far from the only uppity one on their list but he is right up there by our President.

•  Maintaining websites and .org’s- It’s a new era for all of us and yes there are neo- fascists who are also tech geeks.  Here’s a list of sites and organizations that the Anti-Defamation League feels like you should be aware of:

-American Nazi Party

-Aryan Nations

-Aryan Brotherhood

-Creativity Movement

-Jew Watch

-Ku Klux Klan- This group in actuality has fewer ties to Neo-Fascism and Neo-Nazi-ism than you may think.

-Libertarian National Socialist Green Party

-National Alliance

-National Independents Movement

-National Socialist Party of America

-NSDAP-AO

-Overthrow.com (Bill White)-shut down by the FBI

-Stormfront.org

-White Aryan Resistance

• They are poets. –Putting their sensitive side to good use they write inspired prose with titles sure to move you like “Obamy’s Mammy” and “One Flew Over the Gook’s Nest”. (Real titles)

• Amalgamating religions. – Apparently being White is a God given supremacy but it’s okay if you worship Odin and call on Valkyries too!

• 17 Learning new languages – Well one, namely German so as to write crazy kewl lyrics and pass notes in class.  I did however run across a guy who claimed he could read Norse runes; he could not however translate my shirt which had the rune for snow on it.

• They’re goin’ to Church!-Seriously.  A group called The Creativity Movement has called on members to visit various churches and synagogs and “educate” non-believers. (the accepted belief being white supremacy)

So you see neo-fascists and neo-Nazis haven’t disappeared or degenerated into pure debauchery as TMZ and E! News would have us believe.  They are employed in endeavors from the serious to the sensitive.  They are working on building their organizations, making life better for the beaten down White Folk.

http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/default.asp

http://www.kukluxklan.bz/faq.html#aids

http://www.splcenter.org/

http://www.godhatesfags.com/- Westboro Baptist Church

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