Watching the Debates

The Presidential and Vice Presidential debates have always been the most entertaining part of the election season for me.  From the past debates that I’m seen, they’ve usually been less about the issues and more about creating an impression to the American people about the personality and character of the particular candidates.   My first Presidential debate that I remember is the Reagan/Carter debate in 1980, and I just remember Reagan saying “there you go again” whenever Carter criticized Reagan.   Though a lot of the debates seem canned, they do offer a chance to see the candidates perform alone without the handlers and p.r. people, and it gives us a chance to see how the candidates think on their feet.   I found on the internet a site that Jim Lehrer hosted for PBS called Debating Our Destiny (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/index.html) that looked back on the televised Presidential and Vice debates and interviewed the candidates to see their thoughts on the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates.   As we listen to the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates in these next few weeks, I’ve found this site to be illuminating and it gives me some perspective on the goals and approaches that John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and Joe Biden may take.

My favorite debate was the 1992 Vice Presidential Debate, just for the sheer entertainment value.  I had gone to my friend Lupita’s home to watch it with Lupita and another friend Marilou, and I remember our jaws just collectively dropped at how the debate unfolded.  It was basicly a food fight.  That year there were 3 candidates debating:  Al Gore, Dan Quayle, and James Stockdale (the V.P. candidate of independent Ross Perot).  Stockdale was fumbling and often didn’t have answers to the questions that the moderator had.  When he didn’t have an answer, Quayle and Gore jumped in and tore into each other with verbal jabs.  I loved it.  It was the sort of free for all, where the candidates faced each other and answered each others questions.  In the Lehrer interview with Stockdale (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/1992.html), Stockdale said that he had only found out about the debate days before the event was to take place and that no one in Perot’s campaign helped him to prepare.  Quayle came into the debate determined to focus on Clinton and felt Stockdale made the debate cluttered. 

The first debate that I remember very well was the 1984 debate between Mondale and Reagan.   I had been having long discussions with my father during the Fall;  I wanted Mondale to win, while my dad was going for Reagan.  Since I couldn’t vote at the time, it was important that I tried to persuade my dad of the error of his ways.  So our family had some vested interest in the debates.  I remember gloating after the first debate, because I thought Mondale was a lot sharper than Reagan, and it seemed that Reagan was a bit lost during the debates.  In the second debate, Reagan was more his calm and folksy self, and it spelled doom for Mondale.  In his interview with Lehrer (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/1984.html), Mondale said that he viewed the debates as the one way to gain ground in the elections against a very popular President.  Reagan told Lehrer that he stumbled in the first debate because he overtrained by trying to memorize statistics and facts in preparation for the debate.  In the second debate, Mondale said that when Reagan made that quip about not exploiting Mondale’s youth and inexperience, he knew at that moment he lost the elections.  I lost as well.  My dad voted for Reagan and did some gloating of his own.  It was a tough winter that year.

The first election that I was able to vote was the 1988 elections.   The Presidential debates that year made me very angry and frustrated.   Dukakis was the Democratic nominee that year, and I felt that that he was receiving a lot of cheap shots from the Republicans with the Willie Horton ads, the pledge of allegiance issue, and the insinuations about being a card carrying member of the ACLU.  During the debates, Dukakis seemed very cold and monotone, and he had a hard time answering Bush’s cheap shots at him.  I vividly remember wanting to shake him.  Dukakis told Lehrer (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/1988.html) that he had no premonition of the way viewers would gauge the debates, especially a question that a moderator asked Dukakis about whether Dukakis would favor a death penalty to a person who had raped and killed his wife.   As an opponent to the death penalty, Dukakis had answered that question a thousand times before, and answered the question in a canned way.  Dukakis later realized that although he may have answered that question many times before, the debates are the first time that many Americans have viewed Dukakis and will form their opinions based on what they see in these televised events.

This PBS site is a wonderful chance to hear about experiences and insights of the candidates who have participated in the debates.  George H.W. Bush, who participated in 1 Vice Presidential debate and 5 Presidential debates, hated the debates because he felt that the televised debates was more about entertainment than about debating the nuances of issues or of telling the nation of the candidate’s experience.   In the 1988 debate against Dukakis, Bush at one point asked when it was time to unleash the one-liners.   Geraldine Ferraro (Walter Mondale’s Vice Presidential nominee in 1984) and Dan Quayle (George H.W. Bush’s Vice Presidential nominee for 1988) both expressed the fear of making a major mistake that would harm the campaign, and Quayle felt that his trying to memorize all the issues and statistics was a mistake because it made him stiff and nervous.    This was a common theme among many of the candidates, that the debates offered the challenge of being relaxed while being prepared with the issues.   Bill Clinton came into the debates with 3 or 4 prepackaged lines that he was prepared to use when the moment opened up.  Jimmy Carter came into the 1976 debates having never met a President before, and frankly told Lehrer that he was very intimidated to be in the same stage as President Ford. 

I think the best debates were the 3 Presidential debates in 1992, especially the town hall debate.   During the 3 debates, I thought having 3 candidates was an advantage because it forced the candidates to focus on the issues and it made it harder for them to make character attacks without having to defend themselves from two other candidates.  In the first debate, Ross Perot made good use of one liners, but in the town hall debate, his one liners fell flat and they had to focus more on the issues.  When the candidates had to directly answer the people in the audience, it made the debates more personal to me.  My favorite moment was when a woman asked President Bush about how the recession affected him personally. 

In my years watching the debates, I think the candidates who were most effective on television were Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.  They seemed to realize that the point of these television events was not to win the debates, per se, but to connect with the people who were watching.   As the Biden/Palin debate nears, much is being made of Biden’s experience and policy expertise as compared to Palin.   As the Reagan/Mondale debates of 1984 showed, it’s not always the most informed candidates who “win” the debates.   

In watching the first  Obama/McCain debate, I see two serious candidates who are well informed and who are good at stating their very different views on how they would run the country.    With the recent financial meltdown, the dangers in foreign affairs, the problems with energy and the environment, it’s good that these candidates are taking the time to meet face to face and discuss the issues to a national audience.  A lot of what they’ll say will be rehearsed and they will try to paint the other candidate in a negative way, but these debates are still important.  The President and the Vice President are the two political offices that are voted by all of the American people and it’s important for those who run to be able to face the American nation that elected them.   I look forward to watching the rest of the debates.

Sexism and Racism on the Campaign Trail

This year has been one most interesting election years in my years of voting.  The primaries with divervse views represented by Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul.  The contest for the nomination between Hillary and Obama.  The resurrection of McCain in the Republican race.  The emergence of Sarah Palin.  This election season has gone through so many twists and turns.  I’m excited by these elections because the Obama, Clinton, and even Palin candidacies are breaking down barriers of racism and sexism.  These candidates have faced their share of racism and sexism to break down these barriers and these reactions show how far America has to go to be rid of these vices.

I voted for Hillary during the California primaries, but I have to admit that I didn’t have the same fervor that some of my friends had for Clinton.  My mom, sister in law, and several close friends were Hillary enthusiasts and they were deeply angry at the way Hillary was treated during the primaries.  I’ve always wondered, “How was she treated that would cause such anger among these women?”  An article in the September 13th edition of the Economist titled “The Triumph of Feminism” wrote:

“She not only lost an unlosable primary race.  She was dissed and denounced in the process.  Chris Matthews of MSNBC said that she owed her Senate seat to her husband’s infidelity.  One lobbyist created an anti-Hillary pressure group called Citizens United Not Timid.    A couple of young men ordered her to ‘iron my shirt’.  Mr. McCain, whom she regards as a good friend, looked on benignly when a Republican asked him ‘How do we beat the b____?’”

Hillary handled these things with dignity and composure, but it angered many of her supporters that she would be treated in such a way. 

Obama faced racism during the primaries and into the general election.  Early in the primaries, a rumor was started that he was secretly a Muslim and they pointed to his early schooling in Muslim schools in Asia (this is an example of islamophobia as well as subtle racism, for even if he was a Muslim, how would that make him less qualified to be President?).   Union leaders have had some trouble gathering support with a small group of union members who would not vote for a black man.  Eric Alterman, in an article in the September 1, 2008 issue of the Nation wrote of a more subtle form of racism that is faced by Obama.  Alterman wrote:

“Historically blacks and dark-skinned immigrants have been accused of ‘not knowing their place’ by whites who see their positions challenged, and are deemed to be ‘uppity’.  The code word du jour is ‘presumptuous’.”

Though I disagree with most of Sarah Palin’s political stances, I have to admit that I was captivated as everyone else by her biography of a moose hunting former beauty queen and basketball player and mother of five.  I think criticism of her lack of experience is justified and she should be questioned more on her political views, but I was glad that Obama took the high road and said that Palin’s private family life should be off limits to media scrutiny.   If a male politician is not questioned on whether he has time for both his family and his political life, then Palin shouldn’t be either.  I hope McCain and Palin lose this election, but I’m glad that Palin has stepped onto the national stage.  In the September 15, 2008 issue of Newsweek, Kathleen Deveny wrote as a liberal who found herself liking Palin:

“But if I’m really honest with myself, I’m mostly just happy that there’s another woman on the national political stage.  I think it’s good for my 8 year old daughter, who has called Hillary Clinton her idol.  She doesn’t love Hillary because of her health-care policy or pro-choice stance:  she loves Hillary because she thinks girls rule.  The more powerful women there are on the national stage, the better it is for all women, because this is a game of numbers…  when there are enough women in our political life, maybe we will be able to judge them as individuals, rather than representatives of all things uterine.”

As a person who voted for Hillary during the primaries, I happily support Obama now.  If you compare Obama’s position on major issues (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/) with Hillary’s (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/), they share similar views on how to help America on the economy, on the environment, on weaning ourselves off of our oil dependency, on departing from Iraq, on getting universal health care for every American, for getting a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for a program to give illegal immigrants a chance to gain citizenship, for a middle class tax cut and government stimulus for the economy, for a measured policy in Iraq.  In spite of the barriers, Obama and Hillary’s successful campaigns point to a trend where marginalized and minority groups are gaining a greater percentage of the voting population.  These changing demographics, more than anything else, may do the most to reduce the racism and sexism in this country and to end the Republican success in the national elections.  I end this post with an excerpt from an article in the September 1, 2008 issue of the Nation by Chris Bowers.    Bowers wrote:

“Given that Republicans consolidated a shrinking majority against a series of rising minorities, unless the scapegoating stops, their electoral future appears bleak.  In 1992, Latinos and Asians made up only 3 percent of the electorate, but in 2006 they accounted for 10 percent.  In 1990, according to the National Survey of Religious Identification conducted by the City University of New York, only 10 percent of the country self-identified as non-Christian.  According to a 2001  follow-up from CUNY as well as a 2008 study conducted by the Pew Forum on religion and American life, that number had increased to 22-23 percent of the national population.  Although it receives somewhat less fanfare, the national drift from Christian self identification is changing the cultural face of America even more rapidly than the large influx of Latino and Asian immigrants.  Combined, these two trends are changing the cultural and political structure of America with such alacrity that, according to a 2005 study by Greenberg Quinlin Rosner, ‘OMG!  How Generation Y Is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era,’ only 39 percent of Americans born between 1965 and 1994 (inclusive) self idenify as both white and Christian, compared to 66 percent of Americans born in 1964 or earlier.  Given the partisan voting habits of nonwhites and non-Christians discussed in the previous paragraph, it isn’t hard to see that Republicans are facing a slow-motion electoral tidal wave that is turning the country nearly 1 percent more Democratic every year, regardless of specific political conditions. 

It is from this rising tide that Obama should find his victory.  “

Conversations in Kauai

When my wife and I went on a short vacation last week to see her grandmother, we kept encountering conversations with people concerned about the problems of our nation.   On hikes, in restaurants, while shopping, people were talking about the economy, about the elections, about the hurricane hitting the South.  We spent a wonderful time with my inlaws and my wife’s grandmother.  Even in the far off island of Kauai, however, the problems of the world were in everyone’s minds.

The Kuilau Trail is a wonderful trail that is a short distance from our hotel in Kapa’a.  It was full of lush trees and beautiful views of the hillside and the Pacific.  As we hiked, we heard many exotic birds, as well as the ever present chickens.  As my wife and I hiked we met up with two women and began talking with them.  They were a couple from San Francisco, and Lisa and I found ourselves enjoying their company.   We decided to hike together, and we found that our new friends shared many of the same interests that we did about the news of the country.

Sarah Palin was a big topic of conversation.   Palin had just had her convention speech a couple of days ago and some polls showed that her presence had helped McCain gain more approval among voters than Obama.  We all were deeply worried about a possible McCain presidency.    The women felt a bit exasperated that Palin was the woman who would be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, especially when her credentials suffered in comparison to Hillary’s.    As a lesbian couple, they were very wary of Palin’s social conservatism.  It had to be admitted though that her speech was very good, and that she had an appealing biography.  Thinking back on that conversation now, we spent all that time talking about Palin and hardly ever mentioned McCain or Obama.

They were also worried about a proposition in California to ban gay marriages.  They are planning on getting married next year in a private ceremony.  I told them not to worry;  the proposition is losing in the polls and most Californians are much more worried about the economy and the environment than gay marriages.    We mentioned that we have close friends who were married in Newsom’s brief ceremonies in 2004 and they expresses admiration for Newsom. 

During the rest of our hike, our conversation meandered on more mundane topics:  friends, family, work.  We all had dreams of owning a house someday.  We talked about an organic garden that was in the front of San Francisco’s City Hall, and enthused about the growing popularity of farmer’s markets in the Bay Area.  We talked about religion, and our search for a spirituality that spoke to us.  When the hike was over, I was sad to see them go.

This trip was a chance for me to get to bond with my father in law.  It was a fun time.   While my wife shopped with her mother, we went to a short trip to a coffee plantation and talked about the elections and the economy.   Palin once again was a big topic of discussion.  I’m a Democrat and my father in law is a Republican, so we had our political differences.  Yet we both love our country and shared a deep concern about the economy and America’s dependence on oil.  There was a general agreement that this has been the most interesting election season that either one of us has ever witnessed.   Both of us have closely followed the primaries and now the general elections and we shared our insights about the candidates.  I came out of those conversations feeling closer to my father in law and more understanding of his point of view.  Towards the end of the trip we heard of the troubles of Lehman and Merril Lynch, and it cast a pall on our flight home.

Underlying the many conversations in Kauai was a fear and worry about the direction our country was taking.   The bad news in Wall Street, the high gas prices, the talk of global warming, the mortgage crisis all gave us a sense of dread.    It was odd that we didn’t talk about Iraq.  In spite of these worries, we still had a great vacation.  When we talked about the elections, we had some positive hope that change was possible.

Z Magazine

I have always been a liberal Democrat.  Over the past few years I’ve grown more curious to learn about the various trains of thought that make up today’s progressive movement.  And as an illustrator, I am always looking for places that will publish my work.  A coworker, who is more knowledgeable about these matters and seems a more committed leftist, recommended that I try reading and submitting my cartoons to Z Magazine, a progressive magazine that is based in Boston.  Ever since the first issue arrived at my mailbox, I’ve been a fan of this magazine.   It covers the efforts of activists around the world to press for a more radical progressive vision to resolve the problems of the environment, the problems of poverty and the exploitation of marginalized groups, of the need to reign in corporations and the need for a more just economic system. 

Z Magazine was founded in 1987 by two of the founding members of South End Press (http://www.zmag.org/zmag/zmagabout.htm).  It was inspired by the movie Z, by Costa-Gavras, that tells the story of repression and resistance in Greece.  At the end of the movie, instead of listing the cast and crew, Costa-Gavras list the things banned by the Greek junta in the movie.  They include: peace movements, labor unions, long hair on men, Sophocles, Tolstoy, Aeschylus, strikes, Socrates, Ionesco, Sartre, the Beatles, Chekhov, Mark Twain, the bar association, sociology, Becket, the International Encyclopedia, the free press, modern and popular music, the new math, and the letter Z, which in the movie symbolized “the spirit of resistance lives.”   In the spirit of the movie, Z Magazine is dedicated.  In each issue, Z Magazine begins with this statement: 

“Z is an independent monthly magazine of critical thinking on political, cultural, social, and economic lie in the U.S. It sees the racial, gender, class, and political dimensions of personal life as fundamental to understanding and improving contemporary circumstances; and it aims to assist activist efforts for a better future.”

Z Magazine highlights writers as diverse as Lydia Sargent (co-founder of Z Magazine), Noam Chomsky, Harvey Wasserman, Margaret Kimberly, and various activists and freelance writers.   I am a big fan of the various cartoonists who regularly populate the Z pages.  Ted Rall (http://www.rall.com/ ), Keith Tucker (http://www.whatnowtoons.com/) , Carol Simpson , Tom Tomorrow (http://www.thismodernworld.com/) and various other cartoonists create scathing political satire that is difficult to find in more mainstream magazines.  Two cartoonists are especially influential to me. Matt Wuerker works in a traditional crosshatch style that harkens back to the great political cartoonist of the late 19th and early 20th century like John Tenniel, Thomas Nast, and Frederick Opper.  Andy Singer (http://www.andysinger.com/)  works in a similar crosshatch style, and I think his funny and succinct cartoons are some of the best observations of consumer culture today.

 During the past year, I have several favorite articles.  One article, in the April 2008 issue by Zoltan Grossman, chronicles the history of social movements during the 1980s.  As a teen and young adult during that time, I enjoyed reading about the anti-apartheid movement, the Central American solidarity, the nuclear freeze and the anti-nuclear protests, Act Up, and the defense of abortion clinics.  Zoltan does a good job of putting these movements in the context of the Reagan year, and in pointing out the successes and failures of these movements.  He points out that the movements of the 1980s had trouble integrating class and anti-imperial politics with racial and ethnic politics and identity politics, except for a brief period when Jesse Jackson created his Rainbow Coalition in his 1988 Presidential run. 

In the September 2008 issue by Lydia Sargent points out the contradictions in criticizing China for muzzling dissent in the Olympics while the U.S. media plays down anti-Iraq war demonstrations that draw hundreds of thousands.   Sargent reminds the reader that the Olympics has always been a reflection of the dominant idealogies and values of the societies, whether it be the Nazi attempts to display their Aryan superiority, a venue for Cold War rivalry, and a venue for the corruption, commercialism and politics of the host cities.  She then looks at the background behind the 1968 Olympic games in Mexico City: the massacre of hundreds of students in Ttateloco Square who were protesting for greater political freedoms in Mexico;  and the reasons behind the potests of Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos.  They were a part of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, founded by sociologist Harry Edwards, which had 3 demands:  restoration of Muhammad Ali’s boxing title;  the removal of Avery Brundage as head of the U.S. Olympic committee because he was a white supremacist;  and to boycott South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics because of their apartheid policies.  The two Olympians protested specifically to cast a light on the troubles the African American community were facing in the U.S. at the time.

The July/August 2008 issue featured an article by Alice Leuchtag about Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s attempt to be represented in the 1964 Democratic Convention.  Hamer was a leader of the civil rights movement in Mississippi who believed that the only way to fight the segregated Mississippi political system was to establish a racially integrated Democratic Party.  They founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and during the Freedom Summer of 1964, volunteers went into homes, churches and cotton fields to sign up 60,000 members.  They selected 64 black and 4 white delegates to go to the Democratic Convention and to challenge the regular Democratic Party’s all white Mississippi delegation and to be seated in their place as Mississippi’s rightful delegation.  LBJ didn’t want to show any disunity in his election fight against  Goldwater, so he did what he could to quietly shunt the integrated delegation to the side.  The protests of Hamer and the integrated delegation during the 1964 convention opened up other Southern states to greater African American political participation.

My favorite article is an obituary about Utah Phillips by John Pietro in the July/August 2008 issue.  He was a veteran of the Korean War, a drifter who entered a Catholic Worker home and was influenced by Ammon Hennacy, an anarchist and an associate of Dorothy Day.  From there, he added the influence of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Borscht Belt comedians and various country musicians.  Phillips joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and became a lifelong member and global labor activist. 

In the July/August 2008 issue, the Z Magazine staff made an appeal to the readers to encourage others to subscribe to the magazine.  I make this post because I think Z Magazine is a wonderful magazine that exposes ideas and points of view that you won’t find anywhere else.  Our country needs to hear from a diversity of opinions, and I personally have gained much knowledge and have had things to ponder about.   I may not always agree with what is written, by I have benefitted from being challenged and from seeing the work of activists from around the world.  To learn more, go to http://www.zmag.org/zmag.

Barack Obama’s Experience

Yesterday I watched the Republican convention.  It was an enjoyable evening listening to Fred Thompson, Rudy Guliani, and Mike Huckabee, even though I didn’t agree to many of the things they said.  The highlight of the evening, of course, was Sarah Palin, and I liked her combativeness and personality, even if I didn’t agree with much of what she said either.   A common theme among the speakers yesterday was Barack Obama’s supposed lack of experience for the Presidential office as compared to Sarah Palin.  It amused me to hear this, but it also got me to want to write this blog about Obama’s experience in government.  I got this information from the book The Almanac of American Politics 2008.

Barack Obama was a member of the Illinois Senate from 1996 to 2004.  In 2004 he was elected to the United States Senate, capturing 70% of the general state election vote.  He is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee; the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committe; and the Veteran’s Affairs Committee.  These are the subcommitttes that he is a member of:  the African Affairs; the East Asian and Pacific Affairs;  the European Affairs (which he chairs); the International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs and International Environmental Protection;  the Children and Families;  Employment and Workplace Safety;  Ac Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration;  Permament Subcommittee on Investigation;  Permament Subcommittee on Investigations;  and Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security.   He is also a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, the Northeast-Midwest Senate Coalition, and the Senate Manufacturing Caucus.

During his time in the Illinois Senate, Obama played an important role in welfare legislation, on the state earned income tax credit, and on the 2003 ethics legislation.  In 2003 Obama successfully pushed for a law requiring electronic recording of interrogations and confessions in homicide cases, arguing that it would ensure convictions in a majority of cases.  He voted to allow retired police to carry concealed weapons and against allowing people who used banned handguns to defend against intruders in their houses to be exempt from prosecution for possessing the guns.  He sponsored a bill against job and housing discrimination against gays and got a study of racial profiling in traffic stops.

In the United States Senate, Obama introduced a bill to increase the maximum Pell grant to $5100.  He pushed successfully in the Foreign Relations Committee to get $25 million for research and response to avian flu and got the support of Chairman Richard Lugar.  Barack worked with Lugar to add shoulder-fired missiles, abandoned land mines and other conventional weapons to the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.  He worked with Republican Sam Brownback on reponse to the slaughter in Darfur.  He co-sponsored a comprehensive immigration package with Republican Mel Martinez.  He worked on investigating no-bid contracts to recover from Hurricane Katrina with Republican Tom Coburn.  He sponsored a bill for a 50% tax credit for gas stations that installed E-85 pumps with ethanol fuel.  He co-sponsored a bill for funding for Mississippi river locks and dams.  He sponsored with Kentucky’s Jim Bunning a coal liquefication bill.  He and Dick durbin challenged a Defense Department’s shutdown of new wind farms in Illinois.  With Hillary Rodham Clinton he sponsored a bill to encourage health professionals to disclose errors early on and analyze them.  He worked on changing Senate ethics rules with John McCain. 

These actions show involvement in foreign affairs, energy, civil rights, and better government.  These are good experiences for a Presidential office that is heavily involved in all those issues.

Sister Dorothy Stang and the People of the Amazon

The book sleeve gives a succinct introduction to Binka Le Breton’s book The Greatest Gift:

“In 1966, Sister Dorothy Stang went to Brazil as a missionary, and in 1982 she moved to a small town on the Amazon to work with an organization to protect poor farmers and their land from loggers and land developers who stop at nothing- including murder- in pursuit of profits.  After testifying at a government panel investigating illegal incursions into protected areas, Sister Dorothy was denounced as a ‘terrorist’ by powerful companies and began receiving death threats.  Refusing to be intimidated, she continued her work- until two gunmen shot her six times on a rural Amazon road.”

I had never heard of Sister Dorothy Stang before I read this book.  After I finished reading this book I grew to admire Sister Dorothy Stang and I grew to better understand the plight of the poor farmers in the Amazon and their exploitation by the land developers and rich farmers.   Dorothy’s mission in life was to help the poor and to create a more favorable relationship between people and their natural environment.

Dorothy Stang was born on June 7, 1931 to a family of 9 children.  Her father, Henry, was an officer in Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and her mother was a housewife in charge of caring for their children.  They were devout Catholics, and they instilled their faith to their children.  Dorothy was especially devoted, and was known by her siblings and friends as being an outgoing and fun person to be around.  She was also known for her sense of mischief, and was involved in the backyard baseball games.  With these qualities was a devotion to God that lead her to join the order of Notre Dame de Namur at the age of seventeen. 

After a few years in the convent, Dorothy went to a parish in Arizona and worked with migrant families and the poor.  This gave her a heart for helping the poor, and it prepared her for her final ministry when she moved to Brazil in 1966.  During this time, Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council and it gave a new spirit of renewal within the Catholic Church.  It was a time when the church began to empower the laity to study the Bible, priests turned to face the people during the mass, and nuns stepped out of the lower rungs of the church hierarchy to blaze new ministries.  The pope who followed John XXIII was Pope Paul VI and he wrote an encyclical Populorum Progressio which squarely put the church on the side of the poor.  He wrote:  “But it is unfortunate that on these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation. This unchecked liberalism leads to dictatorship rightly denounced by Pius XI as producing ‘the international imperialism of money’. One cannot condemn such abuses too strongly by solemnly recalling once again that the economy is at the service of man. “  

Soon after this encyclical was produced, Latin American bishops met in the Council of Medellin and the Council drasticly changed the role of the church in Latin American society.  Penny Lernoux wrote an article in the August 27, 1988 issue of The Nation that defined the new role of the church.  Lernoux wrote:

“Instead of parroting what they had been told, the bishops took a hard look at political and economic conditons in Latin America, going beyond Vatican II by interpreting conciliar changes in light of the poverty and injustice in their underworld.  Heretofore allies of the upper classes and the military, the bishops shocked the regions elites by denouncing the ‘institutionalized violence’ of the rich against the poor and by committing the church to help the poor organize themselves to achieve greater political, social, and economic equality.”

In Brazil, the government had embarked on a program to develope the Amazon region.  They built roads that opened up the forest to migrant workers to cut trees, set up ranches, and build towns and factories.  The landless poor flocked to the forest, in hopes of owning their own property through a government program that promised them title to the land.  This promise proved useless, as large land owners and ranchers took the titles to the lands that the poor had settled in.  Many of the migrants wound up as farm laborers, many living under a system of debt bondage that was little more than slavery.  These poor Brazilians lived in fear of the landowners, the army, and the police.

Dorothy came into this situation armed with the spirit of Vatican II and the Council of Medallin and she was determined to apply those Christian principals to helping poor Brazilians.  With the Sisters of Notre Dame, Dorothy worked to set up base communities for the poor, train migrants to be leaders of their communities,  and helped build schools for the Amazon community.  They prepared people for marriage, baptism, and the Catholic sacraments, but along with this, they also taught about land reform, and their rights as Brazilian citizens.  As Dorothy learned about a creation centered theology later in her life, she began to fight for the preservation and wise stewardship of the Amazon forests.   Dorothy tried to move migrant farmers from their habit of cut and burn the forest and exhaust the soil, and instead plant trees and care for the soil. 

For this effort, Dorothy Stand made many enemies among the large landowners and corrupt officials. She was accused of arming settlers and of inciting violence.  Dorothy was threatened with death threats for her support of land ownership for migrant settlers.  On February 12, 2005, Dorothy Stang was shot down by the henchmen of a rich landowner.

Sister Dorothy Stang’s death was a loss for the Brazilian people.  Her death though, does not mean that her good work disappeared as well.  The Brazilian peasants who knew her are now active members of their church and are empowered to fight for their rights.  Dorothy was a fighter for her church and she was devoted to serving God.  Sister Elizabeth Bowyer, of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, wrote in the foreword of The Greatest Gift: 

“If this simple, fun-loving, courageous person could spend a lifetime reverencing the dignity of every person, then maybe we can do the same.  Dorothy Stang’s love of people can inspire in us a sense of human kinship as we experience a kind of global interrconnectedness unknown to previous generations.  Because Dorothy embraced and cared for this wonderful Planet Earth, we are encouraged to do the same.  Her joy in giving up the ‘good life’ speaks to us, the 18 percent of the world’s population who use 80 percent of the world’s resources.  Her life tells us that we too can free ourselves from the slavery of consumerism and live more simply so that others can simply live.  Dorothy Stang, a little lady from Ohio, has a big message for our world.”