On Repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the Failure to Pass the Dream Act

Last week was both a happy time and a sad time for me as I read the news of Congress. Last Saturday, Congress voted 65 to 31 to pass a stand alone bill repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, after the House passed the bill 250 to 174. It was an important promise that President Obama kept for the 13,000 military soldiers who have been dismissed since the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was implemented in the Clinton administration. Sadly, though, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, better known as the DREAM Act, was voted down 55 to 41, falling shy of the 60 votes required to limit debate and move forward, essentially killing the legislation for this congressional session. The measure would have offered young illegal immigrants a path to citizenship if they pursue a college degree or enlist in the armed forces. For myself, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the fight for the Dream Act were both important civil rights issues and while I was happy about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I was sad about the failure of the Dream Act to pass the Congress.

The passage of the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was possible through the efforts of administration officials, of the persistent leadership of Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator Harry Reid, Senator Susan Collins and Representative Patrick Murphy. The people most responsible for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell are the activists and discharged military personnel who lobbied and pressured government officials to keep the repeal of this discriminatory policy as a high priority. This is in keeping with a theory I have that social change comes from both political activists pressuring the government from outside the system, and reform politicians fighting for change inside the system. Only when both groups are fighting in conjunction can social change take place.

If we look back in history, we see that the fight for inclusion in the armed forces has had a significant influence in the history of civil rights. In the Civil War, Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists lobbied Lincoln hard to allow African Americans to serve in the Union Army. Lincoln was persuaded to allow African Americans to be in the military in the Fall on 1862 and during the Civil War federal statistics indicate that 178,975 black men served in the Union army during the Civil War. In addition, some 18,000 black men joined the U.S. Navy.

During World War II, Japanese Americans who were interned wanted to join the military to prove their loyalty to the United States. Two months after the declaration of war, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which rounded up Japanese Americans living on the West Coast and put them in internment camps. Over 110,000 West Coast Japanese Americans were interred, 70,000 of them U.S citizens. These Japanese Americans who joined the military included the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was the most decorated unite in military history.

In January 1948 President Truman decided to end segregation in the armed forces and the civil service through executive order rather than through legislation. This followed report of the Gillem Board “Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Postwar Army Policy,” issued in 1947 that concluded that the Army’s future policy should be to “eliminate, at the earliest practicable moment, any special consideration based on race.” Truman issued the executive order in spite of fierce resistance, and actually integration was slow until the Korean War. During that war, insufficient white replacement troops were available and black enlistments were high. Russ Bynum, a military writer, wrote an article on Oct 30, 2010 gave a quote from Marcus S. Cox, a history professor at The Citadel, about the similar arguments about gays serving in the military and integrating the armed forces:

Arguments today in favor of keeping the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” – that openly serving gays would disrupt morale and erode the cohesion of combat units – echo those used to defend military segregation along racial lines, said Marcus S. Cox, a history professor at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

“Many people used that same argument against African-Americans serving in the same units as whites,” said Cox, who teaches black military history to Citadel cadets. “Many people said it’s the end of the military. But the result was there were very few problems, the military ran very efficiently.”

Women also fought discrimination to be able to serve in the military. During World War II, 47,000 women nurses served in the U.S. Army and 11,000 in the U.S. Navy. After the war, the generals and admirals who had once been dubious about woman serving in the military became enthusiastic after seeing the valor of these women’s service. They pressured Congress to have permanent women’s units in each service. In an informative blog Reader’s Companion to Military History, it writes:

In the mid-1970s, the feminist movement and the end of the draft forced the military to abolish the separate women’s units and to integrate its women and men. Women were kept out of combat roles (including practically all infantry, armor, artillery, combat aircraft, and combat warship billets). In global perspective, the United States did, however, take the lead, passing the 12 percent female proportion in 1990 and systematically expanding the scope of women’s activity. The first women reached flag rank in 1970 (army), 1971 (air force), and 1972 (navy), and they had command over significant numbers of men.

The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a tremendous civil rights victory, but the defeat of the DREAM Act was a tremendous blow to civil rights. The bill would’ve given legal status to those who were brought to the U.S. before age 16, have been here for five years, have no criminal record, graduated from high school or gained an equivalency degree and who joined the military or attend college. If you read these requirements, these people are not just getting a free ride to citizenship but are earning their right and are being trained in ways that benefit our country. So for these people who want to serve our country in the military or attend colleges to join a highly educated workforce, they are denied that avenue because of stereotypes that people have against illegal immigrants. This is wrong.

I love this country, but the United States does not have a good history when it comes to exploiting immigrant for their cheap labor, then subjecting them to discrimination. Look at the example of Chinese immigrants. In the late 1800s, the United States initially welcomed Chinese immigrants to fill a shortage of workers. The early Chinese migrants helped drain the swamps of California’s swamplands and worked in the California gold mines. In 1867, 12,000 Chinese were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, comprising 90 percent of the entire workforce. They cleared the trees, lay the track, operated the power drills and handled the explosives for boring tunnels through the Donner Summit. In 1870, 18 percent of all farm laborers in California were Chinese. In all of the fields that they entered, the Chinese immigrants were paid less than their white counterparts, and their labor was often cynically used to control the wages of all worker groups. This led other groups to resent Chinese workers and led to harassment and discrimination. American white miners felt threatened by the Chinese competition and pressured the California legislature to pass a tax that required a monthly payment of three dollars from every foreign miner who did not desire to become a citizen, which aimed at the Chinese immigrants since a 1790 federal law reserved naturalized citizenship to white persons. In 1862, the California legislature passed a law “to protect Free White Labor against competition with Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage the Immigration of the Chinese into the State of California”, a law that levied a tax of $2.50 per month on all Chinese residing in the state, except those Chinese operating businesses, licensed to work in mines, or those engaged in the sugar, rice, coffee and tea industries. The resentments that were building up against the Chinese Americans resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Irish immigrants in the 1800s faced discrimination as well. Almost 2 million Irish Catholics immigrated to the U.S. between 1820 and 1860 as a result of the Irish famine, and they worked in canal building, lumbering, and civil construction works in the Northeast. Irish Catholics were mocked in schools and The Know Nothing Movement made it their goal to oust Catholics from public office. They faced job discrimination with the “HELP WANTED – NO IRISH NEED APPLY” signs that popped up in many industries.

After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, other immigrant groups were welcomed to fill up the shortages in labor. During the 1890s and early 1900s, California farmers worried about the tons of fruit and vegetables that rotted in the fields as a result of labor shortages, and they began employing Japanese immigrants to meet their labor needs. Between 1885 and 1924, 200,000 Japanese went to Hawaii and 180,000 went to the U.S. mainland to work in plantations and farmlands. When Japanese workers demanded higher wages, Asian Indians Sikhs were employed as laborers. Between 1910 and 1917, the Mexican Revolution sparked a migration of one tenth of the Mexican population to seek refuge in the United States. Over 16,000 Mexicans worked on the railroads in the West in 1908, and at least 150,000 of California’s 200,000 farm laborers were Mexican immigrants in the 1920s. Filipino workers began immigrating to Hawaii and the mainland U.S. in the early 1900s to work in agriculture. By 1930, over 110,000 Filipinos were in Hawaii and 40,000 were in the mainland. In each case, the different immigrant groups faced the same discrimination as the earlier Chinese immigrants. After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the National Origins Act of 1924 prohibited Japanese immigration and barred the entry of women from China, Japan, Korea and India. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 provided for the eventual independence of the Philippines, but also limited Filipino immigration to fifty people per year. The 1922 Cable Act even stipulated that any American woman who married an immigrant ineligible for citizenship was to cease being a citizen of the United States.

The pattern of all these immigrant groups is the same. They are initially welcomed to this country for their cheap labor and to fill up labor shortages in certain industries. When these immigrants get tired of being exploited and demand greater rights, then laws are passed that discriminate against them and they’re denied any means of becoming citizens of this country, in spite of the contributions that they’ve made to our country’s industries. Some illegal immigrants do come across for criminal activities like drug trafficking and should be prosecuted to the fullest extant by our law enforcement. The vast majority of illegal immigrants, however, are honest hard workers who are just trying to find a better life for themselves and their families that they cannot find in Mexico. And there are industries here in the U.S. willing to hire them and exploit their cheap labor. This historic pattern of exploitation and discrimination has to stop.

The reason I support the Dream Act is for fairness to the children of these illegal immigrants. African American soldiers during the Civil War served so they could show their white Americans of their worthiness to be treated as equal American citizens. Japanese Americans served in the military to prove their loyalty as American citizens. Gays who want to serve in the military want to show their patriotism to their country. The children of illegal immigrants went out in the open to lobby for the Dream Act to earn the right to be American citizens. If they want to earn a right to be American citizens, we should give them a chance to earn it.

A youtube video of the Gay Veterans Memorial in Cathedral City

A youtube video of Joe Lieberman and gay and lesbian veterans lobbying Congress to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

A youtube video of a student trying to lobby Senator McCain to pass the Dream Act

A youtube video of a student activist after the Dream Act passed the House vote

A youtube video of another student activist who related his story of supporting the Dream Act

A youtube video of Senators Dick Durbin and Daniel Inouye speaking for their support of the Dream Act

A youtube video of President Obama being heckled by activists for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Though I like Obama, I think the activists were right to keep pressure on Obama to keep his promise

A youtube video of President Obama signing the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy

A youtube video of Lt. Dan Choi protesting the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy

A youtube video of Senator Harry Reid and Lt. Dan Choi

The Friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams

These are extremely partisan times. Democrats and Republicans seem to be unable to work together as they fight to an impasse in Congress over such issues as climate change, gay rights, immigration reform, and health care reform. Tea Party members try to vote out of office any politician who is not sufficiently conservative, while progressives decry the Obama administration for taking too many compromises in the health care reform bill and the stimulus bill. Though these times may seem exceedingly partisan, a look at our history shows that America has always had its partisan conflicts and divisive issues. From the Vietnam War to Civil Rights to Abolition, Americans have always been arguing about one issue or another.

In spite of these many disagreements, history is replete with many friendships of individuals with opposing viewpoints. Liberal Ted Kennedy and conservative Orrin Hatch were best friends in the Senate. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil would argue during the congressional debates, but would share drinks and exchange jokes afterwards. When Reagan was shot, O’Neil visited his bedside and comforted his wife Nancy. Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda were best friends even though Stewart was a conservative Republican and Fonda was an ardent New Deal liberal. The most famous friendship of opposites in Maerican history was the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had met in the Continental Congress as supporters of revolution against England and as members of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. They grew closer in Europe while serving as ambassadors to France and England, as John and Abigail consoled Jefferson over the loss of his wife. John and Abigail Adams felt Jefferson was part of the family and Abigail felt Thomas Jefferson was “the only person with whom my companion could associate with perfect freedom and reserve.”. Thomas Jefferson found Abigail to be the first woman that he could talk to as an intellectual equal.

With their friendship, there were great differences between the two of them both in personality and in appearance. Joseph Ellis wrote about them in his book Founding Brothers:

They were an incongruous pair, but everyone seemed to argue that history had made them into a pair. The incongruities leapt out for all to see: Adams, the short, stout, candid-to-a-fault New Englander; Jefferson, the tall, slender, elegantly elusive Virginian; Adams, the highly combustible, ever combative, mile-a-minute talker, whose favorite form of conversation was an argument; Jefferson, the always cool and self-contained enigma, who regarded debate and argument as violations of the natural harmonies he heard inside his own head. The list could go on- the Yankee and the Cavalier, the orator and the writer, the bulldog and the greyhound. They were the odd couple of the American Revolution.

Their political differences became apparent in the 1790s, while serving in George Washington’s cabinet. Jefferson feared the power of the federal government and found himself moving towards the new Republican Party. John and Abigail Adams believed a strong federal government was necessary for the new republic to survive, and leaned towards the philosophy of the Federalist Party. In 1796 and 1800, Thomas Jefferson ran against John Adams were pitted against each other for the Presidency, and the acrimony of the political campaigns caused a lot of resentment on both sides. John and Abigail Adams felt betrayed by Thomas Jefferson, feeling that Jefferson put his political ambitions over their friendship. When Adams was President, Thomas Jefferson secretly hired newspaperman James Callender to defame the Adams’ administration. After Jefferson was inaugurated in 1800, Jefferson and the Adams did not have a civil communication for 12 years.

The one correspondence that occurred during 12 year gap between 1800 and 1812 was a brief correspondence between Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Abigail had written a letter of condolence to Thomas Jefferson on May 20th, 1804 over the death of Jefferson’s daughter Mary Jefferson Eppes. Abigail had great fondness for Mary during their time in Paris, and she reached out to Jefferson in his time of sorrow. In his reply, however, Jefferson caused Abigail great anger by bringing up a political difference that bothered Jefferson. He wrote in a letter dated June 13, 1804:

This consideration was sufficient to keep down all jealousy between us, and to guard our friendship from any disturbance by sentiments of rivalship: and I can say with truth that one act of Mr. Adams’s life, and one only, ever gave me a moment’s personal displeasure. I did consider his last appointments to office as personally unkind. They were from among my most ardent political enemies, from whom no faithful cooperation could ever be expected, and laid me under the embarrassment of acting thro’ men whose views were to defeat mine; or to encounter the odium of putting others in their places.

This response infuriated Abigail. Abigail wrote back a response in which she defends her husband’s right as President to fill up vacant offices and she brought up the falsehoods that Jefferson paid James Callender to heap upon her husband’s Presidency. Abigail’s fury was shown in this response:

I have never made felt any enmity towards you Sir for being elected president of the United States. But the instruments made use of, and the means which were practised to effect a change, have my utter abhorrence and detestation, for they were the blackest calumny, and foulest falshoods, I had witnessed enough of the anxiety, and solicitude, the envy jealousy and reproach attendant upon the office as well as the high responsibility of the Station, to be perfectly willing to see a transfer of it. And I can truly say, that at the time of Election, I considerd your pretentions much superior to his (Mr. Burr’s), to whom an equal vote was given. Your experience I venture to affirm has convinced you that it is not a station to be envy’d. If you feel yourself a free man, and can act in all cases, according to your own sentiments, opinions and judgment, you can do more than either of your predecessors could, and are awfully responsible to God and your Country for the measures of your Administration. I rely upon the Friendship you still profess for me, and (I am conscious I have done nothing to forfeit it), to excuse the freedom of this discussion to which you have led with an unreserve, which has taken off the Shackles I should otherways have found myself embarassed with, – And now Sir I will freely disclose to you what has severed the bonds of former Friendship, and placed you in a light very different from what I once viewd you in.

A silence resumed between Jefferson and the Adams. A reconciliation occurred between Jefferson and the Adams through the efforts of a mutual friend, Benjamin Rush. Rush corresponded to both men, and push for them to write to each other. Jefferson wrote to Rush that he admired Adams “always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes incorrect and precipitate in his judgements.” Jefferson was still hurt from his correspondence with Abigail Adams of 1804 and wouldn’t make the first move in writing to either Adams. It took John Adams to finally take the first step when he wrote a letter to Jefferson on January 1, 1812.

At first the correspondence was rather polite, as both persons were trying to feel out how open they were able to be with each other. After a while though, they began to breach some of the subjects that they differed about, to try to understand each others point of view. In a letter that John Adams wrote to Jefferson on July 15, 1813, Adams wrote:

You and I ought to not die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.

In that same letter, Abigail added a note to Jefferson, to let him know that she still considered him a friend in spite of their differences:

I have been looking for some time for a space in my good Husbands Letters to add the regards of an old Friend, which are still cherished and preserved through all the changes and v (ic) issitudes which have taken place since we first became acquainted, and will I trust remain as long as

A. Adams

There were a variety of subjects that they corresponded about in which they disagreed. One subject, which was broached about in Adams’ July 15, 1813 letter, was their differing opinions on the French Revolution. Jefferson believed that the French Revolution was a continuation of the spirit of the American Revolution, and that both revolutions were the start of a wider fight against monarchial tyranny and for freedom. Joseph Ellis wrote in Founding Brothers:

…he saw the French Revolution as the European continuation the spirit of ’76. He acknowledged that the random violence and careening course of the French Revolution were lamentable developments, but he insisted they were merely a passing chapter in the larger story of triumphant global revolution. “I am convinced they (the French) will triumph completely,” he wrote in 1794, “& the consequent disgrace of the invading tyrants is destined, in the order of events, to kindle the wrath of the people of Europe against those who have dared to embroil them in such wickedness, and to bring at length, kings, nobles & priests to the scaffolds which they have been so long deluging with blood.” In one moment of revolutionary euphoria, he dismissed all critics of mass executions in France as blind to the historic issues at stake: “The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of that contest,” he observed in 1793, “and was ever such a prize won with so little blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed I would rather have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it is now.”

John Adams was deeply troubled by the way the French Revolution had unfolded. Adams was more of a believer of evolutionary social change rather than revolutionary social change, as he thought that the American colonies had the leadership of the merchant class and the Southern gentry as well as established economies that provided a foundation that France and its millions of illiterate and its radical leaders could not provide. He felt that the enthusiasm of people like Jefferson for the French Revolution was based on a naive ideology that didn’t take into account the limitations of human nature. In his letter of July 15, 1813, Adams wrote to Jefferson of his objections to the French Revolution:

The Nations of Europe, appeared to me, when I was among them, from the beginning of 1778 to 1785 i.e. to the commencement of the Troubles in France, to be advancing by slow but sure Steps towards an Amelioration of the condition of Man, in Religion and Government, in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Kowledge, Civilization, and Humanity. The French Revolution I dreaded; because I was sure it would, not only arrest the progress of Improvement, but give it a retrograde course, for at least a Century, if not many Centuries. The French Patriots Appeared to me like young Schollars from a Colledge or Sailors flushed with recent pay or prize money, mounted on wild Horses, lashing and speering, till they would kill the Horses and break their own Necks.

Let me now ask you, very seriously my Friend, Where are now in 1813, the Perfection and perfectability of human Nature? Where is now, the progress of the human Mind? Where is the Amelioration of Society? Where the Augmentation of human Comforts? Where the diminutions of human Pains and Miseries? I know not whether the last day of Dr. Young can exhibit; to a Mind unstaid by Phylosophy and Religion, for I hold there can be no Philosophy without Religion; more terrors than the present State of the World.

When? Where? and how? is the present Chaos to be arranged into Order?

Jefferson and Adams also had very different views on what form a functioning republic should take. Thomas Jefferson was very wary of power being centralized in the Federal government and believed that power should be diffused in the states. He felt that there was in every nation a natural aristocracy of the most talented men that would naturally rise up in a free society, as opposed to the artificial aristocracy of Europe that was created by primogeniture and was thus corrupt and incompetent. Jefferson wrote to John Adams on October 28, 1813:

For I agree with you that there a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness, and other accomplishments, has become but an auxilary ground of distinction. There is an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent it’s ascendency. On the question, What is the best provision, you and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging it’s errors. You think it best to put the Pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where also they may be a protection to wealth against the Agrarian and plundering enterprises of the Majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively. Of this a cabal in the Senate of the U.S. has furnished many proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to protect themselves. From 15. to 20. legislatures of our own, in action for 30. years past, have proved that no fears of an equalisation of property are to be apprehended from them.

I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the real good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society.

As opposed to Jefferson, Adams felt that a strong federal government with a strong executive branch was necessary for the American republic. Adams refuted Jefferson’s distinctions between a natural aristocracy and an artificial aristocracy because he believed that the natural aristocracy was just as vulnerable to the human weaknesses of greed and corruption as the artificial aristocracy that Jefferson described. John Adams felt that human nature was such that the utopian vision that Jefferson had for the American republic was not possible in real life, and that checks and balances were necessary to fight the inevitable corruptions that comes with political power. Adams wrote a reply to Jefferson on November 15, 1813:

Your distinction between natural and artificial Aristocracy does not appear to me well founded. Birth and Wealth are conferred on some Men as imperiously by Nature, as Genius, Strength, or Beauty. The Heir is honours and Riches, and power has often no more merit in procuring these Advantages, than he has in obtaining an handsome face or an elegant figure. When Aristocracies, are established by human Laws and honour Wealth and Power are made hereditary by municipal Laws and Political Institutions, then I acknowledge artificial Aristocracy to commence: but this never commences, till Corruption in Elections becomes dominant and uncontroulable. But this artificial Aristocracy can never last. The everlasting Envys, Jealousies, Rivalries and quarrells among them, their cruel rapacities upon the poor ignorant People their followers, compell these to sett up Caesar, a Demagogue to be a Monarch and master, pour mettre chacun a sa place (to put each one in his place). Here you have the origin of all artificial Aristocracy, which is the origin of all Monarchy. And both artificial Aristocracy, and Monarchy, and civil, military, political and hierarchical Despotism, have all grown out of the natural Aristocracy of ‘Virtues and Talents”. We, to be sure, are far remote from this. Many hundred years must roll away before We shall be corrupted. Our pure, virtuous, public spirited federative REpublick will last for ever, govern the Globe and introduce the perfection of Man, his perfectability being already proved by Price Priestly, Condorcet Rosseau Diderot and Godwin.

…You suppose a difference of Opinion between You and me, on the Subject of Aristocracy. I can find none. I dislike and detest hereditary honours, offices Emoluments established by law. So do you. I am for ex(c)luding legal hereditary distinctions from the U.S. as long as possible. So are you. I only say that Mankind have not yet discovered any remedy against irresistable Corruption in Elections to Offices of great Power and Profit, but making them hereditary.

Both Jefferson and Adams hated the banking industry and the rampant speculation that was creating huge profits for a small group of people. Both men felt that the profits of bankers were inherently immoral because bankers gained those profits by manipulating interest rates without producing an agricultural or an industrial product. Jefferson wanted the banks to be broken up, and believed that unregulated free markets would create an equitable distribution of goods. On January 24, 1814, Jefferson wrote to Adams:

I do not remember the conversation between us which you mention in yours of Nov. 15 on your proposition to vest in Congress the Exclusive power of establishing banks. My opposition to it must have been grounded, not on taking the power from the states, but on leaving any vestige of it in existence, even in the hands of Congress; because it would only have been a change of the organ of abuse. I have ever been the enemy of banks; not of those discounting for cash; but of those foisting their own paper into circulation, and thus banishing our cash. My zeal against those institutions was so warm and open at the establishment of the bank of the U.S. that I was derided as a Maniac by the tribe of bank-mongers, who were seeking to filch from the public their swindling, and barren gains. But the errors of that day cannot be recalled. The evils they have engendered are now upon us, and the question is how we are to get out of them? Shall we build an altar to the old paper money of the revolution, which ruined individuals but saved the republic, and burn on that all the bank charters present and future, and their notes with them? For these are ruin both republic and individuals. This cannot be done. The Mania is too strong. it has siesed by it’s delusions and corruptions all the members of our governments, general, special and individual.

Like Jefferson, John Adams had a hatred of banks and was against the banking program that was advocated by Alexander Hamilton. Unlike Jefferson and the Republicans, though, Adams had as much distrust for the free markets as he did for the banks. Joseph Ellis wrote of their differences in his book Passionate Sage:

But Taylor regarded all banks as conspiratorial agencies operating in collusion with government to defy and distort the natural laws of the marketplace. He was one of the first to articulate the sectional perspective of southern farmers as victims of a northern banking conspiracy sanctioned by the federal government. Supporters of Andrew Jackson, then again, later in the century, southern Populists would seize upon this vision to stigmatize banks and bankers as symbols of an unholy alliance between capital and government. Given their assumptions about the inherently equitable distribution of goods that would occur in an unfettered marketplace, the appearance of vastly unequal pockets of wealth could only be the consequence of government-sanctioned meddling. Taylor’s solution, like Jackson’s after him, was to sever all connections between banking and the federal government.

Adams, on the other hand, never believed in the benign operation of the marketplace. Left to its own devices, he thought that the marketplace would no more discipline itself than would Jefferson’s version of “the people”. Indeed, that was the major problem presented by what Adams called “the multitude of swindling banks”- they were essentially gambling houses that enhanced and accelerated the worst features of the marketplace. Adams did not object to banks because they were distorting the natural rhythms of a burgeoning capitalistic economy. He objected that government regulations were not in place to assure that the flow of money and property served the public interest rather than private interests. Rather than free banks altogether from federal control, he thought that all banks should be public institutions under the control of the national government: “My own opinion has invariably been, that there ought to be but one one Bank in the United States,” he wrote in 1811, “and that a National Bank with a branch in each State… this ought to have been a fundamental Article in the Constitution.” Banks, in short were like all other aristocratic elements in American society- dangerous yet indispensible creatures. “An attempt to annihilate them,” he warned, “would be as romantic an adventure as any in Don Quixote.” Banks could never be eliminated, but ought never be free to pursue their avaricious ends; they must be regulated by law to serve national economic goals. If Taylor’s views on banks foreshadowed the Jacksonians and the Populists, Adams’s views foreshadowed the regulatory legislation of the Progressives and the New Deal

In spite of their differences, Jefferson and Adams found many things that they agreed upon. Both were shocked at the rise of evangelical Christianity at the beginning of the 19th century, hoping instead for the country to become Unitarian. As anti-slavery advocates, they both worried about the potential of the issue of slavery to tear the United States apart. And as they got older, both shared their doubts about the existence of an afterlife.

I learned a lot from the friendship of Jefferson and the Adams. They were very open about their differences and tried with sincerity to listen and understand the others point of view. They moved on from some rough patches and maintained their friendships.

Joseph Ellis described the importance of Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams in his book Passionate Sage

Whatever we choose to call them, the political values that Jefferson championed, indeed that his name came to represent, became the central tenets of the American liberal tradition; the values Adams embraced became important ingredients for critics of that tradition on both the conservative and radical sides of the political spectrum. And that posture-critical realist of seductive Jeffersonian illusions- was the one Adams found most comfortable throughout his correspondence with that man at Monticello. Jefferson embodied deep and sincere convictions about a truly open-ended America, a fundamentally new kind of society which had liberated itself from the burdens of the past and from the class divisions of Europe; which required only a minimalist government, whose only function would be to remove artificial barriers to individual initiative; which could justifiably claim to represent an undifferentiated, nearly spiritual entity called “the will of the people”. No matter how powerful these convictions were to become in nineteenth-century America, Adams regarded all of them as illusions.

Jasper Meets Howard Zinn

Just over two years ago, I read my first Howard Zinn book. The book was A People’s History of the United States and it taught me a lot about the struggles of Native Americans, African Americans, women, war resisters and workers to overcome prejudice and fight for their rights in this country. Since reading that book, I’ve become a real fan of Howard Zinn’s books and his philosophy on social change. Whenever I’d pick up a progressive magazine, like The Progressive or The Nation, I’d always look to see if there was a Howard Zinn article and would be excited if that particular issue had one. I was sad to hear about his death earlier this year. His books and his life, though are a constant inspiration to me on how to be active in fighting for the poor and the marginalized in this country.

Though A People’s History of the United States is his most famous book, my favorite books of Howard Zinn are Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics and You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train. Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics is a collection of interviews that David Barsamian took with Howard Zinn for public radio over the course of a decade. It covers a diverse range of topics, from Zinn’s dissenting views on capitalism and the Iraq War, to his views on FDR’s economic Bill of Rights, to reminiscences on his time as a teacher at Spellman College in the 1950s and early 1960s. My favorite interview in this book dealt with the topic of artists and their importance in resistence. Zinn said in that interview:

The reason that I do is because artists play a very special role in relation to social change. This came to me when I was a teenager and becoming politically interested for the first time. It was people in the arts who perhaps had the greatest emotional effect on me. Singers such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Paul Robeson. Writers like Upton Sinclair and Jack London. I was reading the newspapers and Karl Marx. I was reading all sorts of subversive matter. But there was something special about the effect of what artists did.

And by artists I mean not only singers and musicians but poets, novelists, people in the theater. It always seemed to me that there was a special power that artists had when they commented, either in their own work or outside their work, on what was going on in the world. There was a kind of force that they brought into the discussion that mere rose could not match. Part of it had to do with a passion and an emotion which comes with poetry, which comes with music, that comes with drama, which is rarely equaled in prose, even if it is beautiful prose. I was struck by that at an early age.

Later, I came to think about the relative power of people in charge of society and the powerlessness of most people who become the victims of the decision makers. I thought about the possibility of people without the ordinary attributes of power, that is, money and military equipment, resisting those who have a monopoly on that power, and I thought how can they possibly resist it? I thought art gave them a special impetus through its inspiration and through its emotional effect that couldn’t be calculated. Social movements all through history have needed art in order to enhance what they do, in order to inspire people, in order to give them a vision, in order to bring them together, make them feel that they are part of a vibrant movement.

You Can’t Be Neutral On A Moving Train is about Howard Zinn’s life in activism. He talks about his time in World War II, when he flew missions to bomb European towns, which laid the seeds to his later anti-war feelings. Zinn’s time as a teacher of Spellman College, an African American woman’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, led him to be involved in the early civil rights movement and taught him many lessons about social movements. He taught Alice Walker and Marian Edelman Wright during his tenure there, and in the course of his activism there, met members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and future civil rights leaders Stokely Carmichael and Bernice Johnson. During his time in Boston College, he led teach-ins and gave speeches against the war in Vietnam. His activism continued to his last days, as he spoke out against the Iraq War and against the bailouts of the last few years.

His life of activism really inspires me. One of the things I most like about Zinn is his confidence in the ability of ordinary people to affect social change. In one of my favorite passages, Zinn writes:

It is this change in consciousness that encourages me. Granted, racial hatred and sex discrimination are still with us, war and violence still poison our culture, we have a large underclass of poor, desperate people, and there is a hard core of the population content with the way things are, afraid of change.

But if we see only that, we have lost historical perspective, and then it is as if we were born yesterday and we know only the depressing stories in this morning’s newspapers, this evening’s television reports.

Consider the remarkable transformation, in just a few decades, in people’s consciousness of racism, in the bold presence of women demanding their rightful place, in a growing public awareness that homosexuals are not curiosities but sensate human beings, in the long-term growing skepticism about military interventions despite the brief surge of military madness during the Gulf War.

It is that long-term change that I think we must see if we are not to lose hope. Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment we will continue to see. We forget how often in this century we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.

The bad things that happen are repetitions of bad things that have always happened- war, racism, maltreatment of women, religious and nationalist fanaticism, starvation. The good things that happen are unexpected.

Unexpected, and yet explainable by certain truths which stpring at us from time to time, but which we tend to forget:

Political power, however formidible, is more fragile than we think. (Note how nervous are those who hold it)

Ordinary people can be intimidate for a time, can be fooled for a time, but they have a down-deep common sense, and sooner or later they find a way to challenge the power that oppresses them.

People are not naturally violent or cruel or greedy, although they can be made so. Human beings everywhere want the same things: they are moved by the sight of abandoned children, homeless families, the casualties of war; they long for peace, for friendship and affection across lines of race and nationality.

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zig-zag towards a more decent society.

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

I end this blog with a quote from a Zinn article in the March 2009 issue of the Progressive. Many Progressives had high hopes for change when President Obama began his administration, and have been bitterly disappointed in the compromises that Obama has made while in office. Howard Zinn was not surprised. In looking at the history of reform Presidents, Zinn knew that any efforts of reform would be challenged by entrenched corporate interests, conservative politicians, and an establishment that doesn’t take too kindly to change. With such opposition, it’s often easier for Presidents to delay or even shelve reform efforts, unless an active and powerful grassroots movement pushes back and pressures the President for change. Zinn wrote on March 2009:

I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes- the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhoods, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on maters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a ‘better’ candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore…

Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed it responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which require direct action by concerned citizens.

If you enjoy this cartoon, take a look at these links for more of my political cartoons at Everyday Citizen:
Jasper and the Nature Poem
The Reunion
Government and the Market Economy
Jasper Joins Two Protests
Bob the Nerd Vampire
Jasper Debates War
Jasper Finds His Way Home
Jasper Escapes the Detention Center
Jasper At A Detention Center
Jasper Meets a Poet
Jasper’s Day
Jasper Tackles Health Care
Jasper Protests the War
Jasper and the Economy
Jasper Sings a Protest Song
The Road To Health Care Reform Cartoon
A Cartoon about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
A Cartoon about My Experience in an Evangelical Church
A Cartoon about Political Debate
A Cartoon On Gay Marriage

RAGING GRANNIES GAGGLES

Here is a list of Raging Grannies in the United States and Canada

San Francisco Bay Raging Grannies

Raging Grannies of San Jose

Raging Grannies International

New York Metro Raging Grannies and Their Daughters

Seattle Raging Grannies

Tuscon Raging Grannies

South Florida Raging Grannies

Raging Grannies of Metro Detroit

Raging Grannies of Madison Wisconsin

Ottawa Raging Grannies

Raging Grannies of Pittsburgh

Vancouver Raging Grannies

Hoosier Raging Grannies

Santa Cruz WILPF Raging Grannies

Rochester Raging Grannies

The Raging Grannies perform at the International Day of Action on Climate Change, December 8, 2007 in Edmonton, Alberta.

The Raging Grannies at the World March for Peace and Nonviolence Hawrelak Park, November 21, 2009

The Raging Grannies and Code Pink in the Eureka Peace March in California 2006

The Ragging Grannies in Mountain View, California, sing for fair trade 2008

CATHOLIC WORKER COMMUNITIES

SOME CATHOLIC WORKER COMMUNITIES

Oakland Catholic Worker

Dorothy Day House Berkeley

Martin de Porres House of Hospitality San Francisco

Los Angeles Catholic Worker

Tenemos Catholic Worker San Francisco

Gainesville Catholic Worker

Des Moines Catholic Worker

Charlottesville Catholic Worker

Bread & Roses Catholic Worker Olympia WA

Cherith Brook Catholic Worker Kansas City

Grace Place Catholic Worker Community Cincinnati

St. Louis Karen House Catholic Worker

Los Vegas Catholic Worker

New Orleans Catholic Worker

San Diego Catholic Worker

NEWSPAPERS AND NEWSLETTERS OF CATHOLIC WORKER COMMUNITIES

Via Pacis, quarterly newspaper of the Des Moines Catholic Worker Community

The Catholic Agitator, newspaper of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker

London Catholic Worker Newsletter

San Diego Catholic Worker Newspaper

Here are some youtube videos of individual Catholic Workers in the Sugar Creek Midwest Catholic Worker Retreat 2009

A youtube video of Dorothy Day’s granddaughter talking about her grandmother

The Work of the Catholic Worker

In the early 1930s, Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day conceived of a newspaper called the The Catholic Worker. Dorothy Day was a radical anarchist who was heavily involved in the leftist political movements of the 1910s and 1920s before she converted to Catholicism, and she wedded her radical convictions to her new Catholic spirituality. Peter Maurin was a devout itinerant Catholic who disdained both capitalism and marxism, believing instead in an economic and political philosophy based on the Catholic Social Philosophy. As well as finding the Catholic Worker newspaper, Peter Maurin wanted to found Houses of Hospitality to care for the homeless and unemployed. Maurin’s vision of Houses of Hospitality combined with Day’s experiences with unions and social movements and soon Catholic Worker communities were formed all over the nation. Today, the Catholic Worker communities live on, advocating for the poor, for immigrants and against war.

Jim Forest wrote an article for The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History by Liturgical Press that summarized the form and purpose of the Catholic Worker movement today. Forest wrote:

Beyond hospitality, Catholic Worker communities are known for activity in support of labor unions, human rights, cooperatives, and the development of a nonviolent culture. Those active in the Catholic Worker are often pacifists people seeking to live an unarmed, nonviolent life. During periods of military consciption, Catholic Workers have been conscientious objectors to miliary service. Many of those active in the Catholic Worker movement have been jailed for acts of protest against racism, unfair labor practices, social injustice and war.

Catholic Worker communities have refused to apply for federal tax exempt status, seeing such official recognition as binding the community to the state and limiting the movement’s freedom.

With its stress on voluntary poverty, the Catholic Worker has much in common with the early Franciscans, while its accent on community, prayer and hospitality has Benedictine overtones.

“We try to shelter the homeless and give them clothes,” Dorothy Day explained, “but there is strong faith at work. We pray. If an outsider who comes to visit us doesn’t pay attention to our prayings and what that means, then he’ll miss the whole point.”

It is unlikely that any religious community was ever less structured than the Catholic Worker. Each community is autonomous. There is no board of directors, no sponsor, no system of governance, no endowment, no pay checks, no pension plans. Since Dorothy Day’s death, there has been no central leader.

Today there are over 185 Catholic Worker communities all over the United States. There is a website of the directory of the Catholic Worker communities if you want to volunteer to help serve the poor or to work for economic justice issues. These communities often have their own newspaper that describe their work. They try to keep with the original purpose of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, to make the social justice aspects of the Catholic Social Encyclicals come alive for the community. As well as the directory, there is a link to the Catholic Worker communities with websites that you could look up in your community.

Here are three examples of Catholic Worker communities.

The Los Angeles Catholic Worker was founded in 1970. In their website they state as their goal:

Founded in 1970, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker is a lay Catholic community of men and women which operates a free soup kitchen, hospitality house for the homeless, hospice for the dying, a newspaper, and regularly offers prophetic witness in opposition to war-making and injustice.

We believe that the Incarnation is the basis of the Christian message. We are called to make the Word of God flesh by responding to the suffering Christ incarnate among our poor and marginalized sisters and brothers. The homeless, the addict, the mentally ill, the AIDS victim, the infirm, the politically and culturally oppressed are the ones who Christ has told us will be first in His Kingdom. If we too desire to become citizens of His Kingdom, then we must live our lives in proximity to and in solidarity with those who are at the margins of our society.

Although we were founded as a service/activist orientated community we have learned over the years that it is necessary to strike something of a balance between service and prayer, between action and reflection. While we still definitely err on the side of activism, we have over the years tried to build a structure that forces us to take time for regular prayer, reflection, Bible study, and dialog because as Thomas Merton once wrote, “He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others.”

The L.A. Catholic Worker has a free soup kitchen called the The Hippie Kitchen that serves food on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the central city ghetto of L.A.’s Skid Row where over ten thousand homeless, poor and marginally employed residents live.

They also have a hospitality house called the Ammon Hennacy House of Hospitality. Hennacy House is a one hundred-year-old, fourteen bedroom, three story Victorian home located in the working class Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Members of the Catholic Worker live there and house eight to ten homeless guests. They also provide hospice care to the dying, especially AIDS victims.

The Catholic Agitator is the newspaper of the L.A. Catholic Worker community. It is produced by the community members and is published six times a year. The Catholic Agitator is a wonderful newspaper that expresses a radical progressive Catholic viewpoint.

Trinity House Catholic Worker was started in 2005 in Albuquerque, New Mexico to help the homeless get off of the street and to care for them. They feel compelled to take a stand against war and nuclear weapons due to the effect that these have on the poor. They focus on food recovery and redistribution for the poor. There is a strong critical stance against the flaws of capitalism, in keeping with the philosophy of the papal encyclicals, especially Pope Paul VIs encyclical Populorum Progressio, which writes:

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. But if it is true that a type of capitalism has been the source of excessive suffering, injustices and fratricidal conflicts whose effects still persist, it would also be wrong to attribute to industrialization itself evils that belong to the woeful system which accompanied it. On the contrary one must recognize in all justice the irreplaceable contribution made by the organization of labor and of industry to what development has accomplished.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker Community was founded in 1976 to respond to the Gospel call to compassionate action as summarized by the Sermon on the Mount. In the first floor of the Bishop Dingman House these Catholic Workers help those in need of food, clothing, bedding, and a shower. They also provide a cup of coffee and conversation. Like all other Catholic Worker communities, the Des Moines Workers engage social justice work. They serve food on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays at 6 p.m. and provide canned food, clothing, bedding, and toiletries. On Thursdays, they take part in a weekly vigil in downtown Des Moines from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to end the wars in Iraq and Afganistan and bring their troops home.

Many Catholic Workers hold a Christian Anarchist philosophy. A good definition of the Christian Anarchist philosophy is found in the Free Dissent website:

hristian Anarchism is a left-wing variation of modern Christian thought. Its followers put forward the idea that their philosophy arose directly from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth concerning non-violence, anti-imperialism, and human equality. First of all, what is Anarchism exactly? Anarchism is the social philosophy that opposes all forms of domination, all forms of exploitation, and stratified hierarchy. Anarchism puts forward the ideal that all affairs in society should be undertaken by individuals and voluntary associations instead of using brute force and social control measures. The philosophy of Anarchism leads individuals to oppose the State (also know as the formal government). Also, anarchists oppose the highly stratified hierarchy present in organized religion. In addition, they oppose the vertical nature of control present in the economy under the regimes of traditional feudalism and monopoly capitalism. A large majority of anarchists, including most Christian Anarchists hold to a labor based theory of just ownership, specifically concerning land. Those who work the land, ought to own it exclusively which is in direct opposition to feudalistic land rent and government taxation.

A prominent figure within Christian Anarchist circles is the late Russian philosopher Leo Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy believed the supposedly “Christian” ideals of pacifism and non-violence. From his pacifist and non-violent stance, he was forced to fully embrace anarchism since maintaining a non-violent lifestyle is only possible if you oppose the violent enforcement and monopolization of the political state. Most Christians that embrace anarchism do so because of the “Christian” principles of non-violence and egalitarianism. Leo Tolstoy even defended the idea that Jesus himself was an anarchist. Jesus called for absolute equality among humanity, represented the downtrodden, was the so-called prince of peace, was persecuted by the religious establishment of the time, and was eventually executed by the Roman State. Jesus was also an opponent of the Roman Empire, the state-supported merchant class, and the cultural elitism pushed by the religious authorities. Leo Tolstoy based the majority of his philosophical stances on the famous Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus. One of my favorite quotes from Leo Tolstoy is “In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

I end this blog with a link to a documentary on Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker. The documentary is called Dorothy Day: Don’t Call Me a Saint by Claudia Larson. It is a good introduction to the life of this radical social activist and devout Catholic.