Witness from the Fence

I'm currently blogging for the Iowa City Press Citizen. My blog is titled "Witness from the Fence." If you'd like to read what I've written lately, click the link below:

http://mypc.press-citizen.com/blogs/blog.php?id_blogs=21

Another War Story

After weeks of unspeakable negligence, seriously wounded, Army soldier Michael Hervey was finally told he'd be moved to a hospital in Germany. The news was really another stalemate. In order to be actually, physically moved, the Army required that Michael take his gear with him. Retrieving gear while in the hospital is a bureaucratic nightmare. It can take weeks and months for that detail to be satisfied. Michael was prepared to wait through another series of indeterminate delays, but the next day Army soldier, Ryan Kohler showed up at his bed with his gear.

"How did this get here so fast?" Michael asked Kohler, "Did the doctor or someone push it? Did the supply clerk put through a requisition?"

"No," said Kohler, "Your mom called."

Brenda Hervey's ability to get medical attention for her step-son, Michael is a simultaneous lesson in triumph and tragedy. The triumph is her courage and persistence. The tragedy is help did not come from those who should have helped.

It did not come from the military or the military medical machine that constantly referred her to bureaucracy after bureaucracy. It did not come from state or federal legislators—whom Brenda contacted constantly--in Iowa or New York. Staff in Harkin's, Schumer's and Clinton's offices took the information, but never got back to her. The rest ignored her altogether. It did not come from any public proponent of the war, or any conservative faction waving a "Support the Troops" banner. Moreover, it did not come from Hollywood stars ubiquitously on the front-lines of anti-war marches.

Brendy Hervey's help came from the father of a son also stationed in Iraq. Via her own investigation, Hervey stumbled across Military Families Speak Out, a grass-roots group comprised only of real people with real loved ones who are really affected by the war. She found a friend in Tim Kahlor, who contacted his son, Ryan; and it was Ryan who went out of his way to procure and deliver Michael's gear.

How has it come to be that the sum of all the most powerful resources in the most powerful nation in the world could not get Michael Hervey to the hospital, but two men, already sacrificing far more than their share, were the ones who could and did? This is a reality and tragedy so fraught with deceit and betrayal that it is too much for most Americans to more than superficially acknowledge.

There is a sea of pain here that is so wide and deep that angels gulp and doubt whether eternity provides time to cross it. Each bleak and aching wave whispers the obvious question, "When will the pain matter?"

More specifically, the question is, "Whose pain matters?" The flat reality is that most Americans awaken each morning with no reflexive, visceral twinge over the war. Even most anti-war advocates will admit, when honest, they've never been startled from sleep because of it.

I have put this article away a hundred times now because I require myself to consider this, and I find the pain too unbearable. And, then I find it more unbearable to realize that if my imaginings are unbearable, how is it that we expect the world to heal from the realities that hundreds of thousands have faced in this war?

I imagine the frustration and fear woven through all the details slicing at Brenda Hervey's heart and mind this past year. I imagine her ear numb from holding on the phone, I imagine her stifling tears or anger as she writes down one more number or name. I see her walking a floor or rocking back and forth on a chair as she waits for a call back or pushes through a sleepless night. Eating something, drinking something, reading something, ignoring something, doing or not doing something as sunset after sunset bleeds into sunrise after sunrise; each delivering more questions than answers.

I imagine rows of beds as she walks into the hospital in Germany. I imagine white sheets tye-dyed with pink and orange and yellow and brown stains and smells and hybrids smells of medicine and waste of things human and inhuman. I think of the hallways of suffering she must pass through storing all those beloveds, and some not beloved enough, in chairs or on carts, before she can wrap her arms around her own beloved son.

And more painfully, far more painfully, I realize (as I know does she) that she is luckier than many in this sea.

And, because I am far too human, I cannot keep from imagining something else.

A flash of bright yellow comes through a sunny open door in my mother's arms. This is a memory. And, I remember what happens next. My mother places the sunny newborn baby in the yellow blanket on my lap, and, because it is my fifth birthday, she tells me it is my birthday present. The baby is rosy beige, and her eyes and fists are clenched. I slip my finger through a cluster of hers and believe she intends to grip me. I ask about the dried, brown, stem-looking thing on her belly, and as my mother explains it to me, the baby opens her eyes and stares into me.

"Is she really mine?" I ask in utter wonder.

"As long as you take good care of her," our mother answers.

She is fifty now, my baby sister, and she is a chief petty officer on the USS Stennis, which is positioned in the middle of the Persian Gulf. She is a mechanic, and she repairs war planes. She (who is in a position to know) and others (who are not in a position to know) tell me she is "relatively" safe in this war. It is that word, "relatively," that haunts me throughout these days. If she is "relatively" safe then she must also be "relatively" in danger. No matter who else says what else, I cannot not know this; and I can't stand it. I can't take care of her. I can't even know what her days are like there, because she cannot tell me. I only know she has seen the planes she has repaired take off with bombs and come back without them. And, because I know her to be compassionate and kind, I also fear what this is doing, and has done, to her heart and soul as well as what it may do to her body.

Sooner, rather than later, I will witness another dismissive shrug of "That's how war is." The irrefutable horror of the war will be splashed near some war proponent's feet, and this will be the response.

I don't dare deconstruct this response because it may tell me something I don't want to know. It may tell me that there is no story wrenching enough to motivate a sufficient review of our collective compliance with the persistence of this war. Even more frustrating, there may be no story to be told that will nudge even those who are academically opposed to the war to risk anything to stop it.

Other questions and comments and questions and comments like them I've heard made to others hit me harder.

"At least you don't have a child there."

"At least your sister isn't on the ground."

"Are you sure you're not using your sister to justify your politics?"

"Are you sure your activism isn't only about your own family self-interest?"

Like all words that hurt, the pain comes from a grain of truth they may hold. So I, like others, twist myself into a living illustration of the Kubler-Ross theory.

I deny. I deny her danger. I put my personal concerns away and in perspective. I don't have a child there. My sister is safer than some. I organize or help others organize efforts against the war. I don't have to worry about Jacky, she's probably going to be okay. I read, and I write, and I write. I write letters or emails or essays to Congress, to online forums, to the Editor, to other activists, to my friends, to my family, to my sister.

I bargain. If I work hard enough to stop the war, if I care enough about the pain of others affected by the war; Jacky will be okay. I spend every spare dime I have to stop the war. I go to Washington—a number of times. I go to Ft. Benning. I go to Tuskegee, Alabama, and sleep in a pew in a place where Dr. King preached. In January, I force myself to upload a chart of Iowans in the military who have been killed in Iraq on my group's website. It is an agonizing project that is accomplished through a flood of tears, several pots of coffee, and a pack of cigarettes before I'm finished. There are thirty-seven names, and each name I type tears me apart. I scold myself simultaneously for the grief I feel because it might be indulgent but also because I do not feel grief enough. There is no escape from this guilt because I cannot touch the endless grief wrought by each name I enter on the chart.

I deny while I bargain. This is familiar. I've done this before. I was an indefatigable AIDS activist during the 1980s and 90s to keep my life-long soul-mate friend Michael from dying—an endless parade of demonstrations in Iowa and Washington, symposia, lobby days, the Quilt, and funerals. The number of funerals is one I no longer try to count, funerals of other friends who owned less of a chunk of my heart than Michael, and all their mothers, sobbing inside my embrace. Michael still died, but I refuse to weigh this history in this mix.

Another Michael has entered my life, Michael Hervey, and his situation is present and urgent. His serous injuries may not be serious enough for the Army. He may be sent back to duty soon. There must be some way to stop this. His mother, Brenda and I, both Iowa members of Military Families Speak Out, have only met through email. Brenda sends me a journal entry and other information about her struggle. I am knocked backward by the scorch when I read more about the searing series of betrayals that created their senseless ordeal. Brenda bravely relates, only as a point of fact, that her husband and Michael's father, Bill, has died the year before. I sit on my sofa and sob.

I'm soon distracted by the breaking Walter Reed scandal. Bipartisan bull-roaring commences. I don't know why the story is breaking now. I do know the news is not new to anyone in Congress. Maybe they really don't read our letters. Jacky orders Ramen noodles online because the food Halliburton serves is that inedible. I come from a family who'll eat just about anything—you can tell this by looking at us. How bad must the food be? Congress knows this too. I am distracted by passage of the Joshua Omvig bill. Josh was an Iowan. I've known about him for some time, but this is the first time I read about him in the press. It takes an act of Congress to provide for round-the-clock mental health care for veterans, and the reach of the act is still questionable at best. Here at home, in what is often called "the People's Republic of Johnson County," I have yet to see one elected county official at a single Peach March, Rally, vigil or even at the opening of the Peace Center this month. There are now forty names on my chart. Joshua Omvig is not one of them. I stumble across a note I have of Grandma Shaw's memory of my Uncle Harold being killed in World War II. My family has yet to recover from this. My grandfather never comes home from the war. Driven by guilt for ordering his sons to enlist, he exiles himself to Arkansas instead. My father responds by enlisting too, lying about his age. He was 16. My mother's brother, Bernard, dropped dead from an aneurysm in the front seat of his car right after his last tour in Viet Nam. I trip over a snapshot of my best friend from college, Tom. Tom survived Viet Nam, even though his left arm was paralyzed, only to be killed in a car crash one year after six months of treatment at the Iowa City V.A. hospital. Some well-meaning jerk at Tom's funeral whispers to me that Tom's death is "a blessing in disguise" because of the many times we've coaxed him, trembling, out from under a table or bench every time a car backfires or a fire cracker explodes.

I interrupt my interrupting thoughts because it's time to do my weekly stint as a volunteer at the Peace Center. Afterwards, I stop at George's, my tavern hangout these past 35 years. Before I change the subject and talk with others about the Alberto Gonzales scandal instead, I tell a woman I've known for years of Brenda and Michael's story.

She says, "That's rough, but at least it's only her step son."

I am angry. I am very angry. I am sick of everyone who is sick of hearing about it. I am angry at everyone who isn't angry about this too.

I am angriest at myself. Adjoining the sea of pain is a bottomless reservoir of class bigotry, racism, rationalizations, excuses, dismissals, and apathy that feeds this sea. After all these years of dog-paddling in this reservoir, I have yet to find a way to drain it or even siphon off a little of its poison. Instead I watch its bacteria gurgle and grow like the immense vat of toxic waste it is.

"At least" have become the passwords for inaction.

"At least" we live in a country where you can complain.

"At least" Tina Richards can go to Washington and talk to a congressman about her son even if he did insult her for doing so.

"At least," Cindy Sheehan can buy land to stage her dissent.

"At least," your sister can order food online.

"At least" the women in Iraq got to vote.

"At least," it's only her step son.

How much pain is enough before people will do something? How close does the relative have to be? How horrible their stories? I consider telling all of them to "Go to hell," if only as a method to get them in the same room where we are. The foaming waste fills my nose and eyes and ears. It's in my mouth and strains through my teeth and burns my throat and tongue. "At least" I'm not swallowing it.

I'm angry even though I know anger is a particular problem because it's the ultimate indictment that permits the dismissal of suffering. E.g. "I can't listen to them because they have so much anger." And I have my own list of "at leasts."

At least one elected official might attend at least one peace event in my so-called liberal county.

At least one member of at least one board might be someone who doesn't believe they are superior to those they serve.

At least one of these people who dismiss these stories might hear one out before they throw it out.

At least we should be willing to sacrifice as much—our jobs, our wealth, our status, our lives—to end this war as what is being taken from those we send to fight it.

With due respect to Dr. Kubler-Ross, I am nowhere near acceptance. I cannot accept two more years of this outrage or even two more needless deaths because of it. I cannot accept elected leadership that cares more about the next election than the next orphaned child or grieving mother (or father or grandmother or grandfather, or sister). I cannot accept a citizenry that will accept leadership that accepts this. I need to believe we are waking up to our obligation to assume our roles as responsible citizens and as decent human beings. I need to believe our growing numbers of dissent will soon explode in every corner of human experience, that truth and justice will win, and that this travesty will end. Soon.

Michael Hervey's Story by Brenda Hervey is located on the School for Moral Courage website or by clicking http://www.schoolformoralcourage.com/michaelstory.html

SILO, the war, and threatening Prairie Lights are not progress or progressive.

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

-Martin Luther King, jr.

Because a few folks found the recent exchange about SILO on the Johnson County Progressive Listserve meaningful, they asked me to post it on my blog to make it easer to read.

This blog is a response I gave to Jeffrey Fields' comments about a forum on Sunday, February 4, at 2:30 in Room A of the Iowa City Public Library. The forum is sponsored by opponents of the tax. I've corrected a couple of typos that were in the post I submitted to the list.

Jeffrey's original post can be read here.

Jeffrey,

The purpose of this (the JC Progressives) list is to work together to advocate for progressive goals. Since SILO, by definition, is not a progressive objective, I don't think its advocacy is appropriate for this list. However, I think you've asked some fair questions, and I wanted to offer a response.

I couldn't identify any "inaccuracies" in the case against SILO in your post, but I will address your points one at a time.

The Forum:

The same public is invited to the forum sponsored by VoteNoSilo as was invited to the forums sponsored by the pro-SILO School Board.

A significant difference between the pro-SILO sponsored forums and the forum on Sunday is that opponents of SILO aren't using tax-payer funds to make their case. We haven't had access to School District staff or equipment to print literature, the District's bulk rate postage number to do mailings, nor did the District offer space in its newsletter for those who in the School District to convey their side of the issue.

The School Board has had a remarkably unfair, bully pulpit, advantage in this debate, and it has used it. The debate has been unfair, and the culpability for that unfairness belongs to the School Board.

SILO is about Regressive vs. Progressive Taxation

Claiming that it isn't is a little like claiming that speeding on your way to work isn't about a traffic violation but about getting to work on time. Just because there may be more than one motivation for doing something wrong doesn't mean that something wrong isn't being done.

Property taxes are still less regressive than a sales tax.

The Board is seeking the most abusive tax available. It's not simply that low-income families are asked to pay more taxes. This tax requires them to pay higher taxes than affluent families will have to pay. Regressive taxes are socially immoral. There are other ways to fund community needs, and moral people will find them. Why is the Board advocating for the most hurtful taxation toward low-income people? Not to mention, there are options other than either property or sales taxes to fund education.

It's about not wanting to share the $108 million.

If it's true (and it may not be) that a sales tax is inevitable, the amount of appropriations will not change. What will change is the amount Johnson County will have to share if a sales tax is passed after July, 2008. What has been called an "incentive" is an astonishingly base appeal to unabashed greed. Johnson County is one of the most economically privileged counties in Iowa. Because of this, our school infrastructure is already far superior to those in counties suffering severe economic stress. For affluent Johnson County to want to make its infrastructure even more superior rather than share with its Iowa neighbors with less economic privilege is shameful. Is our culture so diseased by greed that we are only driven by what's good for our own backyard? This "cash grab" motive isn't a reason to vote for the tax. It's a reason to vote against it.

The benefit does not outweigh the cost, especially if you're in the National Guard.

It's not an accident that those who make this claim that the benefits outweigh the costs are not low-income. It's also germane that this question arises during a time of war. The men and women who are fighting and dying in the war are overwhelmingly low-income. Many of their families are so much so that they qualify for food stamps. I could make a case that the amount they'll lose from their subsistence living is more than $12, but let's say it was only that. One of the most precious expenses of these families is phone time with their loved ones overseas. As one woman told me, "It's too rationed and far too rare on what we make." This $12 is at least two hours less time a child will have to talk with that mother or father who may never come home again. You may think extra computer time at school is a good trade for that money. That child and I do not.

In times of war, morality requires that we are especially diligent to not increase economic hardship on those struggling economically already, let alone enact a tax that hurts them more than the affluent.

In summary.

Jeffrey, I believe you to be a kind and caring man, and I like you very much. I don't believe you've totally thought this through.

There is a direct connection between the war in Iraq, the increase in class disparity/bigotry in America, the closing of Prairie Lights bookstore last Wednesday, and this tax, whether people will see it or not.

When I was ten, a scab told me to quit stirring chili in a strike kitchen because the company would never agree to a union and that my mother should be grateful for her job and take the small raise offered. In my 45 years since, there has never been a time when I wasn't told by someone that standing up for the right thing was hopeless because of inevitable factors. In those same years, the only advances in justice I have seen have been accomplished by those who didn't buy that bull -- not be those who compromised. You can't count the number of times Dr. King was told to compromise or to accept the inevitable (even by his allies, see "Letter from the Birmingham Jail"). One sterling moment when he didn't comply was when he stood up for all poor people and against the Vietnam War at the end of his life.

Johnson County has been cushioned by a class bubble for a long time. It's been a place where many could espouse progressive principles with little or no risk. Indeed there are those here who have economically prospered and gained status by at least pretending to share those values.

That bubble is about to burst. The closing of Prairie Lights last Wednesday because of a threat is a wake-up call to that fact. The dominate elite have never wanted justice and equality to prevail. Over the past thirty years, our "compromises" have transformed the advancement of justice into a retreat. This retreat is becoming more obvious and the lines drawn more serious and pronounced.

More and more we will be asked to actually risk something real for justice. We will either defer to holding onto our class or social status, a donor base that disagrees, or so-called "electability;" or we will be emboldened to stand up again wholly and without equivocation for the justice principles that spoke to our hearts in the first place. Those in the street protesting the war, those who stood in front of the closed Prairie Lights bookstore Wednesday night, and those who have publicly objected to its closing are beginning to show us who those people are.

SILO is such a lesson in moral courage. We can either demand fairness in taxation or we can capitulate to fear, greed, and manipulation. Should Johnson County be the only county that stands tall on this, we should be proud. Or as Pete Seeger asked in his famous song, "Whose side (or whose children's side) are you on?"

Another Payne on the Path to Justice

Class is the tow rope that pulls oppression. Its aching, twisting stretch for respectability churns the undertow that drowns equality and erodes courage.

This high-gauge lash is dragging through Iowa City this weekend (January 27, 2007) in a workshop at the HACAP center on Waterfront Dr. called, "Bridges out of Poverty." The workshop is sponsored by the Iowa City Housing Authority and is based on the work of Ruby Payne and her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty.

Payne's skill at self-promotion has been a convenient fit for educators eager for a quick fix in dealing with poverty, and her popularity has rapidly surged with little or no honest investigation of her competence. In fairness, it is flashes a beacon of hope to those who sincerely seek educational equality for their students from low-income families. Confidence in Payne's methods, like Payne's thesis, is based on collegial gossip and unsubstantiated and rather rare anecdotes of success.

The fundamental problem with Payne's thesis is that she doesn't know anything about poverty, let alone the culture of poverty, either through direct experience or scholarly research.

Anita Perna Bohn, an assistant professor at Illinois State University, examined Payne's scholarship and discovered that her work didn't meet any of the academic standards of research. I.e. There is no documentation that Payne has ever been a serious scholar of poverty or the impoverished either through academic or self-education. The "findings" in her self-published book are not verifiable, reproducible or valid. Bohn goes on to say that Payne's methods are not only incompetent but "downright dangerous" and states:

"On my first read-through of the [Payne's] "rules" I didn't know whether to laugh at the sheer stupidity of some of them or to rage at the offensive stereotyping of people in poverty and the thinly veiled bigotry reflected in others. I am still hard pressed to understand why ideas like this have made Payne the hottest speaker/trainer on poverty on the public school circuit today. One thing is certain, though: Ruby Payne has flown under the radar far too long. It's time for teachers and administrators to take a critical look at her immensely popular message."

In fact, there's scant evidence that Payne has ever read a book about poverty, other than her own.

Her bibliography consists entirely of authors with a right-wing, conservative, and economically laissez faire perspective on issues of which only a few are even vaguely related to poverty. She has no reference to any of the scholarly titans in the field like, Shirley Bryce Heath, Jonathan Kozol, Annette Lareau, and J.U. Ogbu. The bibliograhpy does include several books by Thomas Sowell, who has written position papers against a minimum wage, affirmative action, the liberal media bias, universal health care, and same sex marriage.

Payne shares these political views and seeks to advance them in her work. She is a public proponent of "No Child Left Behind," and cites Fox News as the authority for her statistics.

It's not only that Payne is a white, affluent, woman with no direct experience of poverty; she regurgitates and reinforces the most vicious stereotypes of those who live in poverty. Payne contends that people in poverty never plan, are slothful and undisciplined, talk funny, and don't care about their children.

Payne's theory is far from new and basically an unimaginative rehashing of the bigotry that blames poverty on those who are poor. She maintains that if "you people" would learn to talk, walk, and dress like "us," you'd be fine. (Apparently she's unaware of the millions of those with Ph.D.s and other advanced academic credentials working the same low-paying jobs as the working poor.)

This bias is outlined in the flyer distributed for the Iowa City workshop. The flyer states:

"You will be able to…

"▪ Explain how economic realities and living in an economic class system affect patterns of living and decision-making [Low income people are on to this.]

"▪ Describe and teach the hiden rules of middle-class [These rules are hardly hidden and are basically the problem.]

"▪ Understand the various language registers [It's okay to look down on you if I think you talk funny.]

"▪ Understand how to use discipline to bring about positive change [Working two to three jobs to survive doesn't require sophisticated discipline?]"

The flaws in these teachings isn't only that they assume that most low-income people don't know these things already, they deny that it is, in fact, middle-class and affluent America that has a whole lot to learn from the low-income people about discipline, planning, and cultural linguistics.

One particularly perverse tactic used by Payne is to make fun of how the underclass tells a story. Payne insists that a story must have a succinct beginning, middle, and an end without tangents or colorful illustration. This exposes Payne's own aversion to knowing anymore than she wants to know and lets the dominant culture that desperately needs some of this information off the hook for their own class bigotry. Fortunately Payne's limitation here hasn't had more social acceptance, yet, or the entire body of our most beautiful and powerful creative literature would be erased.

Payne denies the interlocking connections between class and race and gender. This has led to a teaching manual specifically addressing the inherent racism in Payne's approach. In An African Centered Response to Ruby Payne’s Poverty Theory, by educational consultant, Jawanza Kunjufu, Dr. Kunjufu asserts that "to provide an adequate education to students in poor communities requires teaching students how to eliminate poverty" rather than meaningless middle-class mimicry. The case he makes is solid and has led to several educational consultantships to debunk and/or clean up after Payne's work.

A peer review of Payne's book, "Savage Unrealities" by Paul Gorski (an assistant professor in the graduate school of education at Hamline University and founder of EdChange.org) refers to Payne's standpoint as "horrifying."

"Payne argues that her work is not about race but about class. … why does she paint such racist portraits of the African-American and Latino families in her scenarios? Payne identifies violent tendencies, whether in the form of gang violence or child abuse, in three of the four families of color depicted in the vignettes, but not in any of the three white families. Each of the families of color, but only one of three white families, features at least one unemployed or sporadically employed working-age adult. Whereas two of the three white children have at least one stable caretaker, three of the four children of color — Otis, who is beaten by his mother; Opie, who is left in the care of her "senile" grandmother; and Juan, who is being raised by his gang-leader, drug-dealer uncle — appear to have none."

Ruby Payne's workshop is not driven by informed educational practice but by a desire to foster a conservative economic agenda. Given some (proportionately few) people of color adopt conservative social and economic philosophies, it is safe to assume that the African Americans and Latinos that Payne has recruited for her cause come from those philosophical ranks.

I did watch a recording of this workshop that was presented last year and found the program to be completely consistent with the fears and objections of Payne's critics.

This column is not an indictment. Well meaning people can be misinformed and otherwise misled. It is a plea for more caution and thoroughness before we subject people to things that may do more harm than good. Our helping agencies should not be exploited to advance a narrow political agenda.

Please write or call the Iowa City Authority and the Iowa City Council today and ask them to

▪ review this program and disband this workshop.

▪ investigate and ask for a verifiable track record from the Bridges Out of Poverty Systems Change Team in Polk County along with the credentials of its trainers and leaders.

▪ consider a healing presentation by a reputable educational organization that works with race and poverty.

Contacts:

Mary Copper, Iowa City Housing Authority Self-Sufficiency Programs coordinator
Mary-Copper@iowa-city.org
319-887-6061

City Council of Iowa City

To contact the entire City Council of Iowa City
Council Members
410 E. Washington Street
Iowa City, IA 52240.
council@iowa-city.org

Members must be phoned individually.

To contact city councilors individually

Ross Wilburn, mayor
ross-wilburn@iowa-city.org
(319) 358-6374

Regenia Bailey, mayor pro-tem
regenia-bailey@iowa-city.org
(319) 351-2068

Amy Correia
amy-correia@iowa-city.org
(319) 887-3578

Connie Champion
No individual email address
Res: (319) 337-6608
Bus: (319) 338-2210

Robert Elliot
No individual email address
(319) 351-4056

Mike O'Donnell
No individual email address
Res: (319) 354-8071

Dee Vanderhoef
dee-vanderhoef@iowa-city.org
Res: (319) 351-6872

Related Links

Savage Unrealities by Paul Gorski
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/sava212.shtml

A Framework for Understanding Ruby Payne by Anita Bohn
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/fram212.shtml

Ruby Payne's bibliography
http://www.ncacasi.org/enews/articles_feb06/sch_accred_class_issues.pdf

Slush Fun: the School Infrastructure Local Option Sales Tax

The School Infrastructure Local Option Sales Tax (SILO) on the ballot on February 13, 2007, in Johnson County in Iowa, is an academic lesson in cultural hyper-greed.

The only stated reason by the Iowa City School Board for placing this tax on a ballot now is to avoid sharing a chunk of its appropriations with other counties if we were to pass a local sales tax more than sixteen months after the date of the election.

No other case is made for a need to pass the tax itself. In fact, the Board not only concedes it has no idea how they'll use the funding. They report they want their first expenditure of it to be on a consultant to tell them how to spend it. For the cash grab to be legitimately deemed an investment in the future, there needs to be a grasp of the present. While it's responsible of the Board to admit they don't have within their own expertise the wherewithal to specify existing local needs and priorities, it would be more responsible to seek that counsel before asking for more tax payer sacrifice.

The board also needs to exhaust all ways to ensure the tax is as fair as possible to citizens, and they have not sufficiently explored less regressive funding avenues. The most economically disadvantaged students in our community will be harmed more than helped by SILO's passage.

While affluent administrators belittle parents who don't spend more time helping their kids with homework, they're advocating a hardship that may make that parent less available because this tax means they'll have to work even more. The spin contrived by some Board members and other SILO supporters that a sales tax isn't' really that hurtful is embarrassingly uninformed and simply wrong. The claim that SILO is property tax relief for the poor is especially discreditable and manufactured.

The Board also needs to educate themselves and others that Johnson County does have a stake in the education of children outside of Johnson County and should embrace rather than avoid that responsibility. (E.g. Don’t Johnson County children in foster care who are placed in school districts in other counties deserve some of our support?)

Their "get it while you can" motivation isn't only ill-conceived. It's not true. They have sixteen months to lobby a new Iowa legislature with its trifecta Democratic leadership to enact fair and adequate educational appropriations. If there is a legitimate reason to implement a SILO, they have 16 more months to make a legitimate case.

Other local elected officials can't seem to articulate the necessity of a SILO now either. They are circling for their pals. Local cronyism, masked as solidarity, has a long overdue moral reckoning, and its delay is tainting the reputations of the ethical in the group.

________

For more information go to: http://www.schoolformoralcourage.com/silo.html

God or Mammon?

Jesus told the man, "You lack one thing to be good. Sell all you have and distribute it to the poor and follow my path." When the man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he was very rich.

Luke 18:22

My grandfather taught me that if you compromise on the little things, that it's foregone that you'll cave when it's something big. I've not always believed this, but the damage I did to my own conscience and character with the compromises I've made has taught me he was right on. Character doesn't strengthen with compromise, it atrophies.

And, so it is now in what we often call liberal, progressive Johnson County. I don't know when the organized leadership of progressive Johnson County and the Johnson County Democratic Party climbed on this slippery slope. I do know it's there now.

1. Self-identified progressives are rationalizing and promoting passage of a regressive tax this coming February, even though they know this tax puts an unfair burden on the poor. They are doing this with a trifecta state legislature that could pass a fair tax increase because they'd rather hurt the poor than hurt their electability.

2. "Progressive" leaders ignored and/or helped cover-up the malpractice of an elected county official because of liability to the party image and getting out votes for the party (aka themselves). County officials voted to support that official not because they believed he was right, but because they feared the retaliation that was theirs to stop.

3. And, now, a Democratic congressman who was elected to end the war has publicly stated—on his first day in office—that he will vote to escalate it.

This shouldn't be a huge surprise since not one County elected official has attended one of the organized peace rallies or demonstrations for the past year. A few candidates showed up at Peace Fest last fall, including our newly elected congressman. It seems clear now what the motive for some of those candidates' appearances were.

It doesn't take much investigation to see that as the status and prosperity of local progressives increased their individual and collective willingness to take real risk diminished.

There is a reigning fallacy that persists that we can retain our individual wealth and status and win justice at the same time. This is not now nor has it ever been true. Liberty and justice are not won that way. It's been won by people who put everything on the line to do the right thing. Neither Gandhi, King, Frederick Douglass, Mother Jones nor Harriet Tubman was concerned with professional resumes or electability.


The Almighty Job and the social status it confers are the 21st century's incarnation of fascist capitulation. We have come to believe that agreeing with or doing whatever the boss (aka job security) says is right and not doing what the boss says is wrong. We hold this as proper even when we know the boss is hurting people. We abdicate personal responsibility for this because we are merely "following orders."

We may cringe at the Nazi Germany analogy as too extreme, after all we're not sending people to concentration camps in America. However, we are. Guantanamo is exactly that. And until we see the direct geometric connection between our everyday wrongful capitulations to authority and status and cultivate our ability to confront them, we participate in these atrocities regardless of our intentions.

When we own our own souls, we don't aspire to affluence; we are revolted by it. We have the clarity to see the evil it fosters, and we want to spare its damage. Generosity isn't giving away what one doesn't need. That is simple sharing. Generosity is giving away or risking what one does need to help others. Often people try to make a meaningless distinction between money and "love" of money as being evil. When character is shaved—even slightly--for money, affection for money more than character is a given.

Hiding behind "I want to get along with people" or "I see both sides" can be equally destructive. This response is a hedge when one of the "sides" has economic or social power over us.

I'm sympathetic with the disappointment that we can't serve good and mammon, but the exact truth is that we cannot. If we sit inside this truth for a time, however, we find its reality is a good one. In this reality, wealth and status are appropriately irrelevant because self-worth is not a reason to strive. It is a given.

I believe defunding the war will happen, but not because of Democratic leadership. It is being won by the people. Moreover, it is being won by the people who risked their future and livelihoods in their call. These people convinced others we needed leadership to end this immoral war. Ironically, it's Republicans they most convinced, but it was the people who led the way.

When the people practice selflessness, courage and confronting injustice more, we heal more suffering. When we do not, all suffering is worse.