Foster Dickson's Blog, page 87

The Passive Activist, an introduction

We Americans are living with an unprecedented absence of leadership. In the Deep South, we have lived with this void for most of our history, so we’re a little more used to it than the rest of the nation— but that doesn’t make it OK. In the face of Congressional deadlock, soaring national debt, secular/religious strife, rogue policy actions by state legislatures, mistrust of the police, declines in public education funding, exorbitant college costs, internet predators and trolls, crumbling labor unions, global warming, and Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, the Passive Activist series offers ideas for how ordinary people can create and implement positive change in our own lives. Movements are made up of people.

#1. Vote.

Get registered, show up, and vote.

According to the US Census report titled “Who Votes?” only about 40% – 50% of Americans over age 18 actually show up to the polls to cast a ballot. In 2014, only 64.9% of American adults are even registered. We all feel free to express our political opinions, but less than half of us express our opinions in a way and at the time when it matters most.

Getting registered to vote is a relatively easy process in most states. And in the states where it isn’t easy, it’s still worthwhile to struggle through the hurdles and hoops. Yes, voter ID laws and similar provisions have made it harder for many people to vote, but the only way to change those laws is to get registered, show up, and vote out the people who make those kinds of laws.

Voting is the ultimate form of lazy man’s activism. Generally, we are only asked to vote two times every other year: in the summertime primaries and in the November general election. Polling places are near your home, they’re open twelve hours on voting day, and federal law says they have to be adequately staffed. If the time, date and place don’t work for you, then options like early voting, absentee ballots, and provisional ballots are there, too, but exercising those options has to be handled in a more responsible and timely manner than waltzing in at the last minute.

In many elections, voter turnout falls below 30% – and in primary run-offs, it can even fall to around 10% – which means to me that too many elected officials are sitting in their offices, making policy decisions, because they got 50% – 60% of the vote from the 20% of voters who showed up, and that’s just 20% of 65% of adults who are registered. Candidates who receive those vote totals do not have a majority at all, not even if you calculate it using Common Core math.

All of us must get registered, show up, and vote. When everyone is voting, then we’ll see how the election results look . . .

Filed under: Civil Rights, Social Justice, Voting

Is recycling a waste of time?

In early October, The New York Times’ Sunday Review section ran a piece called “The Reign of Recycling,” in which John Tierney asks all of us well-intentioned John Q. Publics, “Are you in fact wasting your time?”

Citing his own Times articles from 1996 in his already I-told-you-so introductory passages, Tierney proposes: Yes, you are in fact wasting your time. He writes,

While it’s true that the recycling message has reached more people than ever, when it comes to the bottom line, both economically and environmentally, not much has changed at all.

Tierney apprises us that recycling doesn’t make economic sense and that while “politicians set higher and higher goals, the national rate of recycling has stagnated in recent years.” Though I won’t recap his arguments in detail – and I encourage you to read for yourself – he goes on to relay that economically and pragmatically landfills are the better way to go, despite objections like this July 2015 article, which Tierney himself references.

Though I’m sorry to express this opinion, Americans are economic creatures first. We may sing with pride about our democracy, but we fail to vote, we fail to educate all children, and we fail to demand justice in our legal system. But we never fail to deposit our paychecks and spend, spend, spend— in some cases, more than we deposit. And Tierney alludes to that unfortunate feature of our culture:

THE environmental benefits of recycling come chiefly from reducing the need to manufacture new products — less mining, drilling and logging. But that’s not so appealing to the workers in those industries and to the communities that have accepted the environmental trade-offs that come with those jobs.

Finally, about two-thirds of the way down, Tierney asks the question I’d been waiting for as I read: “So what is a socially conscious, sensible person to do?” (If you’ve read my post “Shut Up, Doomsayers!” then you know that, for me, it’s always about solutions.)

His solution: hit ’em in the wallet— “a carbon tax on garbage.”

But why won’t this happen? Two reasons. First, it’s not politically expedient to raise taxes, especially on businesses, especially not on big businesses with the money to fight back. Second,

because recycling intuitively appeals to many voters: It makes people feel virtuous, especially affluent people who feel guilty about their enormous environmental footprint. It is less an ethical activity than a religious ritual, like the ones performed by Catholics to obtain indulgences for their sins.

I agree with him on both points. About the first: it’s easier to push recycling programs on the general public than it is to face down businesses and pro-business conservatives to pass that tax. About the second: yes, I do like participating in the solution. I feel good knowing that I’m doing right, that I’m making responsible choices. Tierney acknowledges that, though the benefits of one person recycling may be miniscule, they are benefits nonetheless, especially when multiplied by millions of people. And that tax that he and the economist from Bucknell like so much— it hasn’t happened . . . and probably won’t.

So thanks, Mr. Tierney, for reminding us that you’ve been arguing against recycling for almost twenty years. How’s that been going for you? 

Filed under: The Environment

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #93

Education depends fundamentally on our ability to generate optimism and find reasonable (defensible) ways to sustain it. When our faith in the future is shaken, whether it be by technologies we don’t understand, economic competition that undermines job security, or cultural forms that challenge our sense of identity, we often criticize education as having failed to prepare us for our current predicaments.

– from chapter one, “Taking in the world, Transforming the Self” in Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael S. Roth

Filed under: Education, Teaching, Writing and Editing

Video: Community Legacy Project

Last month, I went to Boston for the National Artist Teacher Fellowship convening, held on Harvard’s campus, to present my post-Surdna Community Legacy Project workshop. The NATF fellows and the CLP grantees presented an impressive range of artistic, cultural and educational work that included dance, classical and contemporary music, visual art, technology, theatrical design, and experimental theatre. Here’s a sliver of what was shared there by the CLP folks, courtesy of video wiz Dave Jamrog.

Filed under: Alabama, Author Appearances, Education, Teaching, The Deep South

“Compassionate Conservatism”: Chris Christie on addiction

Though I’m neither a conservative nor a Republican, I do wonder how men with ideas like these expressed by Chris Christie are getting ignored, or at least neglected, while the GOP’s blowhards are being lavished with attention. Christie’s discussions here of the humane sympathy that should accompany the pro-life ideal are commendable. I remember hearing George W. Bush declare and proclaim in the early 2000s about something he called “compassionate conservatism,” and though Dubya’s presidency was hardly marked by compassion, I think what Christie says here might be what Bush was referring to.

Filed under: Civil Rights, Social Justice

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #92

Gloria: How can you joke at a time like this?

Ivan: I joke. You sob. What’s the difference. We’re both miserable.

– spoken during the argument in the bedroom, when Gloria comes back home, in “Author! Author!” (1982)

Filed under: Film/Movies, Teaching, Writing and Editing

GoFundMe: Court Records for the Whitehurst Case

So I’ve been writing this book on the Whitehurst Case, which I have arranged into seven chapters, and here I am, stalled at chapter four. The first three chapters are largely finished, though probably in need of a little editorial work, since I’ve been looking at them for so long. It’s chapter four that is giving me fits.

After setting up Montgomery’s historical background in chapter one, investigating who Bernard Whitehurst, Jr. was in chapter two, and discussing the shooting in chapter three, chapter four delves into the controversy— the part people don’t seem to want to talk about. Chapters five, six and seven – which are about Emory Folmar’s administration, the family’s long-term struggles and modern-day events, respectively – are more fleshed out than chapter four, which covers 1976 and early 1977. Chapter four is the Whitehurst Case.

Because so many of the people involved in those events have passed away, I need access to the federal court records of Whitehurst v. Wright, et al., which was the wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Montgomery. However, the substantial fees associated with ordering the twelve boxes of records are prohibitive— at least, they are for me. To bring those boxes out of storage in Atlanta, the courts charge, I was told, $65 to get started and $35 per box, followed by fifty cents per photocopy and fees for transcribing testimony. Just to get the boxes would cost me $485 . . . that I don’t have. (If you’ve read my posts on Sallie Mae, you know I don’t have money laying around.) By my estimate, I’ll need a couple hundred more dollars for copies and transcriptions.

So I’ve created a GoFundMe account called “Book about The Whitehurst Case,” in which I’m trying to raise the money to pay those fees. If you can help me out, please do. This money is not for me personally. I’m not pocketing any of it. I only want to have the funds to get those records, so I can finalize my research and write this important story in the most factual and accurate way.

Filed under: Alabama, Civil Rights, Local Issues

November’s Southern Movie of the Month

After writing about the 1939 film “Way Down South” two months ago, I couldn’t resist also writing about 1936’s “The Green Pastures” for some of the same reasons. Through a multi-leveled frame narrative, this black-and-white Depression-era film oversimplifies and mistranslates the major stories of the Old Testament into an old-time Southern black vernacular, carrying it to the viewer through two separate outer frames: one involving an old black Sunday school teacher sharing his folksy wisdom with a group of young children, and the other portraying Heaven as an idyllic country fish-fry complete with ten-cent cigars and De Lawd presiding as a kindly country gentleman.

By removing the Old Testament from its ancient cultural roots and transplanting it into the rural farming culture of the Deep South, we see Adam and Eve, Cain and Noah, the patriarchs, even the archangel Gabriel as somewhat simple-minded creatures facing worldly problems. When De Lawd looks over a misty cliff from the Pearly Gates, He first sees the tremendous potential of a new Creation, but quickly finds Mankind to be disobedient, quarrelsome, and problematic. We meet Adam, standing in his work dungarees and plaid shirt, wondrous and lonely, until Eve arrives in her simple housewife’s dress. Similar Southern farming connotations are added to the often-turbulent stories of the Old Testament.

After the initial defiance of first Adam and Eve and then Cain, De Lawd returns to Earth to find a crass world full of carousing, drinking and raucous laughter. Among these careless sinners, there is Noah, a simple country preacher who does not at first recognize the De Lawd. When told that he must build his ark, Noah re-imagines his simple shack as a boat, filing the animals two-by-two into the tiny structure, each animal labeled with signage for good measure. After the Flood, of course, the cleansed world— well, it turns right back sour again. And by the end of the film, De Lawd is left with only one option: sending a savior.

In the culturally specific narrative of “The Green Pastures,” all of Creation is black: De Lawd, the people in Heaven, the prophets, the patriarchs, the angels. Though the raw naivete of the representations in “Green Pastures” could be seen as charming, with historical hindsight, for me the problem came with knowing that it was created by a white playwright, Marc Connelly, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1930 for the Broadway play that preceded the film. Sure, maybe a certain measure of truth was there – about how early twentieth-century blacks thought or lived – but there is also something questionable about having ignorance and backwardness to be quaint.

As a white person watching “Green Pastures” in 2015, it’s hard not to feel the racism. The movie had come on AMC a few months back, and intrigued both by the subject and by Robert Osborne’s explanations of ‘s film history, I gave it a look. Though not as harshly racist as “Birth of a Nation,” the condescension toward black culture is apparent.

On the brighter side, “The Green Pastures” may have constituted one of those tenuous steps forward for film depictions of African Americans in the South. In the introduction to Thomas Cripps’ edition of “The Green Pastures” for University of Wisconsin’s Screenplay Series, we read:

For white Americans, the increasingly visible evidence of the breadth and variety of black culture began to give the lie to generation of invidious stereotypes that had caricatured Negroes in advertising, performing arts, popular fiction, doggerel, and jokes. Coincident with the migration of southern blacks to northern cities, Hollywood movies began to redirect their depictions of blacks on the screen from abject slaveys and toadies toward sentimental tributes to such presumed “good Negro” virtues as loyalty and fortitude in the face of hard times.

The introduction goes on to put “The Green Pastures” in context by cataloging early twentieth-century plays and films with African American subject matter, e.g. Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings. I’m no expert on black drama and film, so I’ll yield to the expert here. (Though I must say that I do intend to search out one film he mentions in his introduction: an early talkie called “Hearts in Dixie” from 1929, which features in its lead role a man named Steppin Fetchit.)

As for me, I guess I am left to think about it this way: Is “The Green Pastures” outdated? Yes. Is it offensive? Possibly. Is it important? Definitely.

Filed under: Film/Movies, The Deep South

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #91

In short, for a crucially large number of Southern whites, segregation is not as important as any one or a combination of the following: economic profit, political power, good government, an absence of violence, food, recreation, an education, keeping a job.

Furthermore, there is also the powerful force of conformity, both to society at large and to close friends and associates. Conformity is a favorite target of intellectual disdain; few liberals will confess that it is not conformity in the abstract which they abhor, but conformity to certain values which they find reprehensible. Liberals would be delighted, for instance, to have conformity to the principle of free speech. And there is a world of difference between conformity to racism and conformity to the idea of equality. The tendency of people to seek security in the approval of their peers and superiors can be used as a great moral weapon as well as a divisive tool.

– from the chapter “Is the Southern White Unfathomable?” in Howard Zinn’s The Southern Mystique, published in 1964

Filed under: Civil Rights, Social Justice, Teaching, The Deep South, Writing and Editing

In the Arts @ MMFA, November 5th from 6 – 7:30 PM

Filed under: Author Appearances, Local Issues, Teaching, Writing and Editing