...E quando ci domanderanno che cosa stiamo facendo,
tu potrai rispondere loro: Noi ricordiamo.
Ecco dove alla lunga avremo vinto noi.
E verrà il giorno in cui saremo in grado di ricordare
una tal quantità di cose che potremo costruire
la più grande scavatrice meccanica della storia e scavare,
in tal modo, la più grande fossa di tutti i tempi,
nella quale sotterrare la guerra.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Obama
Obama acceptance speech in full
A speech by the new president-elect
of the United States of America, Barack Obama
Obama gave his victory speech to an emotional crowd in Chicago
Link to video
Barack Obama
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday November 05 2008 05.24 GMT
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.
I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.
I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation's next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House. And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.
To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics – you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.
But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to – it belongs to you.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington – it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.
I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America – that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves – if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:
Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/05/uselections2008-barackobama
President Obama: This Proud Moment
By William Greider
The Nation, November 4, 2008
We are inheritors of this momentous victory, but it was not ours. The laurels properly belong to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and all of the other martyrs who died for civil rights. And to millions more before them who struggled across centuries and fell short of winning their freedom. And to those rare politicians like Lyndon B. Johnson, who stood up bravely in a decisive time, knowing how much it would cost his political party for years to come. We owe all of them for this moment.
Whatever happens next, Barack Obama has already changed this nation profoundly. Like King before him, the man is a great and brave teacher. Obama developed out of his life experiences a different understanding of the country, and he had the courage to run for president by offering this vision. For many Americans, it seemed too much to believe, yet he turned out to be right about us. Against all odds, he persuaded a majority of Americans to believe in their own better natures and, by electing him, the people helped make it true. There is mysterious music in democracy when people decide to believe in themselves.
Waiting for the results, we all felt nagging tension, even when we were fairly sure of the outcome. I heard from a newspaper friend, a wise old reporter who never gave in to Washington cynicism. "This election eve night," he wrote, "I feel myself tingling about the prospect of a nation which used to lynch blacks during my lifetime electing a black man president. I so hope it happens, believe it would electrify the world. I think he is the bravest man in the world, perhaps the most foolish one as well.... I worry about him like a Jewish mama."
We heard from another family friend, an African-American woman who teaches law in North Carolina. She reported weeping involuntarily when she saw Obama's picture. Did she know why? She said she saw her adolescent son's face in Obama's. Great moments in history give emotional definition to our lives and we carry those feelings forward with us, our own private meaning of events.
In this way, Obama redefined the country for us, but our responses involved generational differences. For younger people, white and black, his vision seemed entirely straightforward. It is the country they already know, and they expressed great enthusiasm. Finally, they said, a politician who recognizes the racial differences that are part of their lives and no big deal. For young blacks and other minorities, Obama's place at the pinnacle of official power lifts a coarse cloak that has blanketed their lives and dreams-the stultifying burden of being judged, whether they succeed or fail, on the basis of their race.
For others of us at an advanced age, Obama's success is more shocking. We can see it as a monumental rebuke to tragic history-the ultimate defeat of "white supremacy." That vile phrase was embedded in American society (even the Constitution) from the outset and still in common usage when some of us were young. Now it is officially obsolete. Racism will not disappear entirely, but the Republican "Southern strategy" that marketed racism has been smashed. Americans will now be able to see themselves differently, North and South, white and black. The changes will spread through American life in ways we cannot yet fully imagine. Let us congratulate ourselves on being alive at such a promising moment.
About William Greider
National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers One World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and-due out in February from Rodale-Come Home, America.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081117/greider_election
An Interview I Would Love To Read
By Michael Albert
ZNet, November, 05 2008
Imagine it is January 2, 2011.
Imagine that Barack Obama has been President of the U.S. for two full years.
Finally, imagine also that the following interview with Obama takes place on prime time TV, as a way of situating what has occurred over those two years and also to foreshadow what is forthcoming.
And since this is all make believe, let's make believe the interviewer's name is Barb Walt.
I believe what follows is not an absolutely impossible scenario for all times, though I don't believe it will happen in the next two years. I don't believe Barack Obama will take office with the views that I here place in his mouth or with the courage to act on those views I attribute to him. But I could be wrong, and of course I hope I am, and more importantly, it could happen another time.
I know that a great many people, unlike me, believe that Obama is absolutely sincere about empowering the working people, women, minorities, and young people of America, even at the expense of those with wealth and power.
Against all evidence of Obama's own words, of the forces he is beholden to, of the inclinations of the "experts" he is welcoming into his administration, of the system preserving pressures he feels every day, and of past U.S. history - many people have an elated feeling that this man will transform the country. I fervently hope they are right, but think they are wrong. I offer this essay to indicate what I think would justify their outlook.
Obama will be transformative, or not.
That's a given, like it will rain tomorrow or not.
So...
Either: like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Barack Obama will be a man elected into office with major elite backing, who when he became President was only a sincere reformer, but who was then polarized by elite resistance and inspired by popular activism, to become much more.
Or: unlike Chavez but like every past American President, Obama will not evolve into holding more radical views, will not stand up to conforming pressures, and will not learn from activists, but will instead oppose us.
Since many Obama voters anticipate the former outcome, the imagined interview below reveals what it might be like if things turn out as they hope. It describes what having a radicalized president with great courage might be like.
But if the future holds no interview remotely like the one below, and no Obama transformation remotely like the one described, and no President-inspired uprising like that reported, and if instead Obama becomes an eloquent mainstream solidifier of elite stability, then it will mean Obama has fallen way short of his supporters' hopes, and it will mean it is incumbent on all who wanted a much more transformative outcome to keep pushing Obama's administration and to keep building the activist means to move forward even as Obama becomes more of an obstacle than an aid to the task.
Which way will it turn out?
Will Obama galvanize efforts to transform society including becoming a movement builder against elite opposition?
Or will Obama settle into office as a system sustainer, defending elite agendas with only modest (albeit important) variations from recent administrations?
We will see.
Below, we see what the transformative scenario might look like. My point is that we should push as hard as we are able to make the transformative path real, but we should also persist in our movement building even if Obama is more obstacle than ally.
Barb: Mr. President...
Barack: Barb, please, don't call me that - call me Barack. I think that "Mr. President" stuff is a throwback to Royal pomp. We should get beyond that...
Barb: Okay, sorry, Mr., er, Barack. To get started - I would like to understand your plans and hopes now, but also where you and the country have been over these past two years, and where you are now going. Can you start by telling us your broad goals as they were when you took office, two years ago?
Barack: Sure, Barb, I can summarize my aims as they were then...
Barb: Good, let's consider it a historical record. After the summary we can address recent changes. How about we start with health care?
Barack: It was my feeling when I took office that a society that doesn't provide health care for all citizens is dysfunctional. I mean, what would you say about a family that took care of some sick members, but told others, too bad, make do?
And if everyone in a family wanted to take care of all members, except an old curmudgeon granddaddy who said screw those who can't pay, clearly that old fuddy duddy's perverse opinion would be ignored, right?
So, by analogy, I felt we should treat all citizens like members of a diverse family, with everyone entitled to health care. And I felt if we raised the moral tone of the country, the curmudgeons opposing universal health care would be ignored.
I also knew health costs were climbing so fast the financial crisis we recently endured would be minor compared to the distributional crisis that would ensue if we left the health system in its prior condition. So I intended to ensure full coverage, but at a cost within our social means, by having everyone together take on the responsibility.
I intended to increase the number of caregivers, reduce their incomes to a sensible level, and in particular, put a low lid on pharmaceutical companies, health care facilities, or other involved firms profiting off disease.
I thought we should have vastly more clinics, too, because how else would people, and especially the poor, have easy access to timely and excellent care.
And, I have to say, I also always wondered, what the hell is the purpose of the incredible pressure that is put on interns? What logic justifies the debilitating hours they are forced to work? I thought that was no way to provide health care, much less to train capable, sensitive doctors, and you know, Michelle in her hospital work, had similar impressions, but I didn't know what we might do about it.
Barb: What about employment?
Barack: My view about jobs was why should someone who wants to work not be able to? Why should one person be working full time, or even very long hours at multiple jobs, and others not working at all? Why not share however much work needs doing more equally, to everyone's gain?
I also thought if someone doesn't have the literacy or other training needed to do work, that would be a fair reason for their not having a job except that almost always a training or knowledge deficit isn't a revelation about the job applicant, but about a society that denied a capable person of the learning he or she should have had. So I felt that we should redress educational denials rather than penalize their victims with unemployment.
I also wondered why some people suffered very harsh and demanding work conditions, even degrading, dangerous, and damaging conditions - while other people enjoyed much better and sometimes even uplifting conditions. And the former even got less pay. In other words, why did some people work so long and so hard for so little, while other people got off much easier and were paid way more? Was this moral? Was it good economics? I had my doubts.
So, I wanted, even two years ago, full employment plus being sure that people had education and training to enable them to do their jobs well and, down the road, perhaps we could also take a look at how and what people got paid for their efforts.
Barb: Public schooling?
Barack: I wanted the next generation to get an excellent education in a nurturing, supportive, and enjoyable environment. And I wanted the people responsible for conveying that education well provided for, both with equipment and wages. I didn't want kids bored and intimidated at school, but, instead, inspired and uplifted. No more warehousing; I wanted real teaching.
I knew that richer districts historically had better schools, due to the tax base difference, and I was dead set against that. What sense did it make to have a gap in income between neighborhoods made larger as time passed, rather than being diminished as time passed?
So even on taking office, I rejected saddling youth in poorer neighborhoods with deficits while youth in richer neighborhoods enjoyed advantages. I wanted to universalize the best education.
I also thought we ought to do something for older folks who wanted to make up for prior gaps in their schooling. To have a society with as much functional illiteracy as we had, some say well over 50% of us can't read a book, was wrong, and should be redressed as a high priority.
While we are on education, I also thought we should make higher education accessible to all who could make good use of it, and simultaneously enrich higher education to graduate the most enlightened and skilled generation we could.
I thought, like many other problems, that our lagging science and our general educational malaise was simply a function of the decades of slash and burn market fundamentalism since Reagan, and certainly those policies did greatly aggravate the situation, but I also had an inkling of a larger insight because I didn't understand how even Republican market worshipers could not be horrified by the horrendous results of their policies. It was one thing to be wrong, fair enough. But how could they persist despite seeing the horrible schooling that resulted?
Barb: What about your initial take on the legal system?
Barack: Here I knew from lots of personal experience, mine and Michelle's, that the legal system was a mess. Lawyers and prosecutors, in civil and criminal cases, were engaged in a kind of demented dance, driven more by cronyism, favors, crowded dockets, and prejudice, than by seeking justice, much less rehabilitation, and the price for this dysfunctional chaos was almost always paid by poorer and weaker defendants, not by those with wealth and power.
The criminal justice system was harsh, uncaring, racist, classist, brutal, often without even a semblance of logic. Everyone knows it. In fact, the prison system seemed to me to be almost a school for crime, not a means of redressing and reducing crime. But I didn't have much notion what to do about it, except, on one front.
Thus, even two years ago, I knew that having the gargantuan levels of arrests that we did, largely for victimless crimes, was horrible for those criminalized and also wasted huge resources in a gargantuan prison system that was eating funds that could go to education, housing, etc. I thought we should look at European procedures and by emulating them we could avoid imprisoning people for victimless crimes, at no loss in justice or prevention.
I knew prison guard unions would oppose reducing incarceration rates, unless we provided new jobs, so we would have to do that too, of course. But I admit I dismissed as paranoid the grass roots formulations I constantly ran into that said, wait, the harsh criminal justice system in poor neighborhoods aren't just irrational bureaucratic gargoyles. They impose control and repression that prevents the poor from rising and taking a greater share of society's wealth. Later, I learned from the poor, rather than considering them ignorant.
Barb: Legislation?
Barack: I had no really significant notion of how to do law making differently, even after having served in the Senate, but I did know we had to attain much higher popular participation in lawmaking and redress the power imbalance between normal citizens and lobbyists for the rich and powerful.
We needed some way that everyday folks could have more say, more oversight, more comprehension, but I didn't have good ideas about what the steps toward that might be.
Barb: Distribution of wealth?
Barack: Perhaps you remember this becoming a mantra for McCain near the end of the campaign? I found it a bit absurd, I have to admit, and yet in retrospect McCain did have a point, though it was a point I didn't yet see clearly.
I mean, even worse than my not knowing precisely where my views were going to wind up, and therefore not initially accepting and embracing the idea of redistribution - you probably also notice that during the campaign I didn't talk about my views as I am relaying them to you now. Why was that? Was I a typical political liar not revealing myself fully?
Barb: I admit, I was going to ask you about lying, as you put it, a bit later, after surveying the rest of your initial views...
Barack: Well, I think I should answer that now, and the answer is yes, in some sense I was a political liar. But what choice was there? If I had expressed all the above views which I felt at the time as I am expressing them for you here tonight, however moderate and sensible they were, I would have been skewered into little pieces by CNN and FOX and all the rest of the media.
I knew that much, even before the past two years experience taught me more about the lengths to which various elite sectors will go to prevent changes. I thought then, however, that having to remain quiet about a big part of my beliefs was just a residue of the way media and elections work. It was something to fix later - but certainly not something I could overcome during the campaign itself.
So instead of telling the whole truth, as I have with you, tonight, back during the campaign I felt if I was going to get elected, while I shouldn't overtly lie, still, I did have to be very judicious about how I expressed myself, always guarding against being misrepresented or even pilloried for views most people would support given time to think them through.
So, I was judicious, and some would say, not without justification, duplicitous. I am not proud of that, though I think a good case can be made that in context it was the right choice. After all, if I had presented my full views like I have been doing to you, tonight, then McCain would have won and the country would be in a very different place now.
But as to McCain's charge about redistributing wealth, that was incredible. After all, the Republicans had spent decades redistributing wealth upward from working people to owners, and that kind of redistribution was fine with McCain.
I thought instead that we had to give people who had only meager possessions more stake and more comfort, rather than taking wealth from them to give people who already had yachts and mansions even more yachts and mansions.
So yes, I felt that taxing the wealthy was part of what was needed, not least to redress what had occurred for a few decades. I didn't think of it as redistribution - though of course it is.
Barb: Wages?
Barack: To me it was obscene for wealthy businesses to pay paltry wages to hard working folks on grounds that the workers don't have the power to take more.
If I own some factory and I can get away with paying my workers less, I will. That's obscene. What I didn't really understand two years ago was that it wasn't just a personal failing of the owner, but was instead systemic. Even a nice and caring owner, and there are plenty of those, had to cut salaries or get out competed.
So, yes, I knew two years ago that I wanted working people to get higher wages for their labor.
Barb: Working conditions?
Again, what possible morality could justify a financially solvent company maintaining horrible conditions, or even opting to make conditions worse, just to cut costs so that owners could do even better?
To me, that was vulgar, but even with my heart in the right place, I was missing that market competition makes it necessary to do this kind of thing to ward off competitive failure, so that it was market competition, not the mindset of the employers, that was the root of the problem.
So, two years back I knew I wanted to promote laws, union activism, etc., to improve people's lives at work, but I had nothing more than that in mind.
Barb: The general direction of the economy? Were you a socialist two years ago?
Not even close. I felt that since its inception the American political tradition had been reformist, not revolutionary. And that meant to me that for a political leader to get things done, he or she should ideally be ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead. I was just a sincere advocate for the rights and conditions of the worst off folks in society. I wasn't about eliminating private ownership of workplaces - that never crossed my mind.
I did think markets needed stringent regulation to avoid doing great harm, so I wanted, to shift away from market fundamentalism and toward stewardship by government, but I wasn't even anti capitalist. In fact, I thought anti capitalists were unrealistic, childish, utopian. Worst of all they were not relevant to our unemployed citizens, or those who have bad jobs, or lack health care, or who breath toxic emissions. It was only later that I came to see things differently, as I guess we are going to come to...
Barb: Yes, we will, but first, what about War and peace?
Such matters seemed pretty simple to me. I mean, I always thought it was ironic for McCain and Palin to say I was untested or inexperienced regarding international relations. Is the horrendous prior behavior that McCain called "experience," a positive credential? The real issue was orientation.
Am I sane, or not? If I am, then I care about human likes and potentials, and I want peace - and I want it so much that I will go the extra step, indeed a thousand extra steps, to try to get it.
Well, wait, I guess honestly, I have to admit that that is more me now, then it was me back during the election, or at least my public face back then. Because while running I was hawkish about Afghanistan wasn't I, and even about Pakistan. I think it was part of getting elected, and at the moment to deliver the scary message well, I made myself believe it.
When I took office, however, I did want to initiate negotiations with countries who at that time I thought represented potential and even real problems for us, including North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and the Mideast writ large, China, and Venezuela, though in the campaign I did mostly just talk tough about Venezuela and especially Afghanistan. And when I got elected I did believe we could negotiate sensible relations, at least, and maybe more. Why not?
Barb: But you didn't see the U.S. as a problem state itself, internationally?
No, not at all.
I thought we made mistakes, sure, even big mistakes, but I didn't think of us as being a problem rather than a solution - even though I would have agreed we were ham-handed at times. In fact, I think I was incapable of thinking that our motives might not be worthy. That came later...
Barb: What about gender issues?
You know, there is a sense in which I was just a person who cared about people. I know that sounds trite, but it was true. I wasn't focused on changing basic structures. I just wanted to push policies and provide an example that would elevate people who needed relief.
So, regarding women, I wanted absolute and full equality, fairness in all sides of life, and also dignity, including no more minimization and objectification - and I wanted the same for people with diverse sexual preferences, gays, lesbians, and others.
Thus, I intended to push for serious and effective day care, child leave, and other programs that women seek and need. But I also wanted to provoke a widespread discussion in society, not unlike what happened in the early days of the women's movement, addressing the causes of women suffering psychologically and materially, and then trying to overcome those causes.
Barb: Issues of race?
Of course no one should suffer in any way, personally or institutionally, due to their race, religion, or any other cultural community they may be part of.
So my views regarding race when I got elected were like my views regarding gender - I wanted to eliminate archaic laws and provisions that interfered with people's options due to cultural biases.
I also wanted to redress residual inequalities between communities so that all communities would have comparable per capita assets and conditions, of course. I thought affirmative action made sense, but not reparations, at least not at the outset.
Barb: Ecology?
Honestly, I wasn't much of a student of ecology. I didn't know much, and I still have a lot to learn.
I did know, however - indeed, how could any sane person not know - that it made no sense to squander resources frivolously, it made no sense to ruin the environment we lived in, it made no sense to ignore climate change and suffer incalculable consequences later.
So I wanted to elevate ecological attention and program to a priority, but I felt we needed to first figure what our ecological program ought to be.
Barb: Okay, when you were elected, two years ago, what was your expectation about fulfilling your aims? What obstacles did you expect to encounter? Did you think you would overcome them?
During the campaign we built an immense apparatus for reaching out to people all over the country and I thought we would use that, and use my access to media and to the public through speeches, etc., to clarify what we sought to do, and to amass huge support for it, and to then implement it.
I knew that many programs would encounter serious opposition. Many wealthy people would oppose paying more taxes, or would oppose having programs that took from the social product on behalf of working people for social services like education and health - though, honestly, I didn't entirely understand why.
I also knew that many people with strong ideological commitments would oppose my plans around health, science, regulating markets, etc.
But with the tremendous outreach team we had developed in the campaign reconceived to be an activist apparatus for discovering, arousing, and fighting for people's desires, and with me and other administration members appearing actively on the media and having my own show as well to talk directly to the public, I thought that despite inevitable opposition, the massive ground swell of clarity, excitement, energy, and desire we would unearth and inspire, would be enough to carry the day. Indeed, I thought we would make quick progress.
After all, we had already done the impossible, in the election. This seemed like an easier task, with the White House in hand, not a harder one.
Barb: In hindsight, now, what do you think people expected you to actually do when you took office?
It depends who you are talking about. I think the public, the broad public was a mixed bag on this.
Many working people and especially young people believed and certainly hoped I would do much of what I have mentioned here, and were happy when they began to realize I wanted to do even more.
Many other people, however, doubted anything much would be done, but at least I wouldn't be McCain or Bush.
For people who voted against me, on the other hand, I think there was confusion, doubt, and sometimes fear and hatred, but I thought we could mostly defuse it and turn it around.
Elites I guess I thought similarly about, but I quickly discovered, instead, that they thought, and this was whether they voted for me or against me, that I would do nothing much different than had been done before. And not only did they think that would be true, they were intent to make it true.
Barb: What did you in fact seek to do, and what did you encounter as a result? How were you surprised? What did it do to your views?
Well, if you remember, the first thing I did was to announce some new cabinet positions - ecology and science. And then I announced a massive campaign around education and health care - with a massive literacy campaign and many new community clinics - and then I started announcing many economic regulations, and urging a campaign for few work hours, and I began undertaking international negotiations. It was just what you would expect, I guess, in light of the things I said above about my views at the outset.
What I encountered, however, came as a big surprise. On the one hand, as you know, there was an incredible outpouring of popular energy and excitement which latched onto what was offered and pushed for much more, as well. These millions of people - the women and men energetically fighting to end the war, to enlarge democracy, to improve people's lives - not only impressed me, they pushed me, they made me study their sentiments, and made me react to their choices.
But on the other side, the negative response was even more incredible, and at least to me, more surprising, especially the speed and vigor with which I was publicly pilloried, both to my face, at first, in my offices, and then once that failed, all over the media. I was attacked, and attacked, and attacked, as were the emerging movements, too.
At first it was pretty slow and private as people came to see me and talked with me - senators, big industrialists, and so on - but what happened at these sessions was, well, I said back to them, hey, wait a minute. I told you broadly all during the campaign what my priorities were. And yes, my views go somewhat further than what I said in the campaign, but not much. So what's the problem for you? And I also told them, one after another, that I didn't get into office to do nothing. I intended to bring changes, just like I said I would. I am no revolutionary, not even a radical, I told them, but we need to act on many fronts, for many constituencies.
Well, once this was conveyed, then the newspapers and talk shows and networks that these folks govern ratcheted up the attacks. And it really went over the top, it went ballistic, you remember, when I met with Chavez and reported that instead of feeling he was some horrible enemy, like I had convinced myself during the campaign, I found that I liked a whole lot of what the Venezuelans were doing, and even wanted to learn from their efforts. At that point, all hell broke lose. The media got really aggressive from then on.
It was incredibly fortunate that we did have a powerful campaign apparatus that we could shift into combating all the lies and calumny these elites were pouring out and, even more important, that the public, all over the country, showed so much support for our new programs.
Indeed, I have to admit, I doubt I would have had the courage or the insight to keep on, except for the huge numbers of folks who took to the streets and went house to house, and otherwise worked tirelessly to keep pushing the debate forward against the elite assault on us. How could I possibly let them down?
Well, okay this went on as everyone knows for months and months, and it still continues, and instead of abating, or becoming civil, it has escalated, and it still is. The more I do in accord with serving the population, the more the elite owned media and talk show hosts and pundits and other politicians attack me in all kinds of ways.
And for your question, from all that, plus the lessons I was finally listening to that movement organizers were teaching, I learned that our society is fundamentally flawed in that it produces people who act as these hostile talk show hosts, newspaper publishers, senators and corporation owners and executives did, and it not only produces them, it elevates them to great power and wealth - indeed, it connects their power and wealth and their attitudes - making each the condition of the other. And so I began to change my views, and from then on the change in my thinking went very quick, I admit, once it got going.
I began to realize that we had bad schools because 80% of each new generation learning mostly to endure boredom and to take orders kept people at the top insulated and advantaged.
I realized that we had bad health care and harsh legality because it weakened most working people, and allowed those above to dominate and claim more for themselves.
I won't go through everything I learned - but suffice it to say that the irony was that while the owners and the rich labeled me a revolutionary danger when it wasn't true - back at election time - in a very real sense their behavior helped cause me to become what they feared.
They taught me, by their horrible antics, along with the even more important positive example of the activists who stood up to them, the need to replace failed institutions and not just failed policies.
So, yes, they turned me from a reformer into a revolutionary. I abhor violence and chaos, of course. But I am committed to involving the population in taking control of its own destiny.
And with that shift, I and all the people in our administration began to think, okay, what do we need to construct in place of the old offending and offensive institutions - in place of private ownership of workplaces, market competition, distant and alienated government - to make a really humane society?
And that's where we are. Our views are changing and growing. We are still learning, especially from grass roots movements, that we are in a vast project or experiment or campaign or struggle - it doesn't matter what label you use for it - to arrive at a shared vision for our society and to implement it.
Barb: Okay, more specifically, how have your aims changed, as a result of the hostility you faced and lessons from the mass movements, regarding the economy?
Well, right now I am seeking a law forbidding capital export and relocation without community and worker permission to do so, and also a law delineating punishments for employers who impede nationally mandated economic reforms. The idea is to increase worker power, while also making worthy reforms.
For each law, additionally, I want the maximum penalty for owners who violate it to be nationalization of their businesses under the management of currently employed workers.
I am also working explicitly toward reducing inequality, reorienting productive potentials to meet social needs, and enlarging economic democracy in all parts of the economy - workplaces and allocation - all as immediate aims.
For example, to foster equality of wealth and income, I am advocating a sharply progressive property, profit, inheritance, and income tax, with no loopholes, as well as a dramatically-increased minimum wage coupled with a new profit tax that would be specifically coupled to inequities in each firm's pay scale.
Due to the new minimum wage law, minimum pay would rise dramatically. Due to a new pay equity tax, industries with a more equitable pay scale would have more after-tax profits even as income inequities among employees would decline. Heavier property and other wealth-oriented taxes would provide means to pay for other socially valuable programs as well as dramatically diminish differences in wealth. Not only could more equitably structured and democratically run firms use their extra funds to further improve work conditions and increase their social contribution, they could generally out-compete less socially responsible firms.
I now call all these innovations redistributive and I repeatedly explain why redistribution from the rich to the poor is both morally justified and socially essential. Indeed, as you know, I call it "reclamation of stolen or at least misplaced riches."
I have also embarked on a comprehensive full employment policy, including a 25% shorter work week but with no reduction in pay for those earning less than $70,000 a year, a 25% pay reduction for those earning up to $150,000 a year, but a 50% pay reduction for all those earning higher still, and a comprehensive adult education and job training program, and a comprehensive social support system for those unable to work, whatever the reason.
More, beyond seeking these immediate improvements in material equity, I now advocate that workers should have work conditions and responsibilities suitable to their personal development and to their responsibility to contribute to society's well being.
I continually emphasize that attaining equity of life circumstances has to mean not only attaining equity of wealth and pay, but also equity of conditions while at work. Of course this takes time, but there is no reason to put off improving the balance, no reason not to start increasing education, not to start redefining our division of labor.
Indeed, with this principle as a touchstone, I now urge the creation of workers' councils in private and public workplaces throughout the country, as workers choose, but empowered by federal mandate to develop job redefinition programs and to win increasing say over the pace and goal of work.
All these values, I repeatedly say, require new underlying logic and structure - I am very clearly anti capitalist now, and anti market, and urge the definition of new, self managing, cooperative, and equitable approaches to economic life.
Regarding investment priorities, I am now proposing tax incentives for socially useful production and tax disincentives for wasteful and luxury and socially harmful production. This would limit excessive and also ecologically damaging advertising or packaging and other antisocial behavior. It would help foster production to meet real needs and potentials.
Indeed, my administration intends to regulate, punish, and even legislate out of operation any business or industry deemed by an independent citizens bureau followed by a supporting public plebiscite to be destructive of the public good.
Even more, we are building means for federal and state budgets to be overseen by the public that the expenditures affect, not by political or economic elites that mishandle them.
Of course, the biggest single material change in economic priorities that I am undertaking is a 90 percent cut in the defense budget. To make this worthwhile and not a shock for society, I am proposing that existing military bases be converted to centers for ecological clean-up, to centers to build and house new schools and social centers for local communities, to workplaces to produce low income housing or new means of clean transportation or energy production. Federal funding for these bases would persist, while resident GIs, or others seeking new employment, are, if they so desire, retrained to work in as well as to democratically administer the converted bases. These new projects will move a huge percentage of our social capacity from wasteful military violence to socially valuable production and will also be exemplary in every other respect.
Regarding economic democracy and participation, I am overtly and aggressively assisting the formation of consumer and worker organizations to watchdog product quality, to guard against excessive pricing, to advise about product redefinition for durability, ecological sustainability, and value to the user, and to participate in plant and industry decisions with open books and full investigative rights.
And beyond all these first steps, I am also continually clarifying that my ultimate economic goal, and I think what ought to become society's ultimate economic goal too, is the full democratization of economic decision making and the initiation of a national public project to develop new institutions for determining work, consumption, and allocation in a non competitive, cooperative, and self managing way.
In short, I am now intent on explaining that the basic problem with our economy is that capitalist institutions make capitalists prefer war production, persistent unemployment, stunted education and health care, repressive legality, homelessness and impoverishment to having a working class that is secure and informed and therefore able to demand a bigger piece of the pie as well as more control over what kind of pie is baked. I am working to propose and win uncompromising changes that redress existing grievances, create conditions more just and humane, and also establish a new balance of power conducive to winning more fundamental changes in the future.
Barb: What about education, as another example?
I have come to realize due to the incredible hostility of my elite critics and the lessons of education and community activists, that while it is often claimed that schools are failing, it really depends on how you look at them.
Existing schools actually succeed at developing, on the one hand, future executives, professionals, intellectuals, and managers by providing them with an empowering environment, diverse skills development, wide-ranging knowledge, an expectation of fulfillment in life, and, it has to be said, a degree of callousness and paternalism and authoritarianism toward those below.
On the other hand, schools also serve to create future workers by providing them the dregs of literacy and maximum training in enduring boredom and obeying orders. From the point of view of elites, these outcomes aren't sign of failure but of success. Elites like the picture. I find it vile. That's why they went ballistic when I began to even moderately change the situation and that's how I learned the need for much more change.
To my new thinking, we have to understand that to make educational change we need to change the context that schools prepare people to enter so that good education for all makes good sense. We need to realize that this requires an economy promising full employment at jobs that require and utilize people's full capabilities, including their highly developed facility at decision-making, their ample knowledge about society, and their expectations of success and participation.
With those changes underway, we also need to develop a popular movement to seek specific pedagogic changes. To enumerate these pedagogic changes, I am advocating that we have a national debate conducted in schools, with teachers, parents, and students, about curriculum reform, improved teaching methods and teacher-student relations, improved resources for schools, and increased community involvement.
I am already seeking to reduce class size to a maximum of 20 students per teacher in all schools. I am seeking to equalize resources per student across all schools, including architecture, computers, books, and food—and to guarantee education (through college) to anyone who wants it.
I am seeking to provide funds to staff all schools at night for community meetings and remedial and adult education, not just for literacy campaigns, but now also for larger and richer and more diverse adult education as well. And finally, I am advocating and working for education funding to come from new corporate profit taxes to guarantee that regions attain educational parity.
Barb: How about foreign policy?
Well, of course, as everyone knows, I got us out of war in Iraq and have been negotiating a reduction of tensions and an increase in mutual aid in many other places, as well. But on a more broad scale, it is sad but true, as I have come to understand while being bludgeoned by rich people's media and taught by poor people's movements, that U.S. foreign aid has heretofore correlated directly with human rights abuses. The more abuses a country practiced, the higher our aid was. More, this was not due to diplomatic stupidity. The practitioners of our policies were not dumb.
So why did we have such horrible policies? Well, the sad truth is that our policy makers viewed aid as a way to maintain a flow of riches and wealth out of other countries and into ours. Call it empire, if you like. It has been around a long time. Indeed, the U.S., had to overcome the British version at our birth, but then, regrettably, we became purveyors too.
Since this rip-off by our country, or more accurately, by our country's richest and most powerful members, of the assets of other countries requires that the local populations in those other countries submit, of course wherever we give aid, indigenous populations are repressed. That's the quid pro quo. That's largely what the aid buys.
The idea is that in return for our "largesse" in providing the tools of repression and authoritarian rule, and propping up vile leaders beholden to us, those elites get to take home an ample bounty of wealth, and our elites get to take home even more. And if something goes wrong, meaning if the populations of other countries try to get out from under our thumb, well, okay, we call in the Marines. And that isn't a slam at the Marines, it is a slam on our system, and on the people who give the orders.
So I think instead of emphasizing empire our foreign policy needs to respect the integrity of other nations and to reflect, as well, a human-serving domestic economy rather than an incredibly hierarchical one. My overall program internationally, and I certainly admit that my aims change as I learn more, now emphasizes:
· Cessation of all arms shipments abroad. And of course cessation of all our overseas military interventions and actions.
· Cessation of any aid abroad that is likely, by any means, find its way into the hands of police or other potentially repressive agencies in other countries.
· Elimination of all overseas military bases, with half the funds saved from closings returned to the U.S. for solving domestic problems; and half applied to aid to underdeveloped countries in the form of no-strings attached infrastructure improvements, job and skills training, equipment grants, food aid, and privileged buyer status for many goods on the international market.
· Implementation of trade agreements which instead of taking advantage or our greater power and size, apportion the benefits of exchange among ourselves and those we trade with so that the weaker party gets more of the benefits - and the wealth gaps narrow - rather than the stronger party taking more, and the wealth gaps widening. Call it internationalism, if you want, or just plain old morality, either way, it is morally sound despite that it is the antithesis of market exchange.
Barb: We don't have enough time to run through everything, I guess, but what about health and ecology?
Well, in brief, a civilized health program for our society must involve three main components: prevention, universal care for the ill, and cost cutting. So, in light of lessons I have learned from health movements and workers, I am currently working hard on...
· Improved preventive medicine, including increased public education about health-care risks, a massive campaign around diet, increased cleanliness in hospitals, and large-scale provision of community centers for exercise and public health education.
· Universal health care for the ill, including the government providing comprehensive coverage for all citizens.
· Reassessment of training programs for doctors and nurses to expand the number of qualified health workers and to better utilize the talents of those already trained.
· Civilian review over drug company policies with a stringent cap on profits and remuneration for officials, with violations punished by nationalization - and review of the medical impact of all institutions in society—for example, the health effects of work conditions and product choices, with an eye toward improvements.
I am also seeking sharp limits on the incomes of health professionals and on the profits that pharmaceutical and other medical companies could earn, and of course this is in accord with our new ideas about incomes generally.
To get rich, I have come to realize, is vile. It means one is taking way more than what one's effort and sacrifice in contributing to the economy warrant - but to get rich off illness, that is especially pernicious. And insofar as we need large scale funding for our health programs, it will come from punitive taxes on unhealthful products such as cigarettes, alcohol, and unsafe automobiles, etc.
As to the ecology, as you know I am establishing a department of ecological stewardship to develop a list of necessary clean-up steps, as well as a policy to preserve the ecology and prevent further global warming.
Beyond this, I argue that funds for clean energy development and deployment, for all kinds of conservation, etc., should come from a tax on current polluters and on prior beneficiaries of unclean industrial operations.
It used to be that for a company if it could produce more cheaply by polluting and not cleaning up the mess and it was not just wise but even essential to do so. Others would pay the costs imposed by the pollution, and you would save. If you didn't do it, and your competitors in the market place did do it, they would outcompete you with their savings. This is the connection, or one of the connections, between market exchange, profit seeking, and ecological degradation. And so one of our big tasks is to make all these connections clear and to develop insight and activism focused not just on single issues, but on the whole overarching logic of society.
The critical innovation in our approach to ecological sanity is therefore to open a national public debate about the relation between our basic economic and social institutions and the environment. We want to involve the population in clarifying that we need institutions attuned to ecological costs and benefits and that we must experiment with non-market approaches to allocation, rather than trying to police the inevitable ecological disasters that markets routinely produce.
Bard: Okay, what about Race and Gender?
Well, part of it is obvious and basically what I felt on being elected and what I began doing then. But even beyond ensuring that there aren't vile characterizations and media manipulations, and beyond ensuring that there is proportional representation at all levels of society for the various groups, and beyond redressing, as well, the material and situational residues of past injustices, I have come to realize there is more we have to do.
So to accomplish the above, we have education programs, caucuses giving minorities and women oversight and a room of their own, affirmative action and taxes and reparations and even the new Women's Bank and Minority Bank to undo past accumulated imbalances, and facilitate new projects, etc.
But I am also eager to initiate, which is why we have the new cabinet positions for gender and sexuality and for race and culture, widespread and deep going discussions aimed at finding the structural relationships inside families and in schooling and in sexual interactivity, and in cultural communities and especially in their interrelations, which tend to produce the distorting and unjust views and practices that we call sexism and racism. I want not only to have programs to redress the symptoms, but also to get at the deepest causes.
In that, my aim for racism and sexism is a bit like it is for the economy. We don't just say let's get wealth gaps narrowed, we also say, let's remove the institutional relations that produce the gaps in the first place, and I think we need to do the same for race and gender, and for politics, too, for that matter - which is why we are embarking on building neighborhood, county, and region based assemblies for direct democratic control over society - and why we intend that in time these will be the seat of political power, not mayor's offices, governor's offices, or even my office, for that matter.
Barb: Okay, I know we should go on with this a lot longer, but even our extended time slot is almost up, so to summarize how would you say your overall current program contrasts, broadly, to two years ago?
When I took office, I thought I was going to easily implement modest programs to better the situation of society's less well off sectors and to improve our health, education, etc.
As you know and as we discussed, I ran into a minefield - really a shit storm - if you will pardon my language - of quite vicious elite opposition.
This was a real eye opener for me, but instead of succumbing, I decided to fulfill my promises.
Of course the situation got more embattled, but it taught me that making society better is not a matter of tweaking this or that lever. It is about completely changing the levers.
So, again, when I took office my program was about alleviating pain, improving institutional efficiency, and generally making the system work better. But now though my program still seeks innovations to better the lot of those worst off and to improve education, health, etc., it is also about enfranchising workers and consumers and empowering all citizens regarding all the decisions that affect them.
So now it is not about making the existing system work better but is instead about discovering what new structures and relations we need to put in place to remove the obstacles that impede the fullest liberation of our talents and the most complete fulfillment of our needs.
We can't have a social system that produces the behavior I encountered for trying to meet my rather moderate election promises. We can't have a system that makes people so anti social and so greedy, so ignorant and so violent, and that then gives precisely those people most control. We can't have a system that robs so many people of their human possibilities.
So now my program is about real change, just like I said in the campaign, but thanks to the opposition I encountered and what it taught me, and thanks even more to the huge numbers of people who allied with my efforts and fought and keep fighting against all obstacles, it is about change that goes way beyond what I was talking about in the election - change in basic relations, in property, in decision making, in the norms governing who gets how much product, how we legislate, how we adjudicate, how we raise the next generation, and so on.
Barb: What about your approach to winning these changes, how is it different now, than before?
Before I thought winning change was about convincing politicians and prominent citizens of the wisdom of my programs. Now I know that it is about amassing popular power, not just votes but sustained activism, sufficient to force our outcomes on the rich and powerful, who are fighting viciously against them.
Before I thought I was the key to it all, honestly with everyone calling me Mr. President, and all. Now I know that while I am important to the process, the real key is public awareness, public insight, public energy, public militancy, public organization, and public action. It isn't me who is taking over and running organizations throughout society in new ways - it is the public.
You know how politicians used to talk about a war on drugs, a war on terrorism. Well, I don't like addictions and I sure as hell don't like terrorism - including inflicted by the US on others - but I also don't like rich, comfortable, powerful people who want to keep a tight grip on most of society's wealth and power. Those people need to lose if real freedom and real justice are to blossom. If it is a war that those people want, a war that they thought they could intimidate me with - fine, we will proceed, and it will be a war of justice against greed, of equity against inequality, of solidarity against antisociality, of self management against autocracy. If they know no other language than battle, then even though we want communication and reason, we can battle too, and we will.
Barb: To finish, do you still believe we can have a just, equitable, really participatory society? What is your long run goal?
Yes, I believe it more than ever. In fact, for the first time, I am really coming to understand what such words mean.
I have learned we can't have a really participatory society, though, if we maintain a few people owning all workplaces and other economic assets. We can't have it if we maintain elitist decision-making and cultural exclusion or sexism. We can't have capitalism, I now realize, or patriarchy, or racism, and equity or solidarity. We can't have capitalism and have democracy much less real participation and self-management. The rich and powerful, trying to intimidate me, instead taught me the need for fundamental change by the way that they rejected even small incursions on their wealth and power.
And I also know that we can't have participation, real democracy, with government structures that have no roots in the population, but that exist over and above the population. These things I now know, but they don't cause me to think that a better life, a better world, is impossible. On the contrary, they illuminate the path to that better life and better world.
Are the obstacles to real change larger than I thought they were, larger than I understood them to be? Yes, they are.
But I have also seen poor people, working people, women and men of all races, come to political life, come to activist life, all over our country, these past two years, and as large and intense as the forces of reaction and hostility have been, I have seen that the popular forces that can become aroused and involved for peace and justice are far larger - and we are arousing them and they are getting active. And so we will win.
We have seen such an incredible outpouring of humanity and caring, of sharing and organizing, of innovation and creativity, of learning and doing, and especially of mutual aid in just these two years - just think what we can all together accomplish with more time and with the accelerated momentum that comes with a steady accrual of gains that both improve people's lives and, with each step, give us more means to go still further.
So yes, I think we can have an economy in which workers and consumers cooperatively self manage economic life without familiar hierarchies of wealth, power, and circumstance, and indeed without class divisions of any kind.
And yes, I think we can continue the long journey of overcoming racial and gender beliefs, structures, and even residual imbalances and hierarchies - both ideological and material - in a society that has ways of living in families, and of birthing and nurturing the next generation, and of celebrating identity, and that has mutual beliefs, and shared language, cuisine, and all the other components of culture - thereby arriving finally at a society that does not mistreat anyone, explicitly or implicitly, for race or gender, or sexuality.
And yes, I think we can have a political system that accomplishes adjudication of disputes, legislation of shared norms, and implementation of collective projects with every citizen having a self managing participatory say in the outcomes, without elitism, without alienation, without injustice.
Yes, I do believe all that.
I am not the same man who ran for office against John McCain two years ago and won. I said then I was not a perfect person and would not be a perfect President. That was true, truer than I knew, even. But I am someone who can learn, and I will not bow to greed and viciousness.
Many deep interpersonal values are the same for me now, as two years ago, yes, but the view of the world that I have, the view of what we need to do, both short term and long term, and the view of the steps required and the tasks we have to undertake that I now have, those have all altered greatly.
I have learned much. What before seemed to me largely irrelevant, now seems to me the core of our future - explicit desires to transform society's central institutions, explicit desires for revolution in ideas but also in social relations. And what before seemed to me essential, which was convincing elites by reasoned appeal, done largely behind closed doors over the heads of the public, now seems to me both a fruitless pursuit and a horribly repulsive one. The task I see and feel is to address, learn from, and accompany the broad public and its popular movements into a new society that we will all enjoy together.
Barb: Thank you, Mr. President.
Barack: You are very welcome Barb, but mostly the thanks go from me to the public, for waking me up and for making possible the incredible social project we now undertake. And please, it is Barack...
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19345
Postato da: treball a 05/11/2008 12:51 |
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news, testi, good news, elezioni, repetita iuvant, social, international, occidente, usa today
Yes, We can
Why We Vote
This article appeared in the November 17, 2008 edition of The Nation.
The Nation, Editorial
October 29, 2008
This past week, a flier of unknown origin was circulated in Hampton Roads, Virginia, bearing the seal of the state Board of Elections and instructing Democrats that, because of an emergency order of the state General Assembly, they were to vote on November 5... the day after election day. Across the country GOP lawyers are working overtime to erect barriers to keep people from voting, and the McCain campaign and its surrogates have spent weeks smearing ACORN for engaging in the audacious and outrageous act of... registering poor people. That the group submitted 400,000 registrations that were flawed-making the total more like 900,000 than the oft-cited 1.3 million-should not overshadow the fact that it has been part of a much larger and apparently effective drive to expand the electorate. So as we (finally) approach election day, we find ourselves in a familiar situation: the left wants the maximum number of eligible citizens to vote, and the right does not.
Progressives have long stood for a wider franchise that includes the propertyless, women, African-Americans and young adults. The same is not true of conservatives: from Edmund Burke, who worried about the "cruel oppressions" the many have-nots might visit upon the few haves, to activist Paul Weyrich, who admitted in 1980 that "I don't want everybody to vote.... As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populace goes down."
For several decades, starting around 1964, conservatives were winning this battle. Turnout declined from 63 percent in 1960 to just over 51 percent in 2000. Last election we witnessed enough of an increase to detect the rumblings of a reawakening. Now we appear to be in the midst of a full-fledged democratic renaissance. By every measure-from the number of small donors and volunteers to the number of those who cast their votes early-participation is at its highest level in a generation.
Particularly poignant is the role black voters are poised to play as they head to the polls. All across the South, men and women once barred from the ballot-forced to brave dogs, insults and terrorism simply to add their names to the voting rolls-will, on November 4, be able to cast their ballot for an African-American man to be president of the United States. Imagine the emotion of 109-year-old Amanda Jones, whose father was born into slavery, when she voted early this year in Texas.
Along with the ugliness, this election has produced a tremendous number of grace notes: the recent report of employees at an Indiana call center walking out rather than read anti-Obama talking points; the McCain supporters who confronted and shunned an Islamophobe outside a rally (captured on YouTube); and the story (reported on Politico) of how a McCain backer in line to vote early in Hamilton County, Ohio, lent his NASCAR jacket to three elderly Jewish women after overhearing that they would not be allowed to enter the polling place wearing their Obama gear. While chatting with the women, who spoke of the alliance of Jews and blacks during the civil rights struggle, the man was seized with the desire to be on the right side of history; when it was time for him to cast his ballot, he voted for Obama as well.
This last story gets at something profound about why we go to the trouble of voting. We vote in order to change the country, to exercise our rights, to make our voices heard and a hundred other clichés as shopworn as they are true. But we also vote because it places us in direct fellowship with other citizens; we vote because it is a secular sacrament, an act of civic solidarity. Because it is the ultimate declaration that we are, indeed, all in this together.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081117/editors
Postato da: treball a 04/11/2008 12:53 |
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testi, events, repetita iuvant, social, international, occidente, usa today
Xenofobia
Nel Belpaese dell'intolleranza
il microrazzismo quotidiano
Non ci sono solo aggressioni. In Italia la xenofobia
passa anche attraverso gesti in apparenza minori.
Sempre più numerosi
di CARLO BONINI
La Repubblica, 25 ottobre 2008
ROMA - Il giorno in cui H., cittadino tunisino con regolare permesso di soggiorno, chiese di partecipare al bando comunale da sessanta licenze per taxi, scoprì che tassisti, qui da noi, si diventa solo se cittadini italiani. Il giorno in cui F. ed L., coppia nigeriana residente in Veneto, risposero a un annuncio per cuochi, scoprirono che l'albergo che li cercava, di neri non ne voleva. E "non per una questione di razzismo", gli venne detto dalla costernata direttrice della pensione, "perché in giardino, ad esempio", lavoravano "da sempre solo i pachistani". Il giorno in cui S., deliziosa adolescente napoletana, finì nella sala d'attesa di un pediatra di base di Roma accompagnata dal padre, alto dirigente del Dipartimento della pubblica sicurezza, realizzò che insieme a lei attendevano soltanto bambini dal colore della pelle diverso dal suo. E ne chiese conto: "Papà, perché da quando ci siamo trasferiti a Roma siamo diventati così sfigati?".
Il Razzismo italiano è un "pensiero ordinario". Abita il pianerottolo dei condomini, le fermate dell'autobus, i tavolini dei bar, i vagoni ferroviari. "Negro", una di quelle parole ormai pronunciate con senso liberatorio nel lessico pubblico, non nelle barzellette. Volendo, da esporre sulle lavagne del menù del giorno di qualche tavola calda, per allargare a una parte degli umani il divieto di ingresso ai cani.
L'Italia Razzista è la geografia di un odio di prossimità, che nei primi dieci mesi di quest'anno ha conosciuto picchi che non ricordava almeno dal 2005. Un odio "naturale", dunque apparentemente invisibile, anche statisticamente, fino a quando non diventa fatto di sangue. Il pestaggio di un ragazzo ghanese in una caserma dei vigili urbani di Parma; il linciaggio di un cinese nella periferia orientale di Roma; il rogo di un capo nomadi nel napoletano; la morte per spranga, a Milano, di un cittadino italiano, ma con la pelle nera del Burkina Faso; l'aggressione di uno studente angolano all'uscita di una discoteca nel genovese.
Dunque, cosa si muove davvero nella pancia del Paese? Al quinto piano di Largo Chigi, 17, Roma, uffici della presidenza del Consiglio dei ministri, Dipartimento per le pari opportunità, lavora da quattro anni un ufficio voluto dall'Europa la cui esistenza, significativamente, l'Italia ignora. Si chiama "Unar" (Ufficio nazionale antidiscriminazione razziale). Ha un numero verde (800901010) che raccoglie una media di 10 mila segnalazioni l'anno, proteggendo l'identità di vittime e testimoni. È il database nazionale che misura la qualità e il grado della nostra febbre xenofoba. Arriva dove carabinieri e polizia non arrivano. Perché arriva dove il disprezzo per il diverso non si fa reato e resta "solo" intollerabile violenza psicologica, aggressione verbale, esclusione ingiustificata dai diritti civili.
Nei primi nove mesi di quest'anno l'Ufficio ha accertato 247 casi di discriminazione razziale, con una progressione che, verosimilmente, pareggerà nel 2008 il picco statistico raggiunto nel 2005. Roma, gli hinterland lombardi e le principali città del Veneto si confermano le capitali dell'intolleranza. I luoghi di lavoro, gli sportelli della pubblica amministrazione, i mezzi di trasporto fotografano il perimetro privilegiato della xenofobia. Dove i cittadini dell'Est europeo contendono lo scettro di nuovi Paria ai maghrebini.
In una relazione di 48 cartelle ("La discriminazione razziale in Italia nel 2007") che nelle prossime settimane sarà consegnata alla Presidenza del Consiglio (e di cui trovate parte del dettaglio statistico in queste pagine) si legge: "Il razzismo è diffuso, vago e, spesso, non tematizzato (...) La cifra degli abusi è l'assoluta ordinarietà con cui vengono perpetrati. Gli autori sembra che si sentano pienamente legittimati nel riservare trattamenti differenziati a seconda della nazionalità, dell'etnia o del colore della pelle". Privo di ogni sovrastruttura propriamente ideologica, il razzismo italiano si fa "senso comune".
Appare impermeabile al contesto degli eventi e all'agenda politica (la curva della discriminazione, almeno sotto l'aspetto statistico, non sembra mai aver risentito in questi 4 anni di elementi che pure avrebbero potuto influenzarla, come, ad esempio, atti terroristici di matrice islamica). Procede al contrario per contagio in comunità urbane che si sentono improvvisamente deprivate di ricchezza, sicurezza, futuro, attraverso "marcatori etnici" che si alimentano di luoghi comuni o, come li definiscono gli addetti, "luoghi di specie".
Dice Antonio Giuliani, che dell'Unar è vicedirettore: "I romeni sono subentrati agli albanesi ereditandone nella percezione collettiva gli stessi e identici tratti di "genere". Che sono poi quelli con cui viene regolarmente marchiata ogni nuova comunità percepita come ostile: "Ci rubano il lavoro", "Ci rubano in casa", "Stuprano le nostre donne". Dico di più: i nomadi, che nel nostro Paese non arrivano a 400 mila e per il 50% sono cittadini italiani, sono spesso confusi con i romeni e vengono vissuti come una comunità di milioni di individui. E dico questo perché questo è esattamente quello che raccolgono i nostri operatori nel colloquio quotidiano con il Paese".
L'ordinarietà del pensiero razzista, la sua natura socialmente trasversale, e dunque la sua percepita "inoffensività" e irrilevanza ha il suo corollario nella modesta consapevolezza che, a dispetto anche dei recenti richiami del Capo dello Stato e del Pontefice, ne ha il Paese (prima ancora che la sua classe dirigente). Accade così che le statistiche del ministero dell'Interno ignorino la voce "crimini di matrice razziale", perché quella "razzista" è un'aggravante che spetta alla magistratura contestare e di cui si perde traccia nelle more dei processi penali. Accade che nei commissariati e nelle caserme dei carabinieri di periferia nelle grandi città, il termometro della pressione xenofoba si misuri non tanto nelle denunce presentate, ma in quelle che non possono essere accolte, perché "fatti non costituenti reato".
Come quella di un cittadino romeno, dirigente di azienda, che, arrivato in un aeroporto del Veneto, si vede rifiutare il noleggio dell'auto che ha regolarmente prenotato perché - spiega il gentile impiegato al bancone - il Paese da cui proviene "è in una black list" che farebbe della Romania la patria dei furti d'auto e dei rumeni un popolo di ladri. O come quella di un cittadino di un piccolo Comune del centro-Italia che si sveglia un mattino con nuovi cartelli stradali che il sindaco ha voluto per impedire "la sosta anche temporanea dei nomadi".
La xenofobia lavora tanto più in profondità quanto più si fa odio di prossimità (è il caso del maggio scorso al Pigneto). Disprezzo verso donne e uomini etnicamente diversi ma soprattutto socialmente "troppo contigui" e numericamente non più esigui. Anche qui, le statistiche più aggiornate sembrano confermare un'equazione empirica dell'intolleranza che vuole un Paese entrare in sofferenza quando la percentuale di immigrazione supera la soglia del 3 per cento della popolazione autoctona. In Italia, il Paese più vecchio (insieme al Giappone), dalla speranza di vita tra le più alte al mondo e la fecondità tra le più basse, l'indice ha già raggiunto il 6 per cento. E se hanno ragione le previsioni delle Nazioni Unite, tra vent'anni la percentuale raggiungerà il 16, con 11 milioni di cittadini stranieri residenti.
Franco Pittau, filosofo, tra i maggiori studiosi europei dei fenomeni migratori e oggi componente del comitato scientifico della Caritas che cura ogni anno il dossier sull'Immigrazione nel nostro Paese (il prossimo sarà presentato il 30 ottobre a Roma), dice: " È un cruccio che come cristiano non mi lascia più in pace. Se la storia ci impone di vivere insieme perché farci del male anziché provare a convivere? Bisogna abituare la gente a ragionare e non a gridare e a contrapporsi. Non dico che la colpa è dei giornalisti o dei politici o degli uomini di cultura o di qualche altra categoria. La colpa è di noi tutti. Rischiamo di diventare un paese incosciente che, anziché preparare la storia, cerca di frenarla.
Si può discutere di tutto, ma senza un'opposizione pregiudiziale allo straniero, a ciò che è differente e fa comodo trasformare in un capro espiatorio. Alcuni atti rasentano la cattiveria gratuita. Mi pare di essere agli albori del movimento dei lavoratori, quando la tutela contro gli infortuni, il pagamento degli assegni familiari, l'assenza dal lavoro per parto venivano ritenute pretese insensate contrarie all'ordine e al buon senso. Poi sappiamo come è andata".
Se Pittau ha ragione, se cioè sarà la Storia ad avere ragione del "pensiero ordinario", l'aria che si respira oggi dice che la strada non sarà né breve, né dritta, né indolore. I centri di ascolto dell'Unar documentano che nel nord-Est del paese sono cominciati ad apparire, con sempre maggiore frequenza, cartelli nei bar in cui si avverte che "gli immigrati non vengono serviti" (se ne è avuto conferma ancora quattro giorni fa a Padova, alle "3 botti" di via Buonarroti, che annunciava il divieto l'ingresso a "Negri, irregolari e pregiudicati"). E che nelle grandi città anche prendere un autobus può diventare occasione di pubblica umiliazione, normalmente nel silenzio dei presenti.
Come ha avuto modo di raccontare T., madre tunisina di due bambini, di 1 e 3 anni. "Dovevo prendere il pullman e, prima di salire, avevo chiesto all'autista se potevo entrare con il passeggino. Mi aveva risposto infastidito che dovevo chiuderlo. Con i due bambini in braccio non potevo e così ho promesso che lo avrei chiuso una volta salita. L'autista mi ha insultata. Mi ha gridato di tornarmene da dove venivo. E non è ripartito finché non sono scesa". T., appoggiata dall'Unar, ha fatto causa all'azienda dei trasporti. L'ha persa, perché non ha trovato uno solo dei passeggeri disposto a testimoniare. In compenso ha incontrato di nuovo il conducente che l'aveva umiliata. Dice T. che si è messo a ridere in modo minaccioso. "Prova ora a mandare un'altra lettera", le ha detto.
http://www.repubblica.it/2008/10/sezioni/cronaca/intolleranza-razzismo/intolleranza-razzismo/intolleranza-razzismo.html
Postato da: treball a 25/10/2008 16:14 |
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italia, testi, repetita iuvant, social, fear, racism, emergenze, occidente, migrazioni, mad planet, human rights, cronache italiane, intolerance
Razzismo, ancora
PARMA PONTI E CYNAR
COME LA CITTÀ STA CAMBIANDO.
IN PEGGIO
Uno scrittore parmigiano, in «esilio» temporaneo a Bologna, racconta i suoi luoghi dopo gli ultimi episodi di razzismo e la deriva a destra. E prima, quando il «negro» era meridionale
Paolo Nori
Il manifesto, 4 Ottobre 2008
Un po' di tempo fa ero a Napoli, in piazza Municipio, prendevo un caffè, e un signore, al bancone del bar, che aveva sentito il mio accento esotico, mi aveva chiesto: Di dov'è lei? Di Parma, gli avevo detto io. Ah, Parma, mi aveva detto lui. Poi aveva fatto una pausa e aveva detto Si sta rovinando, Parma. Io avevo avuto allora la stessa reazione che si ha di solito quando si sente uno straniero parlare male dell'Italia.
Cioè noi dell'Italia parliamo malissimo, e come si fa, oggi, a parlarne bene, ma quando sentiamo qualcuno che viene da fuori che ne parla male ci scatta dentro una specie di istinto che non so cosa sia.
Mi ricordo una volta, a Bologna, su un treno, c'era una ragazza ucraìna che era stata beccata senza biglietto. E, come succede in quei casi, nella carrozza si manifestava un'istintiva simpatia per quella ragazza che magari non aveva soldi, che poi in fondo cos'erano, i cinque euro che costava il biglietto per arrivar fino a Rimini, e un'istintiva antipatia per il controllore e per il suo rigore anacronistico e cieco. Era anche una bella ragazza, e il controllore non me lo ricordo ma non credo che fosse un gran bel controllore. E la ragazza si giustificava, in un italiano discreto, col fatto che le avevano spiegato male in biglietteria, o che aveva capito male lei, e si rifiutava di pagare la multa e di far vedere i documenti, e alla minaccia del controllore di chiamare la forza pubblica, la ragazza aveva reagito dicendo Lei chiami chi vuole, non è colpa mia, è colpa della vostra lingua di merda.
Questa espressione, La vostra lingua di merda, aveva spento tutti i rumori della carrozza e aveva determinato, nei passeggeri, la fine della benché minima simpatia per la ragazza ucraìna. Io, mi ricordo, avevo pensato Sarà bello l'ucraìno. È più un dialetto, che una lingua.
Allora forse è per quello, che quando qualche mese fa il manifesto mi aveva chiesto di commentare la fotografia, pubblicata da Repubblica on line, di una ragazza seminuda gettata per terra nella cella di un comando della polizia municipale di Parma, io avevo cominciato, a scrivere qualcosa, ma mi ero fermato poi subito. Mi aveva trattenuto quella specie di istinto che non so cosa sia.
Era luglio, se non ricordo male, e su tutti i quotidiani italiani si parlava di questo fatto di Parma, e se ne parlava male, come si faceva, a parlarne bene, gli unici che ne parlavano bene erano gli amministratori della città. Ma io, che avevo appena pubblicato un romanzo nel quale si parlava, tra le altre cose, degli amministratori della città, e se ne parlava male, come si fa, a parlarne bene, io avevo avuto la stessa reazione che avevo avuto col napoletano. Al napoletano avevo detto Ma no, quella è gente venuta da fuori (credo che lui, il napoletano, si riferisse in particolare al caso di Tommaso, il bambino rapito e ucciso a Casalbaroncolo), e della polizia comunale di Parma e dei suoi amministratori avevo forse pensato la stessa cosa, che quella fosse gente venuta da fuori, anche se eran di Parma così come me e forse qualcuno più ancora di me.
Perché la sostanza, di Parma, che io ritrovo nella sua aria, nella sua luce, e non posso scrivere La sua luce, riferito a Parma, senza commuovermi, è una mia debolezza che dipende dal fatto che sono in esilio a Bologna, la sostanza che ritrovo nel suo dialetto e nel suo italiano, nella cantilena con la quale noi di Parma buttiam giù le frasi, nell'incanto di alcune espressioni come Bon bonbé, per dire che qualcosa è molto buono, o Putòst che gnènta l'è méj putòst, per dire che piuttosto di niente è meglio piuttosto, espressione che dà a questo avverbio di modo, Piuttosto, quasi la statura di un personaggio, la sostanza di questa città, quel che c'è sotto, quello da cui siamo venuti fuori tutti noi parmigiani, la sostanza a me sembrava fosse rimasta quella descritta da Bruno Barilli nella prima metà del novecento: Popolo facile ad accalorarsi, travagliato e pieno di una sinistra inclinazione musicale, popolo turbolento e temibile, popolo che disprezza il villano, odia lo sbirro e massacra la spia dove la trova, quello di Parma, scrive Barilli.
Che è una cosa completamente diversa dall'immagine che di Parma e dei parmigiani si ha fuori dalla città: la nobiltà, l'aristocrazia, la raffinatezza, la cultura. Che non è che non ci siano, ci sono anche quelle, ma non è lì, secondo me, la sostanza; la sostanza io credo che sia ancora quella delle barricate del '22, in quella sinistra inclinazione musicale che ha fatto di Parma l'unica città italiana che ha resistito, con successo, al fascismo. Quell'altra a me sembra come una vernice che si è sovrapposta, all'estero, all'immagine di Parma, e che ha dato l'idea di una grandeur che ai parmigiani che intendo io fa un po' ridere.
Quando per esempio gli attuali amministratori hanno fatto un ponte sul torrente Parma, che essendo un torrente è piccolo, e per la maggior parte del tempo in secca, quando gli amministratori hanno fatto questo ponte che sembra il ponte di Brooklyn e per inaugurarlo ci hanno portato il direttore dell'Agenzia europea per l'alimentazione, che credo fosse un belga, e quando questo direttore ha detto Bellissimo ponte, peccato che non avete il fiume, gli amministratori della città sembra che non abbiano riso, mentre i parmigiani che dico io devono aver riso parecchio.
Devono aver riso meno, i parmigiani che dico io, quel popolo là con la sinistra inclinazione musicale, quando il sindaco di Parma, un paio di anni fa, dopo che in provincia di Parma una ragazza di diciassette anni era stata uccisa da un ragazzo di Parma ventenne con una ventina di coltellate, e poi questo ventenne era andato a bere in un bar con dei suoi amici e poi aveva preso un taxi e quando era stato il momento di pagare aveva tirato fuori la pistola e aveva ucciso il tassista, il sindaco di Parma, quel giorno lì, quando gli han chiesto cosa aveva da dire di questa cosa lui aveva detto Vuol dire che dopo aver pensato alla città delle infrastrutture, penseremo alla città delle persone. Per i parmigiani con una sinistra inclinazione musicale credo non ci sia stato niente da ridere, a sentire questo cinismo soddisfatto e sconcio e a sentirsi paragonati a delle infrastrutture.
E non c'è niente da ridere adesso che i vigili urbani possono arrestare dei ragazzi di ventidue anni e spogliarli nudi e farli andare avanti e indietro nudi per il loro comando e dirgli robe da schioppi, come dicono a Parma.
Che io, se questa cosa sia o non sia vera, e come siano andate davvero le cose, io non lo so, e non posso saperlo, magari davvero l'occhio nero che ha quel ragazzo se l'è fatto da solo, magari davvero la parola negro su quella busta se l'è scritta da solo, è una cosa difficile da immaginare, ma magari è così. Solo che a me, questa Parma città della tolleranza zero, città della grandeur anche nella lotta ai barboni, agli spacciatori da strada, agli ambulanti e ai negri, dipenderà dal mio esilio, non so, ma a me ormai sembra una città che ha preso il sopravvento, rispetto a quella che conoscevo io.
E questo fatto di quel ragazzo che sembra sia stato arrestato, picchiato, spogliato, insultato dalla polizia municipale di Parma, col pieno appoggio degli amministratori, che hanno il pieno appoggio della maggioranza della popolazione, mi fa venire in mente una cosa che è successa poco più di un anno fa, il giorno di ferragosto del 2007, quando ancora abitavo a Parma, due settimane prima di trasferirmi a Bologna.
Poco più di un anno fa, il giorno di ferragosto del 2007, ho visto il mio amico Tim, che non vedevo da un anno. Eravamo io e lui, a Parma, e c'era caldo.
Abbiamo girato un po' per il centro, abbiamo preso un caffè, ci siamo raccontati quello che ci era successo e non c'era da essere tanto allegri, ma neanche da sbattere la testa contro il muro.
In centro era tutto chiuso, abbiamo preso un autobus e siamo andati a mangiare nella pizzeria sotto casa mia, in periferia, in casa non avevo niente, solo cibo per gatti. Eravamo i primi clienti. Non so perché racconto queste cose.
La pizzeria si chiama Il veliero, ed è arredata come un arredatore si immagina sia arredato l'interno di un veliero, bianco, verde arancione. Mi piace molto.
C'è una vetrinetta con una collezione di bottiglie mignon di liquori.
Mio babbo ne aveva sempre in casa. Di amaro Ramazzotti. Da quando ho avuto dodici anni mi ha detto che potevo berlo anch'io, tanto non faceva niente. C'era anche una pubblicità, Un amaro Ramazzotti fa sempre bene, due ancora meglio. Io, ogni tanto, andavo fino alla vetrinetta che era in sala di fianco alla televisione, la aprivo, aprivo il tappo di plastica della bottiglietta e truc, bevevo tutto d'un fiato. Sono trent'anni che non ne bevo. Non mi manca. E forse era Cynar.
Dopo un po' in pizzeria hanno cominciato a arrivare degli altri clienti. Il cameriere chiedeva a tutti cosa facevano in città, perché non erano in ferie. Io gli ho detto che mi piace lavorare. Lui mi ha guardato per qualche secondo come se stesse per dire qualcosa, poi è andato via.
A un certo punto, da un tavolo alla mia sinistra, un signore ha cominciato a insultare un ragazzo molto grasso seduto di fronte a lui.
Il ragazzo lo vedevo di schiena. Aveva i capelli rossi, e una maglietta arancione, e le braghe corte e le scarpe da ginnastica, e sembrava che guardasse per terra. Era il tono di quello che lo insultava, che lo faceva sembrare un ragazzo, dalla stazza poteva essere un uomo. Sémo, gli diceva il signore, Ignorànt. Lo diceva con disprezzo. Il cameriere si è avvicinato al tavolo, si è rivolto al ragazzo Tuo padre fa dei sacrifici, per te, gli ha detto, tu devi ricambiarli, devi trovarti un lavoro per essere il bastone della vecchiaia di tuo padre, che adesso è lui che lavora per mantenerti a te.
C'era una terza persona, seduta a quel tavolo, una signora, che ha detto, rivolta al cameriere, Mio marito è in pensione. Ah, ha detto il cameriere, è in pensione?
Io e Tim mangiavamo del riso e ci piaceva molto, o forse avevam molta fame.
Dopo qualche minuto il ragazzo si è alzato, ha preso un casco dalla sedia vicino a lui, si è avvicinato a sua madre, le ha preso la testa, l'ha baciata, è andato via. Intanto il padre diceva, con un tono che pretendeva al buffo, come se fosse una battuta che aveva detto altre volte e che aveva fatto ridere Io questa faccia la conosco. Il ragazzo non l'ha neanche guardato. Io e Tim continuavamo a mangiare il riso. La signora si è rivolta al cameriere e gli ha chiesto Quanto tempo è, che sei qua? Trent'anni, ha detto il cameriere. Il cameriere era meridionale. E i primi tempi mi guardavano così, ha detto, ha abbassato la testa, l'ha diretta contro il muro della pizzeria e ha fatto uno sguardo come se guardasse una cosa inspiegabile. Ah, ha detto la signora, ma adesso, con tutta la marmaglia che è arrivata. E ci han messo del tempo, ha detto il cameriere, a considerarmi come loro. Sì, ha detto la signora, ma adesso, con tutta la marmaglia che è arrivata.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/04-Ottobre-2008/art13.html
la forza senza cultura
GAD LERNER
la Repubblica, sabato, 04 ottobre 2008
È auspicabile che i presidenti della Camera e del Senato siano lesti nel cogliere gli scricchiolii della pacifica convivenza e promuovano un osservatorio parlamentare sul razzismo che ormai tracima dalla greve licenza verbale in troppi episodi di violenza fisica. Lo stesso governo della "tolleranza zero" ha interesse a far suo un allarme che non riguarda più solo il diffondersi dell´inciviltà, ma anche l´ordine pubblico.
Episodi come il pestaggio del giovane Samuel Bonsu Foster a Parma o l´umiliazione inflitta alla signora Amina Sheikh Said all´aeroporto di Ciampino ? quali che siano gli esiti delle indagini ? evidenziano un´impreparazione culturale di settori della forza pubblica nella pur necessaria opera di vigilanza e prevenzione anticrimine. Problemi simili esistono nelle polizie di tutto il mondo, il cui aggiornamento professionale deve tenere conto delle mutate condizioni ambientali. Ma ancor più inquieta l´ormai lunga collezione di aggressioni, squadristiche o individuali, che si tratti di pogrom incendiari contro gli abitanti delle baraccopoli o di sprangate sulla testa del malcapitato di turno. Tale esasperazione è stata spesso giustificata dagli imprenditori politici della paura come legittima furia popolare. Minimizzata tributando demagogicamente lo status di vittime ai "difensori del territorio". Fino a quando c´è scappato un morto: Abdoul Salam Guiebre. Ma nella stessa città di Milano la guerra tra poveri ha riproposto il bis martedì al mercato di via Archimede. Stavolta non per un pacco di biscotti: Ravan Ngon è stato pestato con una mazza da baseball dal venditore di frutta e verdura alla cui bancarella si era avvicinato troppo con la sua merce abusiva. Lo stesso giorno, nella borgata romana di Tor Bella Monaca, una banda di teppisti adolescenti pestava, così, a casaccio, Tong Hongshen, colpevole solo di aspettare l´autobus. Abdoul Salam Guiebre, Tong Hongshen, Ravan Ngon: nomi difficili da pronunciare, figure giuridiche differenti (un cittadino italiano, un immigrato con permesso di soggiorno, un altro che vive qui da cinque anni senza essere riuscito a regolarizzarsi), ma innanzitutto persone. Nostri simili che stentiamo a riconoscere come tali, di cui preferiamo ignorare le vicissitudini e i diritti.
Nelle interviste trasmesse da Sandro Ruotolo a "Annozero", abbiamo udito i parenti dei camorristi accusati dell´eccidio di Castel Volturno manifestare indignazione: la polizia si muove "solo quando i morti sono neri"! Che si trattasse di una vera e propria strage, sei omicidi, passava in second´ordine. Temo che quell´infame, velenoso rovesciamento delle parti tra vittime e carnefici, rischi di diventare in Italia senso comune, se le istituzioni non interverranno per tempo.
Di certo non aiutano i pubblici elogi di Maroni al vicesindaco di Treviso, che sul suo stesso palco si riprometteva di cacciare i musulmani "a pregare e pisciare nel deserto". Come se non fossero già centinaia di migliaia i nostri concittadini di fede islamica. Non aiutano i giornali filogovernativi che attribuiscono all´intero popolo zingaro una congenita propensione al furto. Non aiuta il cortocircuito semantico che equipara il minaccioso stigma di "clandestino" a un destino criminale. La regressione culturale di cui si è detto preoccupato anche il presidente dei vescovi italiani, Angelo Bagnasco, ha tra i suoi responsabili gli spacciatori di stereotipi colpevolizzanti che nel frattempo promettono l´impossibile: un paese in cui, grazie alla mano forte delle nuove autorità, i cittadini siano esentati dalla fatica della convivenza.
Così come si è rivelato fallace ? inadeguato all´offensiva reazionaria ? l´espediente retorico di una sicurezza che non sia "né di destra né di sinistra"; altrettanto insulso rischia di apparire oggi il richiamo al binomio "diritti e doveri" degli immigrati. Giusto, certo. Ma astratto, fin tanto che non verrà indicato loro un percorso praticabile d´integrazione e cittadinanza. O preferiamo forse che si organizzino separatamente per farci sentire la loro protesta, esasperando una contrapposizione separatista fino allo scontro con le istituzioni?
Tra i sintomi della regressione culturale c´è anche la miopia con cui le forze democratiche del paese, a cominciare dal Pd, finora hanno ignorato la necessità di dare rappresentanza politica agli immigrati. Sarà forse poco redditizio elettoralmente, ma è decisivo per il futuro della nostra società che si affermino leadership responsabili, organizzazioni accoglienti, punti di riferimento alternativi ai capiclan e ai propagandisti dell´integralismo religioso. Persone che hanno avuto l´intraprendenza di emigrare per sfuggire a una sorte infelice, e che spesso hanno conseguito traguardi culturali e professionali significativi dopo essere approdati senza un soldo sulle nostre coste, possono contribuire anche al rinnovamento della politica italiana, bisognosa di ritrovare idealità e speranza.
http://www.dirittiglobali.it/articolo.php?id_news=8494
Il frutto avvelenato della tolleranza zero
di CURZIO MALTESE
La Repubblica, 1 ottobre 2008
A Parma, nella civile Parma, la polizia municipale ha massacrato di botte un giovane ghanese, Emmanuel Bonsu Foster, e ha scritto sulla sua pratica la spiegazione: "negro". Davano la caccia agli spacciatori e hanno trovato Emmanuel, che non è uno spacciatore, è uno studente. Anzi è uno studente che gli spacciatori li combatte. Stava cominciando a lavorare come volontario in un centro di recupero dei tossici. Ma è bastato che avesse la pelle nera per scatenare il sadismo dei vigili, calci, pugni, sputi al "negro".
Parma è la stessa città dove qualche settimana fa era stata maltrattata, rinchiusa e fotografata come un animale una prostituta africana. L'ultimo caso di inedito razzismo all'italiana pone due questioni, una limitata e urgente, l'altra più generale.
La prima è che non si possono dare troppi poteri ai sindaci. Il decreto Maroni è stato in questo senso una vera sciagura. La classe politica nazionale italiana è mediocre, ma spesso il ceto politico locale è, se possibile, ancora peggio. Delegare ai sindaci una parte di poteri, ha significato in questi mesi assistere a un delirio di norme incivili, al grido di "tolleranza zero". In provincia come nelle metropoli, nella Treviso o nella Verona degli sceriffi leghisti, come nella Roma di Alemanno e nella Milano della Moratti.
A Parma il sindaco Pietro Vignali, una vittima della cattiva televisione, ha firmato ordinanze contro chiunque, prostitute e clienti, accattoni e fumatori (all'aperto!), ragazzi colpevoli di festeggiare per strada. Si è insomma segnalato, nel suo piccolo, nel grande sport nazionale: la caccia al povero cristo. Sarà il caso di ricordare a questi sceriffi che nella classifica dei problemi delle città italiane la sicurezza legata all'immigrazione non figura neppure nei primi dieci posti. I problemi delle metropoli italiane, confrontate al resto d'Europa, sono l'inquinamento, gli abusi edilizi, le buche nelle strade, la pessima qualità dei servizi, il conseguente e drammatico crollo di presenze turistiche eccetera eccetera. Oltre naturalmente alla penetrazione dell'economia mafiosa, da Palermo ad Aosta, passando per l'Emilia.
I sindaci incompetenti non sanno offrire risposte e quindi si concentrano sui "negri". Nella speranza, purtroppo fondata, di raccogliere con meno fatica più consensi. Di questo passo, creeranno loro stessi l'emergenza che fingono di voler risolvere.
Provocazioni e violenze continue non possono che evocare una reazione altrettanto intollerante da parte delle comunità di migranti. Al funerale di Abdoul, il ragazzo ucciso a Cernusco sul Naviglio non c'erano italiani per testimoniare solidarietà. A parte un grande artista di teatro, Pippo Del Bono, che ha filmato la rabbia plumbea di amici e parenti. La guerra agli immigrati è una delle tante guerre tragiche e idiote che non avremmo voluto. Ma una volta dichiarata, bisogna aspettarsi una reazione del "nemico".
L'altra questione è più generale, è il clima culturale in cui sta scivolando il Paese, senza quasi accorgersene.
Nel momento stesso in cui si riscrive la storia delle leggi razziali, nell'urgenza di rivalutare il fascismo, si testimonia quanto il razzismo sia una malapianta nostrana. L'Italia è l'unica nazione civile in cui nei titoli di giornali si usa ancora specificare la provenienza soltanto per i delinquenti stranieri: rapinatore slavo, spacciatore marocchino, violentatore rumeno. Poiché oltre il novanta per cento degli stupri, per fare un esempio, sono compiuti da italiani, diventa difficile credere a una forzatura dovuta all'emergenza. L'altra sera, da Vespa, tutti gli ospiti italiani cercavano di convincere il testimone del delitto di Perugia che "nessuno ce l'aveva con lui perché era negro". Negro? Si può ascoltare questo termine per tutta la sera da una tv pubblica occidentale? Non lo eravamo e stiamo diventando un paese razzista. Così almeno gli italiani vengono ormai percepiti all'estero.
Forse non è vero. Forse la caccia allo straniero è soltanto un effetto collaterale dell'immensa paura che gli italiani povano da vent'anni davanti al fenomeno della globalizzazione. La paura e, perché no?, la vergogna si sentirsi inadeguati di fronte ai grandi cambiamenti, che si traduce nel più facile e abietto dei sentimenti, l'odio per il diverso. La nostalgia ridicola di un passato dove eravamo tutti italiani e potevamo quindi odiarci fra di noi. In questo clima culturale miserabile perfino un sindaco di provincia o un vigile di periferia si sentono depositari di un potere di vita o di morte su un "negro".
http://www.repubblica.it/2008/08/sezioni/cronaca/prostituta-reazioni/commento-maltese/commento-maltese.html
Postato da: treball a 06/10/2008 12:41 |
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L'Orrore
Un passo indietro di mezzo secolo
Gad Lerner
La Repubblica, 12 settembre 2008
Il principale canale televisivo pubblico di questo paese sta dedicando ben quattro prime serate al concorso di Miss Italia, in cui vengono scrutati e votati centinaia di corpi femminili.
Dubito che ciò accada in altre nazioni progredite.
La più nota manifestazione culturale di un partito di governo si chiama Miss Padania, celebrata alla presenza del suo segretario politico che è anche ministro della Repubblica.
Notevole clamore suscitò la presenza al Telegatto del futuro ministro alle Pari Opportunità, particolarmente ammirata in tale circostanza dall´attuale presidente del Consiglio. La stessa Mara Carfagna, del resto, deve la sua prima notorietà a spettacoli televisivi incentrati sull´esibizione seduttiva della femminilità.
La mercificazione del desiderio sessuale maschile è un fenomeno esasperato da tale offerta consumistica, che viene riconosciuta fra le cause principali del boom della prostituzione. Comprare le prestazioni di una donna – in un contesto culturale che autorizza la mortificazione pubblica della sua dignità – è scorciatoia considerata sempre meno riprovevole, come dimostra l´espansione del mercato anche fra i giovani e le fasce sociali abbienti. La fatica di un rapporto sentimentale, la ricerca di partner gratificanti in quanto corrispondono al modello pornografico televisivo, determinano fenomeni crescenti di violenza sopraffattrice e di impotenza. Moltiplicano il bisogno di incontri occasionali e le frustrazioni di coppia.
Eludendo tale enorme questione culturale, che incrementa il mercato delle ragazze dell´est e di colore con il falso mito della loro sottomissione, oggi il governo accomuna nella sbrigativa nozione di "reato" le prostitute e i loro clienti. Si illude di fare pulizia, compiendo un passo indietro di mezzo secolo. Al contempo bacchettona e sporcacciona, nel segno dell´ipocrisia, la destra di governo legifera sovrapponendo il volto di uno Stato intrusivo nel magma dell´eros da marciapiede. Quelle ragazze si vendono sotto giganteschi tabelloni pubblicitari di cui riproducono la volgarità. Tanto bastò, nel giugno scorso, perché un emendamento al decreto sulla sicurezza poi ritirato le indicasse tra le «persone pericolose per la sicurezza e la pubblica moralità». Un binomio ideologico che è tutto un programma: «sicurezza» e «pubblica moralità», ovvero Autorità e Valori.
Ma ora che il disegno di legge Carfagna aggiunge tra i colpevoli pure i loro clienti, il decisionismo governativo deve per forza autolimitarsi, occupandosi solo della visibilità del fenomeno: punibile sarà la prostituzione di strada, indubbiamente sgradevole per molte categorie di cittadini perché contribuisce al degrado urbano.
Il ministro Carfagna dichiara «orrore» di fronte alle persone che vendono il loro corpo, senza distinguere fra coloro che lo fanno per scelta (quanto libera?) e quelle sfruttate da organizzazioni criminali. Si espone così all´obiezione della portavoce delle prostitute Carla Corso, la quale le ricorda che – sebbene in forma diversa – anch´essa ha utilizzato la desiderabilità del suo corpo per conseguire il successo professionale. Ma pur senza addentrarsi nel rapporto elusivo e insincero con il proprio passato del ministro Carfagna, è lecito chiederle: se la prostituzione è un «orrore», perché vietarla solo per strada?
Vietare la prostituzione di strada sarebbe accettabile – così come la legge già punisce i rapporti a pagamento con minorenni e il racket – se contemplasse ambiti legali e tutelati per il sesso mercificato. Invece la falsa categoria dell´«orrore» – che è solo un´invettiva, una manifestazione di disprezzo, e consente di chiudere gli occhi di fronte alla malattia dell´amore degradato – viene esibita per negare pure l´alternativa di una prostituzione esercitata in luoghi più degni. Cioè per evitare scelte politiche che la stessa dottrina cattolica accetta come "riduzione del danno".
Non stupisce allora che la stessa Caritas si opponga al nuovo reato di "prostituzione di strada", denunciando il rischio di favorire lo sfruttamento nella clandestinità delle persone più deboli. Così come il "reinserimento nel paese d´origine" dei minorenni risponde più a una logica di espulsione sbrigativa che di accudimento pietoso.
Se davvero venisse applicato l´arresto e l´incarcerazione di prostitute e clienti, al di là di qualche retata spettacolare da trasmettere nei telegiornali, le nostre prigioni ne verrebbero ben presto saturate. Suppongo che le forze dell´ordine impegnate sul fronte del crimine abbiano altre priorità, e dunque non si preveda di andare oltre l´effetto dissuasivo e simbolico.
Anche se con la capienza degli istituti di pena non si può scherzare a lungo: tra non molto, c´è da giurarci, il decisionismo governativo troverà il modo di importare pure in Italia il business delle carceri private, unica soluzione per una popolazione detenuta destinata a rapido incremento.
Avremo con ciò un paese più pulito o più sporco? Davvero qualcuno crede che la lezione di morale sessuale del ministro Carfagna risulti credibile ai suoi stessi elettori? E che questa destra diretta emanazione dello show business televisivo, specializzato in vallettopoli, sappia tutelare il rispetto per il corpo femminile?
La prostituzione è un fenomeno alimentato dalla povertà e dalla misoginia reazionaria, cause difficili da estirpare.
E infatti secoli di storia del potere italiano, clericale e libertino, narrano di vizi occultati e di svergognate colpevoli puttane.
Il futuro non promette di meglio.
http://www.gadlerner.it/index.php/2008/09/12/bacchettoni-e-puttanieri.html
Postato da: treball a 12/09/2008 18:06 |
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Continental Drift
Da revolution is on da phone
BINYAVANGA WAINAINA
Mail & Guardian, Sep 11 2008
Sigh.
I do not come from the YoYo generation. So I had no idea dat P-Squared, a very phat duo of identical twins from Nigeria, had landed in Nairobi to give a concert that turned da city upside down. I had no idea that these twins had won a competition in Nigeria called "Grab Da Mike". I do not know da guy called DJ Space of MOB DJs, who worries about being lynched if a P-Squared song is not played every 15 minutes.
I suspect our ministry of education does not know who DJ Space is either. Nor does the music department of Kenyatta University. I can just see the course curriculum: Dis Hip-Hop Course aims to be da Bomb.
We do produce a lot of people who can play da flute. We also can do praise-singing choirs. In our National Schools Music Festival, there is no Hip-Hop category, or anything that came after 1930. There are choirs singing things such as Waltzing Matilda and "Were you ever in Quebec, rowing timber on the deck".
When I was in school, we had a teacher of great enthusiasm for what they called the set piece. Unfortunately he had a Meru accent which mangled all the hard consonants. The song went something like this: "A pigeon flew over to Galilee, Fre cru". The choir had to find our inner bird and trill, over and over again, "Fre Cru, fre cru, fre cruuuuuu." Poor man was only able to say Mblee Clu …
There are categories for sopranos, and altos and choral groups. There is no rhumba or benga. With the exception of the traditional music categories, there is nothing that in any way ties the tastes of any Kenyans or Africans, or even Quebec Canadians I know. There is nothing that ties any known market that has ever existed in Kenya: in pre-colonial Kenya, in post-colonial Kenya, in post-election violence Kenya, in science fiction Kenya. The buyers of the products of the music festival can only be dictators needing praise choirs and retired schoolteachers from small-town America in the late 1930s and the officials of the Music Festival.
For Kenya to become a middle income country by 2030, our government decided to remove music and art from our syllabus. The idea there I guess, is that there is no money or future in it. South Africa and Senegal make millions of dollars from cultural products - in part because their education systems celebrate local languages and culture.
The reason why Kenyans are bad musicians is because we are out of touch with our own tastes and instincts. The most important thing we learn in school is to demean who we are and where we come from. The reason why Kenyans are so culturally unconfident is because we stand in music halls and pretend to be rowing timber on the deck in Quebec. To this day the lobbies of our five-star hotels play this sort of music.
So while we were trying to be a sort of impossible and imaginary Western person - serving no market or idea - another billion-dollar market quietly landed at the feet of African artists everywhere a few weeks ago.
When the Zain group announced the arrival of a mobile phone network that covers 500-million people, from the Middle East to Nigeria, it fulfilled a vision by the founders of Celtel International to build the first true pan-African mobile phone network - inspired by the Nkrumahs and Marcus Garveys of this world.
Soon, and I mean in a matter of months, we will have a cheap, borderless platform from which to share ideas, music, words and conversations with millions of people. I will be able to produce a song and somebody in minutes in Nigeria or Congo or Gabon will scroll down his phone and buy it.
I will be able to do the same with animation, comic strips, graphic novels, romance ebooks, how-to multimedia and soap operas.
Many businesses are aware of this, as are many policy people, ICT experts and money people in London. But the producers of this content have been caught flat-footed. There is no partnership between capital, policy and artists. It truly escaped the minds of our foggy old policy people that this 20-year-old season called the Information Age is the one of the content creator: Da musician, Da writer, Da artist.
The mobile phone has brought the distribution we have all been dreaming about for over a century.
Already big British and American money is sniffing around to develop this content and sell it back to us. Most of Nairobi's animators have been bought up.
Harvard now has a team documenting the rise of African hip-hop. Meanwhile, our students stand on stage and sing, "Fre Cru, Fre cru, Fre cru". That Harvard graduate will be the guy to make the millions of dollars from our own cultural products.
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-11-da-revolution-is-on-phone
Postato da: treball a 11/09/2008 19:27 |
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news, testi, africa, repetita iuvant, international, mad planet, multiculturalism, allusioni
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