Racing In The Street

For years I have been telling the same lame joke around this time of year: "This year I gave up Lent for Lent." As a Protestant of the Christmas & Easter variety, the rituals most associated with Catholicism were not part of our seasonal celebrations--Give something up for Lent? Are you crazy? It's all about the new clothes for church, chocolate bunnies for the kids and a big ham feast for the adults.

A recent article pointed out how even Protestants are celebrating Easter with ashes, fasting and self-sacrifice.

The older I get, the more I find the appeal of religion is in its stark challenge to modern materialism. Our society has seemingly abandoned all good sense and devoted itself to the selfish satisfaction of buying and consuming. Concern for those less fortunate is considered to be soft-headed and a waste of time. Recognizing alternative ways of thinking and living has become more important to me, even if it means tolerating some religious trappings along with the positive philosophy. Lent certainly has that kind of appeal. Give something up for Lent. Do something personally that will be difficult or uncomfortable.

Got it. No fast food or candy for 40 days. I'll let you know how it goes.

Roger Clemens, tuning up for the World Baseball Classic and deciding whether or not to retire, pitched to a group of first year Astro players, including his son Koby at Houston's spring training camp. Koby smacked the first pitch from his father for a home run.

Clemens' second pitch was high and tight, forcing Koby to jump out of the batter's box.

Welcome to the majors, kid.

According to recent polls, over 80% of seniors want to remain in their homes as they age, rather than move into a nursing home. How can this be accomplished in these days of scattered nuclear families and older seniors needing more specialized care? Some interesting grassroots alternatives are developing, spearheaded by seniors with beaucoup bucks and the willingness to spend what it takes. The strategies are well worth studying in hopes of developing projects that even folks of modest means can enjoy.

On Beacon Hill in Boston, the residents of the city's toniest neighborhood have created a non-profit agency, Beacon Hill Village to assist elder residents with everything they need to stay in their homes. Many of these houses are not accessible, historic old homes where renovations are not always possible.

A member’s membership dues ($550/mo.) covers weekly trips to the supermarket, rides from volunteers, group exercise classes and lectures on topics related to aging. Other services needed by seniors, especially home repairs and home health aides, are available from a stable of service providers that offer group discounts to members. The professional staff is available 24hours a day by phone to help work out problems. The non-profit has over 300 members and is even able to partially subsidize about one-fifth of their lower-income members (although lower income in the Beacon Hill neighborhood is relative.) The group is being studied by groups across the country and will shortly be publishing a study of their group that promises to help others replicate the project.

In the slightly more crunchy-granola California town of Davis, seniors have borrowed from the theory of co-housing to develop a sort of commune for the elderly. Rich folks in this community sold their original homes, using the profits to buy a piece of land where they created a new development. The eight private homes clustered around a common center is named Glacier Circle. The common center will also house a below-market rate apartment that will be rented out to a skilled nurse to offer additional health care services.

Dr. William Thomas is known for his work to make nursing homes less institutional with his Eden Alternative. “Edenized “ facilities have on-site day care centers for workers’ kids, home-made food and other amenities that try to reduce the institutional feel of the homes. Almost 250 nursing homes across the country have adopted the Eden principles, like St. Luke’s home in Utica: “We poured in plants and animals and children . . .spiced it up with hundreds of birds and dogs and cats and children and plants and gardens, so that the environment itself felt more alive, looked more alive, sounded more alive.”

Dr. Thomas’ next project is an attempt to bypass the nursing homes entirely, by creating co-operative, inter-generational living communities called Eldershires. The first development is called Avalon and will be located just on the outskirts of Sherburne, N.Y. in Chenango County. Eldershire communities will be privately developed, but seniors and others seeking to be part of a cooperative community can buy into the development and will be trained to take over its management. The project in Sherburne has just received preliminary approval from local officials.

NYCO's Blog has just posted what she calls an e-reprint of some posts by Dancin' Larry entitled "Talkin' Organizin'. The posts discuss the community organizing philosophy and tactics of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky literally wrote the book on community organizing, Rules For Radicals, published a year before his death in 1973. The most comprehensive biography of Alinsky is Let Them Call Me Rebel by Sanford Horwitt, the text on which I base this post.

Alinsky created the first modern community organization, The Back of The Yards in Chicago during the 1940's. Other organizations created by Alinsky were The Woodlawn Organization in Chicago and the Community Service Organization in Los Angeles, both in the 1950's. In the 1960's Alinsky decided to concentrate on teaching others to organize, setting up the Industrial Areas Foundation, the first of what have become an integral part of community organizing--national organizing networks that help train organizers and give research and tactical support to community organizations.

Saul Alinsky worked closely with or trained some of the most important activists, writers and politicians of our time. The Back of The Yards group's success bolstered the organizing work of the nascent AFL-CIO, helping to organize the Chicago stockyards of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and supporting the efforts of John L. Lewis and Walter Reuther. The Woodlawn Organization stared down the Daley machine, organizing massive voter registration drives. TWO's leaders were at the forefront of Martin Luther King's short campaign in Chicago. Cesar Chavez was trained as an organizer by Alinsky's main assistant Fred Ross at the Community Service Organizaztion.

Even more importantly, thousands of everyday citizens have received the training and support that has allowed them to stand up and fight for their neighborhoods through community organizations that believe, like Alinsky, that democracy is for ordinary Americans.

NYCO made one point on which I would like to elaborate: "One of Alinsky's celebrated organizing victories happened vs. Kodak in Rochester during the 1960s, if you're looking for a local angle." Another local angle was Alinsky's work in Syracuse during 1965. Syracuse became a test case for the Office of Economic Opportunity (the OEO was the agency that actually fought The War On Poverty) and its philosophy of maximum feasible participation of the poor.

Alinsky was a major critic of the War On Poverty, calling it "a prize piece of political pornography." Since the beginning of his career, he had fought against social workers and other welfare workers who believed that poor people must be rescued. Alinsky always believed that poor people should be trained to fight for the power that would allow them to do for themselves. Supporters of both philosophies fought for control of the OEO.

SU professor Warren Haggstrom set up the SU Community Action Training Center with over $300,000 in federal funds under the OEO's Community Action Program. Haggstrom hired Alinsky to hold weekly seminars with students on organizing theory. Alinsky also had his chief aide Fred Ross work full-time in Syracuse, organizing students to go door-to-door surveying residents about their concerns. Interested residents hosted house meetings with their neighbors. Several adjacent blocks would knit the house parties into a neighborhood action committee. The goal was to create a neighborhood action committee in six targeted areas. Eventually the six committees would coalesce together as a powerful organization. The issues that the students and residents organized around were housing conditions, high gas bills and unfair evictions. The survey also initiated a a voter registration component "Register For Power."

The mayor at the time William Walsh (U.S. Rep. Jim Walsh's father) protested bitterly to Washington about this program, especially the voter registration drive: "These people go into a housing project and talk about setting up a 'democratic' organization--small 'd', but it sounds just the same as Democratic--big 'D', and in a close election it could be decisive." The S.U./Alinsky program was also in direct competition with another Community Action Program, the non-threatening Crusade for Opportunity. The Crusade's finances were controled by City Hall and its goal was to mobilize charitable and civic agencies to work on a case-by-case basis with poor people.

Politicians like Mayor William Walsh put pressure on Washington to eliminate programs that attempted to bypass the local power structure and directly empower grassroots residents. By the summer of 1965, Washington started easing advocates of the "maximum feasible participation of the poor" out of the agency. Syracuse, due to the outspoken nature of Alinsky's comments, became the symbol of the neutering of the OEO and its Community Action Program. The S.U. program's funding wsa not renewed after its first year and Professor Haggstrom was fired. The NY Times asked Alinsky if he was disappointed that the Syracuse program was discontinued and he sneered his reply: "Have you ever been to Syracuse?"

The fight over how best to fight poverty in Syracuse is still reflected in the groups that emerged from the two competing Community Action Programs. From the ashes of the Crusade For Opportunity has emerged
PEACE, Inc. (People's Equal Action and Community Effort, Inc. ) whose mission is detailed on their website: "As one of Central New York's largest human service agencies, P.E.A.C.E., Inc. works tirelessly throughout the city of Syracuse and surrounding areas to provide programs and services for the whole family, including child and youth services, family and community development, senior services and energy and housing services."

In 1977, the Board of Urban Ministry, a now defunct organization of inner-city Catholic churches, adopted the S.U./Alinsky template of neighborhood action committees to create a grassroots organization to fight for improved housing conditions on the city's southside. One year later, that organization was spun off as an independent non-profit agency, Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN). SUN to this day utilizes the confrontional tactics and grassroots leadership that is a hallmark of Alinsky-style organizations. Full disclosure: I am the senior staff organizer for SUN.

This is the best article about Bob Marley I've read in a long time. As the sub-title says, he's been hijacked by stoned suburban teenagers.

"Say you're a middle-class American white kid. It's spring term freshman year, and you've just discovered pot, Bob Marley, and ultimate frisbee. You really want to drop that organic chemistry course, but you know your parents will be pissed. In such a scenario, Bob Marley's songs, with lines like 'Emancipate yourself from mental slavery' and 'No chains are on my feet/ but I am not free,' seem to be talking to you in a way that's deeply profound."

The article is a great brief primer on everything you need to know about one of the most important musical artists of the 20th century:

1) It's the early music that shines. Popular trifles like "One Love" and "Three Little Birds" are not representative of his work.

2) Bob Marley sang about resistance and revolution--topics light years to the left of even the most politically aware rocker and rapper in middle class America.

3) Bob Marley was seriously religious and his lyrics are drenched in imagery and language from the Old Testament.

For the full credit course, you must read Catch a Fire : The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White. The biography details Bob Marley's life and is a brilliant description of his music. However, the book goes much further than standard pop star biography. White dissects the history of reggae from its earliest forebears, discusses the racial, social and political complexities of Jamaica and gives a high level tutorial on the religious beliefs that underpin all of Bob Marley's work.

I've got to go now, I've got Bob Marley Live! cued up on my iPod.

As a community organizer for Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN), my job is to help build a community organization with the skill, guts and determination to fight for its neighborhoods. The fight is difficult because the coin of the realm in the halls of government and the suites of the private sector is money--the one thing we do not have. Yet sometimes, despite the odds against you, everything goes right.

On Wednesday SUN learned that Rep. James T. Walsh had accepted our invitation to discuss low-income families' struggles with high heat bills. On Thursday our leadership team, four local resident volunteers, held a long meeting to prepare the agenda and rehearse their roles. On Friday we identified three additional residents that could relate their personal stories dealing with high heat bills. We felt the Congressman needed to hear about the sacrifices that families are making when they are forced to pay 2-3x's the cost of last year's heat bills--often on fixed incomes. On Saturday, everything came together.

The personal stories were heartfelt and powerful. The stories were buttressed by three additional residents. This was no bitch session--this was a chance to speak the truth to power.

SUN's leaders (leader is a term we use for the resident volunteers that take active roles in a public meeting or action) then made five specific demands of the Congressman for effective actions he could take in Washington to help families deal with heat bills:

1) Support an upcoming supplemental spending bill to add $1 billion to the HEAP and Weatherization budgets.
2) Oppose the proposed Bush cut of 20% to the Community Development Block Grant budget in FY 2007--the major source of home repair loans to families in our neighborhoods.
3) Work with SUN to eliminate a glitch in the Weatherization program that allows landlords to receive partial benefits, while denying these same partial benefits to middle income/owner-occupants.
4) Work with SUN to create a task force of residents, financial institutions, government agencies and technology experts to work toward the goal of making every home in the city weatherized and energy efficient.
5) Support a windfall profits tax on oil & natural gas companies to help pay for some of these initiatives.

Rep. Walsh unreservedly agreed to the first four demands and said he would look at the fifth seriously.

This meeting was a major accomplishment, pulled off in a very short period of time and run to perfection by the type of grassroots folks that everyone usually writes about as disaffected, alienated and out of touch with mainstream democratic institutions. This was grassroots democracy in full bloom, on a cold and blustery day in the snowiest city in America.

This blog has always served as sort of my repository for thoughts that otherwise would get lost. It also allows me to occasionally think more deeply about issues that matter to me. I made the blog public so I would be forced to focus and correct the typos.

After awhile I began to wonder if anyone was reading these posts, I hardly ever have anyone leave comments (other than the online poker and discount Viagra folks.) So I got me one of them sitemeter doohickeys to get some answers.

The vast majority of visitors to this site have linked over from NYCO's Blog. This is understandable since this blog is the hub around which all the rest of the CNY blogosphere revolves--I think Baloghblog called it the "mack daddy" of local blogs. I use NYCO's Blog as my favorites list when I surf around area blogs. (It must be the great writing. Today's post on the Cheney incident summed up the entire problem with the Bush administration in about 100 words.)

My blog name brings me a lot of traffic. I get a healthy number of folks who have an interest in illegal street racing, both pro and con. They link to me from search engines, take one look at posts about rockers, Red Sox and local politics and accelerate on to the next site.

However, my blog name also gets me a lot of Springsteen fans (of which I am a diehard) but most of them seem to be ONLY interested in Bruce and stay for the requisite 1-2 seconds before they are Born to Run again. However, these fans also constitute my first foray into international waters as I have gotten several French, Spanish and English fans coming by.

I recently had my first experinece with being hyper-linked on a (Inter)national blog. My post on Bono's homily at the National Prayer Breakfast was included in a wrap-up of many such posts by a blog dedicated to the religious aspects of U2. This led to a flurry of hits and an honest to goodness comment (positive too!).

Well, back to the regular stuff next time--you know rants about the crappy state of Syracuse, review of Bruce's new release (the audio version of the 1975 Hammersmith Odeon DVD) and the exploits of the Boston Red Sox' newest star and the player with the best name in all of major league baseball--Coco Crisp!

My wife was singing a song this morning while I was in the shower, the melody was so familiar that I started to sing as well. It was then that I realized that I was singing different lyrics. My wife was singing in her native Polish and I was singing in heavily accented gringo Spanglish. After poking around a little about this song, I realize that I truly am a product of my culture--the commercial, white-bread America of the late '60's/early '70's.

The song is familiar to many for its ay, yi, yi, yi chorus. After some internet searching, I found that the song is a Mexican folk song called Cielito Lindo (Lovely Heaven). It is a love song and the chorus says: "sing, don't cry", because singing makes your heart happy.

My wife was singing a Polish version of the song, one that used the same melody, but whose lyrics talked about how World War II forced people to scrounge for basic food supplies, including their beloved kielbasa and vodka.

I realized, much to my chagrin, that I was singing the theme song to a dimly remembered commercial (1968) for Fritos corn chips, anyone else remember the Frito Bandito?

Ayiee, yie-yie-yieeee, /I am dee Frito Bandito.
I love Frito's Corn Chips/I love dem I do.
I love Frito's Corn Chips/I take dem from you.

From today's Boston Globe comes this reminder that spring training is only days away and Opening Day is right around the corner.

Join me and other Red Sox Nation folks as we all say: Coco Crisp!!!!

While Bruce's performance on the Grammy's was inspiring, I got a shock during the roll call of those people that had passed away in the past year. Chris Whitley died in November of lung cancer at the age of 45.

My two favorite Chris Whitley Albums:

"Living With The Law" (1991):

“Chris Whitley's extraordinary debut album, is fantasy blues - bona fide poetry and National steel guitar conjuring dream imagery from some surreal western movie. Riveting and original, Whitley mines roots music not as an imitator but as a visionary who trades on archetypal symbols and classic riffs to fashion his own twilit American mythology . . .Often, a song will begin w ith Whitley singing and playing spare slide-guitar melodies; gradually, as the full band kicks in, the song mounts to an electric, drum-heavy crescendo. Chris's brother, Daniel, joins him on guitar for the feedback frenzy that climaxes "Long Way Around." On the title track and elsewhere, snare drums brushed lightly meet up with bass lines as heavy as a farmer's boots . . .there hasn't been music as wise as Whitley's in quite some time.

--Paul Evans, Rolling Stone

“Dirt Floor” (1998):

“They point to the gaunt, pale figure on the cover of the recently released Dirt Floor and assert that his is a body slowly being worn down by the music he plays, this melancholy brand of acoustic blues that drips with crucifixion imagery and dead-dog-on-the-side-of-the-road fatalism. They listen to his voice - neither from the heart nor from the gut, neither sweet nor sullen, neither white nor black - and drown in its somber hues . . .Dirt Floor, released on a tiny label run by a 24-year-old kid out of his New York apartment, is the answer to their prayers; it's the sound made when a man is dropped from his label and then goes chasing ghosts around his daddy's abandoned farmhouse in Vermont. . .It's a good record, a creepy record, a vaguely uplifting record in a wretched sort of way, and a good record for a man to tour behind, as he doesn't need anyone to play it but himself. And it doesn't sound like the blues, but you know it is anyway.”

--Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer

That such an adventurous musician (he mixed his blues with country, folk, hard rock, electronica) was not a household name is perhaps not surprising. However, we have his music. It was an unusual voice, but also unusually gifted. Listen.

At the end of his live performance tonight on the Grammy Awards of his song Devils & Dust, Bruce Springsteen shouted out: "Bring 'em home!". There was no reaction, as the audience was already applauding the performance.

"Got God on our side/We're just trying to survive
But if what you do to survive/Kills the things you love
Fear is a powerful thing/It'll turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God-filled soul/Fill it with devils and dust."

--Devils & Dust

Thanks to Baloghblog, I got this link to the transcript of a speech that Bono, the lead singer for the band U2, gave at the most recentNational Prayer Breakfast. I have several reactions, both theological and political.

First, Bono has long been religious, but also a very healthy sceptic (see "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"). The major point I take away from what he calls his homily is this--religion can get in the way of God. Bono grew up in a culture that literally fought over the correct way to believe. His parents could not worship in the same church. Families were torn apart, society segregated and people died for their particular manner of worship.

It's been this kind of horseshit that has always kept me away from organized religion. The stakes aren't the same in our country, but the effect has been the same. True believers trying to limit other people's access to the divine because they don't sing the same hymns, read the same books or pray the same way. Bono speaks to those of us who have been turned off by God's followers--ignore them, find God for yourself.

Bono has found God by meeting him where he lives--with the poor: " I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill… I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff… maybe, maybe not… But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor."

Bono follows this up with a call to make your religious values real: work to end the poverty and disease that is causing 150,000 people a month to perish in Africa. The crisis in Africa is a direct challenge to our sense of ourselves as religious people, not to act is to be complicit in an order that allows people to in Africa to die from the kind of diseases and poverty that the western world has eradicated.

It's the political nature of Bono's call that has excercised some people. Ironically, Bono has gotten more criticism from the left than the right. This website's posting by several left-leaning music and pop culture critics is typical: Bono Must be Stopped. Messianic and egotistical are the ad hominem attacks. The more serious charge is that he is compromising the attack on GW Bush from the left.

My take is different. Bono admits to the ego part. In another speech Bono poked fun at that most frightening modern phenomenon: "The rock star with a cause." But is Bono playing footsie with right-wingers and hurting the cause? I don't believe so. He has decided what his goal is--eliminate suffering in Africa--he is not going to dilute his message and become a billboard for each and every cause, no matter how valid. This attack is a re-working of the right-wing ad hominem argument against activists: "If you're so concerned about peace & justice for X, why aren't you working for Y as well?" People can only do so much, especially if you want to be effective.

As for playing footsie with right-wingers, Bono uses his access to speak truth to power, in a language that his adversaries can understand. He gets to quote scripture to politicians, religious leaders and business types to ram home the point that right-wing policies do not live up to the standards of basic religious tenents. How many lefties get invited to the National Prayer Breakfast to say this to the collected conservative religious folks:

"It's not about charity, it's about justice. And that's too bad. Because you're good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can't afford it. But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment. . . Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market, that's a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents, that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents, that's a justice issue. And while the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject."

He spent many years as Pope John Paul II’s enforcer--the head of the Congregation Of The Doctine Of The Faith, the part of the Vatican that sniffs out apostates, disbelievers and heretics. He gave a rousing speech immediately before the Cardinals gathered to elect a new Pope on the evils of modern society’s tendency toward moral relativism (damn kids these days think that judging people is wrong, but some things are just not right dammit!) His first policy since being elected Pope is to try to root gays out of seminaries in America. He is, of course, Pope Benedict XXVI, or as I refer to him--Mad Benny.

I was born and raised an Episcopalian, but I have never been a devout churchgoer. My wife’s family is all Catholic, so if I go to any services they tend to be Catholic masses. My nuclear family has all passed away, so my in-laws are my family. They emigrated from Poland and were inspired by John Paul II. The Catholic Church kept the idea of a Polish nation alive and the Pope’s inspiration helped free millions of people from oppression. (I know, it wasn’t the same in Latin America and I’ve never understood the anti-condom thing.) This was enough to get me thinking I was a Catholic by proxy.

Mad Benny changed all that. I note to people now that I am an Episcopalian and that our church not only tolerates gays, we make them Bishops. (At least for now--we’re kind of upset about the whole thing. Many congregations have stormed out of the living room and slammed their bedroom doors behind them. But we’re WASP’s. We don’t really talk about those things. Everything’s fine. . .really.)

But now Mad Benny has thrown us a curve ball. His first major theological statement is his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love") One part “All You Need Is Love” and one part, government and politics isn’t in our job description. The encyclical is readable--well written and only about seventy pages, but I didn’t make it all the way through (American Idol was on, and I had to clean the bathroom and there’s this report due at work. . .)

God is love, there are other valid religions, work out your politics for yourself (just keep in mid a few of our teachings)--sounds like the kind of squishy thinking he’s been railing about for awhile. Sounds suspicious--Mad Benny was the guy who got the American Bishops to stop coddling pederast priests long enough to tell their parishioners that John Kerry wasn’t moral enough to be President.

However, this encyclical touches at the problems I have with both Catholicism and organized religion. 1) As an American, my first response to most people telling me what to do is “Who died and made you Pope?” 2) Why do religions fight so much over silly doctrines and who’s the one true way? Why can’t there be a multiplicity of ways? So Mad Benny is keeping the Catholics in play for me. . .at least for the moment.

Over at NYCO's blog, there was a very interesting discussion on why so many area bloggers were focusing on local and regional issues, instead of imitating other bloggers writing (from both the right and left) on national politcal issues. My contribution to this discussion was modest, my sense that the writings of the big-time national bloggers did not have an appreciable impact on my life. I do believe that the discussions on local issues hit me where I live: economic development, history, food, community planning, environmental concerns--just to name a few.

After doing a little web surfing today, I realized what the national blogs are missing--the spirit of their intelletual forebear I.F. Stone. Stone was a reporter who never attended press briefings, didn't try to develop sources with high placed officials and for most of his career was self-published. The I.F. Stone Weekly was a broadsheet with a single writer and a circulation that topped out at 70,000. However, among his accomplishments was being the first journalist to stand up to Joe McCarthy, writing the definitive history of the Korean War and breaking the lies behind the Tonkin Gulf incident that led the US into Vietnam.

I.F. Stone disdained the "on-one-hand, this; on-the-other-hand, that" journalism that still exists today. Taking unpopular stands led him to be blacklisted and smeared as a communist. However, he despised all bullies regardless of their politics. In an interview taped during the 1970's he prophesized the crumbling of the rigid Soviet regime and in the 1980's wrote to The Nation praising their criticism of the leftist Sandinistas for crushing press and free speech freedoms in Nicaragua.

In a biographical reminiscence of Stone in The Nation, the journalist Andy Kopkind is quoted as saying that the I. F. Stone Weekly "organized the consciousness of its readers somewhat in the way a community action group organizes a neighborhood: for awareness, understanding, action." This is what I realize current political bloggers lack. There is no passion for social change and real people in their writings. Their concerns are parochial and very partisan.

I.F. Stone lived out the words of his credo: "To write the truth as I see it; to defend the weak against the strong; to fight for justice; and to seek, as best I can, to bring healing perspectives to bear on the terrible hates and fears of mankind, in the hope of someday bringing about one world, in which men will enjoy the differences of the human garden instead of killing each other over them."