November 8 Election

California’s special election

Get out and vote! For education, for health care, for a decent energy system, for demoratic rights

from California Federation of Teachers AFT AFL-CIO

No Proposition 73 Constitutionally defines life begins at conception.

No Proposition 74 Teachers can be fired without justification for five years, not two years as the law states now.

No. Proposition 75.
Silences nurses, teachers, firefighters—targets public employees by imposing spending restrictions that apply only to unions and not to corporations. This law is a terrible assault on democracy in California.

No. Proposition 76.
The Governor’s power grab over the budget. Overturns the funding guarantees the voters passed and gives the governor unprecedented power to cut the state budget unilaterally. The Governor’s already taken $2 billion from education he hasn’t paid back.

No. Proposition 77.
Gives 3 unelected and unaccountable judges power to redistrict
new legislative districts for 37 million Californians

No Proposition 78.
Stop phony prescription drug program. This law codifies the pharmaceutical industry’s phony program to “voluntarily” reduce prescription rates.

Yes. Proposition 79.
Consumer plan to provided affordable prescription drugs to
eight million Californians with state enforcement.

Yes. Proposition 80. Consumer plan to provide for energy for all Californians and to prevent fraud like Enron did in a deregulated energy system.

Governor Schwarzenegger has pushed this unnecessary special election. He has said when running for office since he’s wealthy he wouldn’t take money from special interests but he’s taken millions—more than any other elected official in California.

In this election Schwarzenegger is pushing the interests of the speical interests who gave him big contributions. Since many of his propositions are unpopular, he’s counting on a low turnout in the vote on Tuesday November 8 to pass them.

Get out and vote!

Halloween Carnaeval/West Hollywood

Last night I attended the Halloween Street celebration in West Hollywood, the largest in California with over 350,000 on the streets. As my friend Erica and I walked down Santa Monica Boulevard, we saw people dressed in costumes walking along with us west--a skeleton bride in white face paint and a bridal dress walking next to two cops. When I lived in West Hollywood, I always walked from my house a mile to the celebration, but I've not been living in West Hollywood for four year. However, at a birthday party last spring of a West Hollywood senior activitst Ric Rickles I was introduced to West Hollywood's mayor Abby Land, so I decided this year I was going.

We got to La Cienega and Santa Monica Boulevard, crossed the street and left the sidewalk to walk with thousands of others in the middle of the crowd. A very diverse crowd it was: white, black, Asian, Latino; young and old, some parents with toddlers around their necks; gay, bisexual, and straight; people speaking Russian, Spanish, English and French.

As we walked forward west the crowd got thicker until we got to the first bandstand where people in costumes were strutting across the stage: a ninja Bunny who executed some karate moves; a Jack-of-the Box in half popping out of a box around his waist; four beautiful Venetian dancers in red and blue pointy colored hats and long flowing robes colored in danced on stage. As we stood in the crowd watching the people on stage a line of penguins--fifteen men in black with white pointy masks--marched in front of us. That was fantastic to see a March of the Penguins right before our eyes. Ten minutes later the fifteen penguin-men marched on stages and marched in a circle, circling the m.c. who yelled, "I'm pregnant!" I loved those penguins! Finally, the penguins marched right off stage!

A few minutes later two tall figures dressed as elegrant ladies in gowns marched on stage. The M.C. announced, "Lady Katrina and Lady Rita" as the two hurricanes dance around before dancing off. Good that people in West Hollywood help us laugh off disasters. Later as we were weaving in and around through the crowd which was getting thicker and thicker a man in black with two birds perched on his shouder approached me. A foot away he held one of his birds right in front of my face and said, "Bird flu." I ducked out of his way. Right after 9/13 I went to West Hollywood Halloween and a man and a woman were wearing two tall rectangular boxes that looked like skyscrapers: they were the Twin Towers.

We stopped by the fire truck as my friend Erica met an old friend Carol from high school she hadn't seen in twenty years, and they chatted what they had been doing these last twenty years, Then we marched on, seeing a man holding a sign "Jesus Loves Jews" which I liked and then a Jesus Freak holding up a sign condeming the crowd followed by an escort of about five cops. By this time the crowd was really thick and it was slow going. What is great is the peacefullness, the diversity, the creativity, and the imagination. Groups of gigantic men and women were decked out in gowns, towering blonde and red wigs, and high heels were posing for others holding cameras. Big girls! Very big girls! In West Hollwyood everyone can be Star for the Evening. All body sizes welcome! Big guys dressed up as gorillas and Vikings! Fat women looked great as divas and princesses in elegant gowns!

At another stage we saw a group cowboys/cowgirls in blue jeans, cowboy shirts and black hats were dancing to disco rap, doing turns and twirling their black hats. As we marched along we saw a man besides a female figure wearing an U.S flag/burka like the women of Afghanistan--I wished I had my camera! We saw Chinese aristrocrats in beautiful embroidered gowns; lots of drag queens in towering wigs, elegrant gowns, and platform shoes; a young man wearing around his neck a table set with plates and silverwear who was a movable feast. Lots of people dressed up in black-and-white stripped prison outfits as wells adults dressed up as babies.

What's great is this one day a year all of Los Angeles comes together to celebrating everybody's creativity--this city needs more festivities like this.

Day of the Dead/ Hollywood Forever Cemetery

I’ve been going to Day of the Dead/Halloween festivities in Los Angeles. First, October 29^th I went to 6^th Annual Day of the Dead at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a historical cemetery having a grave of blonde bombshell actress Jayne Mansfield, silent movie star Rudolf Valetino’s grave and a monument for the LA Times printers killed when the newspaper was bombed in 1911.

As I walked in this year, parking was harder to come by even in the afternoon and groups of people were walking in—thousands were coming this year. The event lasted from 3-11. Finally, I got in line, and gave them a $5 donation—new this year.

About 4:00 near the cemetery's entrance they had a group of men and women dressed in indigenous Mexican dress with—attractive long dresses with orange embroidery for the women and white shirts for the men—kneeling in a prayer for the opening ceremony. To one side was the Oaxaca band holding their instruments including a tuba; to the other side a large group of Aztec dancers with headdresses of gray and black plumages, white skull faces, and black costumes. The crowd of a couple hundred gathered around. After the prayer ceremony, the drummer with a 3 foot drum got in the center starting to beat his drum while forty Aztec dancers— swathed in white face paint, gray feather headdresses, black skeleton outfits, and bells around their ankles—danced and danced in the center of the circle.

Day of the Dead was originally a Mexican Indian holiday celebrating the dead that the Spanish Catholics appropriated and Catholicized. Here in Los Angeles Self-Help Graphics in East Los Angeles, a community-art center for Chicanos, started Day of the Dead celebrations over two decades ago where artists create alters, inspiring many other Dead of the Dead celebrations in Los Angeles and changing the culture of this city. Hollywood Forever Cemetary started their celebration six-years ago by asking artists of all ethnicities to make alters; in that first celebration only a few hundred showed up, but today thousands were coming.

Back at the opening ceremony the men in white shirts picked up a coffin, heading off into the ceremony in a processional while the band started playing as they marched behind the coffin; the other Mexican men and women followed, then the Aztec dancers, and then the rest of us who by now numbered hundreds got in line to parade into the cemetery. Lots of cameras went offTo the left was an alter covered in a United States flag for the soldiers dead of Iraq.

After we of few minutes of marching the line turned leftl. Next we passed an alter for Rosa Parks, the great black woman who started the Montgomery bus boycott; an alter for all those who have died from cigarettes; another alter covered in an U.S. flag for a soldier dead in Iraq; an alter for Jayne Mansfield who is buried in this graveyard, and another alter for rebel rocker Johnny Ramone, who is also buried here. Many of the alters had loaves of bread for the dead and photos of the dead. Many alters had tall, white skeleton sculptures bedecking the grades along with yellow flowers. The creators of the alters sat in folding chairs besides their creation. One alter had two young men and two men dressed in black with white face pain--all were dancing.

At the next intersection was a huge white cloth like a white sea covering the grave. The ashen-white faced dancers covered in white rags of the anti-war butoh dance group Corpus Delicti were dancing as if they were corpses dead from the war. Corpus Delicti has often danced at Los Angeles anti-war marches to show Americans the dead of our war. To our left down that row of graves was an alter for the murdered Women of Juarez and another with a mural of a knight on horseback for great Spanish author Miguel Cervantes who died four centuries ago in 1605. All in all a great Day of the Dead.

Who Will Rebuild New Orleans?

Who should rebuild New Orleans is displaced New Orleans people—mostly black but also poor white-- who have lost their jobs and homes. The government should set up a large federal project restoring the wetlands that protect the city and rebuilding the city itself. The jobs should be above minimum wage and with benefits.The government should set up a program like the Works Project Administration (W.P.A.) that the New Deal had during the Depression that put unemployed people to work buiding everything from the San Francisco Gate Bridge to schools, libraries, roads all across the nation. The W.P.A. was incredibly successful helping people reconstruct their lives as well as building bridges, roads and buildings we still use today seventy years later.

Is this going to happen? No.

President Bush has already suspended provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act that requires the government contractors to pay prevailing wages in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. Also the Department of Homeland Security has suspended sanctions against employers who hire workers with no documents.

So who will be hired? Not blacks from New Orleans who were instrumental in creating the rich culture of the city and who have been left with nothing. Not poor white Cajuns whose families have lived in the region for 200 years also instrumental in creating Louisiana's culture. Not them. Oh no.

Government contractors are hiring Latino immigrants from Mexico and Central America and sending them to Louisiana. Gregory Rordiguez in the September 25, 2005 LA Times reports that these male workers “live outside New Orleans in mobile homes without running water and electricity.” Rodriguez quotes President Bill Clinton on NBC’s “Meet the Press” saying that “New Orleans will be resettled with a different population: the evacuees will be forced to relocate and will be replaced by poor Latinos.

One subtitle Rodriguez uses in his article is “Latinos to the Rescue,” point out the many contributions of immigrant labor. Indeed, immigrant labor including Mexican immigrants have made huge contributions, but New Orleans could very well be rescued by the labor of its own citizens, giving them a decent life in the process. Instead the government will exploit desperately poor Latinos in order to rebuild the city. Of course, any workers who help to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf should be given legal status, electricity, running water, and wages above the minimum.

But the jobs should firstly go to people from New Orleans who have been forced out so they can return to their city to rebuild their city, their neighborhoods, and their lives. We should pressure Bush to follow the previsions of the Davis-Bacon Act that requires the government contractors to pay prevailing wages in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. We should pressure Bush to restart a Works Progress Administration . We should have government contractors hire evacuees and house them in trailers with electricity, running water, and a decent wage. We should also demand that any immigrants who work rebuilding New Orelans be given legal status, basic rights and a decent wage. That's the way New Orelans should be rebuilt.

World Festival of Sacred Music is Dynamite!

I attended last Saturday, September 17, at UCLA the opening concert for the World Festival of Sacred Music. This festival has 43 events performed by 1000 dancers, singers, and musicans held at spaces secular and sacred all over Southern California from September 17 through October 2.

The opening event was held in an amphlitheater at UCLA under a harvest full moon where we hear 5 music groups from around the world. First, there was the opening blessing by Cindi Moar Alvitre and the Tia'at Society, members of the Tonga people, the Native Americans of Los Angeles area. What I found fascinating was the Ti'at Society was reviving the "ancient Southern California Indian tradition, the Moomat Ahiko, a sacred canoe, whose name translates to "Breath of the Ocean."

The first musical group was Gonja Dreams, led by Iddi Sakka, which had musicians and danacers from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Brazil, Israel and the U.S. performing music of the Gonga people of Northern Ghana but combining African and Western rhythms and instruments.

Next was Los Folkloristas, a group that plays traditional music and Mexico and Latin America as well as Danza Floricanto/USA, the oldest professional Mexican folk dance troup in Los Angeles. Los Floristas' songs ranged from the Mexican song "Raiz Viga" (Living Roots) to an Bolivian Indians' lament, to "Tierra Mestiza" about Chicano immigrants in the U.S. to "LA Paloma" (the dove" from Chile.

Next they had two groups performing at the same time. On the main stage the KNUA Korean Traditional Performing Arts Troupe, just having flown in from Korean, played haunting melodies on traditional instruments of flute, gong, and a stringed violin-like instrument. Some of the songs and dances were in honor of Buddhism while the last was of shamanistic origin whose purpose was "to wash away evil spirits or misfortune." At the same time The Hung Lakorn Lek Puppet Theater Troup from Thailand was performing scenes from the great Hindi epic the Ramayana. George Abe next performed on the Japanese flute in praise of the moon which loomed full, ripe and rich overhead.

The next group was Chirgilchin which is translated as "miracle" from the Tuvan language of Siberia. Chirgilchin are three young Tuvan throat-singers. The movie "Ghengis Blues" was
a international hit about the Tuvan throat singers who are quite amazing. The three played unusual Tuvan instruments of a lute, two-stringed violin, and rattle used by Tuvan shamans. I thought the music sounded like Siberian cowboy music with a beat and based on a scale like American blues. Indeed, Tuvans were a nomadic horse culture, so many of the songs are about, of course, horses, nomadic way of life, and nature. They were awfully wonderful.

Lastly was Jri Pavlica & Hradistan Dulcimer Band from Czech Republic who preserve the folk music of Southern Moravia who were also terrific. The opened with traditional Moravian and Bohemian folk songs; then they had a song cycle covering pagan singing from before 1000 a.d., early Christain choral music, medieval drinking songs, Baroque dance songs, and village songs. They closed with Jiri Pavlica's wonderful, contemporary songs. These like the Tuvan throat singers were virtuoso musicians.

At the end all the musicians and dancers came on stage--from Native America, Africa, Latin America, Korean, Siberia, and the U.S.--while Brenda Jackson, an African-American opera singer sang "Amazing Grace" acompanied by everybody. Quite a sight. The World Festival of Sacred Music shows Los Angeles at its dazzling best.

To find out more, check out the festival's website www/festivalofscaredmusic.org

Notes from Inside New Orleans

I'm reprinting Jordan Flaherty's article "From Inside New
 Orleans" because I thinkthe mass media's scapegoating
 of the people of New Orleans this last week must
be addressed.

Scientists had warned for years of dangers that
 a hurricane would flood New Orleans but all levels of
government from the city to the federal government
ignored the warnings.

 Doctors without medicines in
New Orleans were even"looting," or breaking into stores to
 get medicines for their patients who werein danger of
dieing without them. Also, the people who were starving,
 without water,or medicine in New Orleans said people broke
 into stores to get food and water--which people needed to
 live. Yet all week certain news commentators called this
"looting."
Julia


Notes From Inside New Orleans
>by Jordan Flaherty
>Friday, September 2, 2005
>http://www.leftturn.org/
>
>I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago.  I traveled
 from theapartment I was staying in by boat to a
>helicopter to a refugee camp.  If anyone wants to
 examine the attitudeof federal and state officials
>towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise
 you to visit one ofthe refugee camps.
>
>In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway
 near Causeway,thousands of people (at least 90%
>black and poor) stood and squatted in mud and trash
 behind metalbarricades, under an unforgiving
sun, with heavily armed soldiers standing guard ove
 them.  When a bus would come through, it would stop
 at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of
the barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no
 information given about where the bus was going. Once inside
 (wewere told) evacuees would be told where the bus was
 taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas,
 or other locations.  I was told that if you boarded a
bus bound for Arkansas (for example), even people with family
and a place to stay in Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get
out of the bus as it passed through Baton Rouge.  You had no
 choice but to go to the shelter in
Arkansas.  If you had people willing to come to New Orleans
 to pick youup, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.
>
>I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers,
>Salvation Army workers, National
>Guard, and state police, and although they were friendly, no one could
>give me any details on when
>buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any other
>information.  I spoke to the
>several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been
>able to get any information
>from any federal or state officials on any of these questions, and all
>of them, from Australian tv to local
>Fox affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess.
>One cameraman told me "as
>someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only information
>I can give you is this: get
>out by nightfall.  You don't want to be here at night."
>
>There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to
>set up any sort of transparent
>and consistent system, for instance a line to get on buses, a way to
>register contact information or find
>family members, special needs services for children and infirm, phone
>services, treatment for
>possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.
>
>To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at
>New Orleans itself.
>
>For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a
>incredible, glorious, vital, city.  A
>place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere else in the world.  A
>70% African-American city
>where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous,
>subversive and unique culture of
>vivid beauty.  From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras
>Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz
>Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a
>place of art and music and
>dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world.
>
>It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block
>can take two hours because you
>stop and talk to someone on every porch, and where a community pulls
>together when someone is in
>need.  It is a city of extended families and social networks filling
>the gaps left by city, state and federal
>governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the public
>welfare.  It is a city where someone
>you walk past on the street not only asks how you are, they wait for an
>answer.
>
>It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear.  The city
>of New Orleans has a population of
>just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 murders this year, most of them
>centered on just a few,
>overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods.  Police have been quoted as saying
>that they don't need to
>search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a
>shooting, the attacker is shot in
>revenge.
>
>There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much
>of Black New Orleans and the
>N.O. Police Department.  In recent months, officers have been accused
>of everything from drug
>running to corruption to theft.  In separate incidents, two New Orleans
>police officers were recently
>charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several high
>profile police killings of
>unarmed youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has
>inspired ongoing weekly protests
>for several months.
>
>The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders
>will not graduate in four years.
>Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per child's education and ranks 48th
>in the country for lowest
>teacher salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young
>people drop out of Louisiana
>schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent from school on
>any given day.  Far too
>many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison,
>a former slave
>plantation where inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of
>inmates eventually die in the
>prison.  It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs
>are are low-paying, transient,
>insecure jobs in the service economy.
>
>Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics.  This
>disaster is one that was
>constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence.  Hurricane Katrina
>was the inevitable spark
>igniting the gasoline of cruelty and corruption.  From the
>neighborhoods left most at risk, to the
>treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the victims,
>this disaster is shaped by race.
>
>Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this
>week our political leaders have
>defined a new level of incompetence.  As hurricane Katrina approached,
>our Governor urged us to
>"Pray the hurricane down" to a level two.  Trapped in a building two
>days after the hurricane, we
>tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations,
>hoping for vital news, and were told
>that our governor had called for a day of prayer.  As rumors and panic
>began to rule, they was no
>source of solid dependable information.  Tuesday night, politicians and
>reporters said the water level
>would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized.  Rumors spread like
>wildfire, and the politicians and
>media only made it worse.
>
>While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way
>to get there were left
>behind.  Adding salt to the wound, the local and national media have
>spent the last week demonizing
>those left behind.  As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in
>it, this is the part of this
>tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.
>
>No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely
>closed stores in a
>desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just what the media
>did over and over again.  Sheriffs
>and politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of
>perform rescue operations.
>
>Images of New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged population were transformed
>into black, out-of-control,
>criminals.  As if taking a stereo from a store that will clearly be
>insured against loss is a greater crime
>than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of
>dollars of damage and
>destroyed a city.  This media focus is a tactic, just as the eighties
>focus on "welfare queens" and
>"super-predators" obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes
of
>the Savings and Loan
>scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are
>being used as a scapegoat
>to cover up much larger crimes.
>
>City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here.
>Since at least the mid-1800s, its been
>widely known the danger faced by flooding to New Orleans.  The flood of
>1927, which, like this
>week's events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of
>natural disaster, illustrated
>exactly the danger faced.  Yet government officials have consistently
>refused to spend the money to
>protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city.  While FEMA and others
>warned of the urgent impending
>danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to
>reinforce and protect the city, the
>Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to
>fund New Orleans flood control,
>and ignored scientists warnings of increased hurricanes as a result of
>global warming.  And, as the
>dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response
>dramatized vividly the callous
>disregard of our elected leaders.
>
>The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a
>US President and a
>Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of Huey Long.
>
>In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New
>Orleans.  This money can either be
>spent to usher in a "New Deal" for the city, with public investment,
>creation of stable union jobs, new
>schools, cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be
>"rebuilt and revitalized" to a
>shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more casinos, and with
>chain stores and theme parks
>replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz
>clubs.
>
>Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty,
>racism, disinvestment,
>deindustrialization and corruption.  Simply the damage from this
>pre-Katrina hurricane will take
>billions to repair.
>
>Now that the money is flowing in, and the world's eyes are focused on
>Katrina, its vital that
>progressive-minded people take this opportunity to fight for a
>rebuilding with justice.  New Orleans is
>a special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.
>
>-----------------------------------------------
>Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn
>Magazine (www.leftturn.org).  He is not
>planning on moving out of New Orleans.
>
>-----------------------------------------------
>
>Below are some small, grassroots and New Orleans-based resources,
>organizations and institutions
>that will need your support in the coming months.
>
>Social Justice:
>www.jjpl.org
>www.iftheycanlearn.org
>www.nolaps.org
>www.thepeoplesinstitute.org/
>www.criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=crno_home
>
>Cultural Resources:
>www.backstreetculturalmuseum.com
>www.ashecac.org/
>http://198.66.50.128/gallery/
>www.nolahumanrights.org
>http://www.freewebs.com/ironrail/
>http://www.girlgangproductions.com/
>
>Current Info and Resources:
>http://neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html

Republicans and New Orleans Castastophe

Because of the horrible events all week in New Orleans and the Gulf, I'm reprinting Michael Parenti's article.

An article Friday, Sept. 2, 2005, in the LA Times said that lots of news media had run stories predicting a disaster for New Orleans: in 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, the largest newspaper in Louisiana, ran a 5-party story about disaster could could happen to the city which won numerous awards; National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" in 2002 laid out how New Orleans was at risk; the New York Times ran an article saying thousands of lives were at risk. After the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran its 2002 story, it ran 9 more stories "reporting that the combination of tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and the demands of homeland security had led President Bush's administration to repeatedly reject urgent requests from the Army Corpos of Engineers and Louisianas's congressional delegation that it allocate the money to save New Orelas." Also, all of New Orleans' people could have been evacuated just like Cuba evacuated 1,300,00 people in 2004 and housed in tents before Hurricane Karina hit--saving thousands of lives.


How the Free Market Killed New Orleans*

By Michael Parenti

The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans
and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with advanced
warningthat a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and
surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market.

They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to
devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just as
the free market dictates, just like people do when disaster hits
free-market Third World countries.

It is a beautiful thing this free market in which every individual
pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby effects an
optimal outcome for the entire society. This is the way the invisible hand
works its wonders.

There would be none of the collectivistic regimented evacuation as
occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful hurricane hit that island
last year, the Castro government, abetted by neighborhood citizen
committees and local Communist party cadres, evacuated 1.3 million
people, more than 10 percent of the country's population, with not a
single life lost, a heartening feat that went largely unmentioned in
the U.S. press.

On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already
clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives had been lost
in New Orleans. Many people had "refused" to evacuate, media reporters
explained, because they were just plain "stubborn."

It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters
began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee
because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With
hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they had
to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market did not
work so well for them.

Many of these people were low-income African Americans, along with
fewern numbers of poor whites. It should be remembered that most of them had
jobs before Katrina's lethal visit. That's what most poor people do in
this country: they work, usually quite hard at dismally paying jobs,
sometimes more than one job at a time. They are poor not because
they'relazy but because they have a hard time surviving on poverty wages while
burdened by high prices, high rents, and regressive taxes.

The free market played a role in other ways. Bush's agenda is to cut
government services to the bone and make people rely on the private
sector for the things they might need. So he sliced $71.2 million from
the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent
reduction. Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and upgrade the system
of pumping out water had to be shelved.

Bush took to the airways and said that no one could have foreseen this
disaster. Just another lie tumbling from his lips. All sorts of people
had been predicting disaster for New Orleans, pointing to the need to
strengthen the levees and the pumps, and fortify the coastlands.

In their campaign to starve out the public sector, the Bushite
reactionaries also allowed developers to drain vast areas of wetlands.
Again, that old invisible hand of the free market would take care of
things. The developers, pursuing their own private profit, would devise
outcomes that would benefit us all.

But wetlands served as a natural absorbent and barrier between New
Orleans and the storms riding in from across the sea. And for some
yearsnow, the wetlands have been disappearing at a frightening pace on the
Gulf' coast. All this was of no concern to the reactionaries in the
White House.

As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like to say that
reliefn to the more unfortunate among us should be left to private charity. It
was a favorite preachment of President Ronald Reagan that "private
charity can do the job." And for the first few days that indeed seemed
to be the policy with the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The federal government was nowhere in sight but the Red Cross went into
action. Its message: "Don't send food or blankets; send money."
Meanwhile Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network---taking
a moment off from God's work of pushing John Roberts nomination to the
Supreme Court---called for donations and announced "Operation Blessing"
which consisted of a highly-publicized but totally inadequate shipment
of canned goods and bibles.

By Day Three even the myopic media began to realize the immense failure
of the rescue operation. People were dying because relief had not
arrived. The authorities seemed more concerned with the looting than
with rescuing people. It was property before people, just like the free
marketeers always want.

But questions arose that the free market did not seem capable of
answering: Who was in charge of the rescue operation? Why so few
helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard rescuers? Why did it
take helicopters five hours to get six people out of one hospital? When
would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where were the feds? The
state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the buses and trucks?
theshelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies and water?

Where was Homeland Security? What has Homeland Security done with the
$33.8 billions allocated to it in fiscal 2005? Even ABC-TV evening news
(September 1, 2005) quoted local officials as saying that "the federal
government's response has been a national disgrace."

In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) irony, offers of
foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany and several other nations.
Russia offered to send two plane loads of food and other materials for
the victims. Predictably, all these proposals were quickly refused by
the White House. America the Beautiful and Powerful, America the
SupremeRescuer and World Leader, America the Purveyor of Global Prosperity
could not accept foreign aid from others. That would be a most
deflating and insulting role reversal. Were the French looking for another punch
in the nose?

Besides, to have accepted foreign aid would have been to admit the
truth---that the Bushite reactionaries had neither the desire nor the
decency to provide for ordinary citizens, not even those in the most
extreme straits. Next thing you know, people would start thinking that
George W. Bush was really nothing more than a fulltime agent of
Corporate America.
>
> -------
> Michael Parenti's recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights)
> and
> The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), both available in
> paperback. His forthcoming The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press)
> will be published in the fall. For more information visit:
> www.michaelparenti.org.
>
>

Anti-Abortionists Use Pornography of Violence

Last October on a trip to UC Berkeley I walked by the political tables near Sather Gate and saw about three young women at the anti-abortionist table along with the usual grisly photos of dead fetuses. I didn't engage them in any argument at all but just looked them and their photos over carefully. My generation fought for their right to have those tables, to have free speech, and to have their photos. Good that everybody has free speech.

But here's my free speech. I think those photos at the anti-abortionist table were deeply offensive. I thought those photos were pornography for political ends. These photos showed violence agan and again--an unrelentless vision of violence in order to upset people. I've once seen a violent Hollywood film with humans getting killed in awful ways every ten minutes that I thought the film uses pornography of violence which degrades human life.The anti-abortionist with their terrible photos use a similar pornography of violence that degrades human life.

But the anti-abortionists show photos which are the visual equivelent of a kick-in-the-stomach. Arguing that way is deeply dehumanizing --dehumanzing to the audience in particular. I think that the anti-abortionists by showing pornographic photos of dead fetuses or verbal equivalents--there is a verbal pornography of violence that lists one grisly death after another-- are undermining their own arguments.

The anti-abortions don't engage in argument appealing to the audience's logic or reason. When we got free speech on the Berkeley campus, we engaged in arguments appealing to logic and reason month after month. I would hope that the anti-abortionists quit such ways of arguing and instead argue from facts showing where the sources for their facts. It's not enough to throw out a random statistics--people lie with statistics every day of the week--but one needs to show where these statistics come from.

A Novel About a Plague: The Rag Doll Plagues

Alejandro Morales has written an amazing novel called The Rag Doll Plagues. The novel is divided into three parts, and in each part a physician named Gregory Revultas battles a deadly plague called La Mona: Book One takes place 1788-1792; Book Two occurs in contemporary southern California; and Book Three in 2050 Southern California and Mexico. The book has a driving plot which recalls Camus' The Plague.

Morales, a professor of Spanish at Univeristy of California Irvine, combines magic realism, historical chronicle, and science fiction in this novel first published in 1992. The novel bends history, with spirit guides from the past and future popping in to help each doctor. What does magical realism have to do with the the doctors fighting the plague? Everthing!

In Book One Dr. Gregorio Revultas, a surgeon to the king of Spain, is sent to Mexico City in 1788 to battle the first plague. At first he is horrified by the dirt, excrement and garbage he finds among the poor and diseased in Mexico City in this society with rigid classes. But Dr. Gregorio has two spirit guides from the future: Gregory and Papa Damian. Dr. Gregorio also as guides Father Jude, a mestizo priest, and Father Juan Antonio Llorente, a doctor and historian; they show him that the plague is exacerbated by the Inquisition's persecution of native cuanderos who help prolong the lives of those with the plague, but no one can find a cure.

Only when Gregorio Revultas, during the first years the French Revolution, begins to connect with Indians as equals and to improve sanitation, increase garbage removal, and install public baths in the poor neighborhoods of Mexico City that the plague moves away to the north. Dr. Gregorio has learned that plagues are deeply connected to enviornment destruction and social repression. At the same time Dr. Gregorio rids himself of his Spanish prejudices, finding a new home in Mexico where he writes down his life. Book One reads like an 18th century historical chronicle.

The second Dr. Gregory Revultas in Book Two finds his beloved Sandra falls ill with the plague. Sandra is not Mexican but is a wonderful Jewish-American actress whose performance in Lorca draws young Chicanos from the barrio who become her protectors when her illness worsens. Again, society is divided in rich and poor classes, but Dr. Gregory becomes part of growing community in the barrio who act to help Sandra with her disease. Again Gregory's grandfather Damian is his spirit guide.

Gregory and Sandra go to Mexico to the village of Tepotzotlan where the first Dr. Gregorio lived and was buried. The 2nd Dr. Gregory even starts reading the historical chronicle of the first. Dr. Gregory is learning that healing only comes from creation of a beloved community around Sandra as well as connecting with the cuanderos and doctors of the past. This community can prolong Sandra's life but not stop the plague from killing her; all the while the second Gregory constantly writes about his life with Sandra. Book Two reads like a contempoary magic realist novel with spirit guides and a elderly neighbor with a jaguar as a pet. It's all connected!

In Book 3 Canada, the United States, and Mexico have joined into one country but the same rigid class structure still exists in a science fiction story. The 3rd Dr. Gregory heads a medical team that fights plagues caused by horrible pollution. He lives in the ranch house built by his grandfather Gregory and constantly reads novels written by his grandfather Gregory in grandfather's library though most people just read computer books. Again he has spirit guides of Papa Damien and grandfather Gregory. His girlfriend Gabi is turned off by the old books and in order to accelerate her career has her arm replaced by a computer arm. As Dr. Gregory reads his grandfather's novels, he begins thinking that the novels are really history, a history that helps him to understand his society and eventually to find a cure for the third plague.

So how does the 3rd Gregory find a cure? We have threatening new diseases like ebola virus, AIDS and SARS? Indeed Morales has been telling us throughout his novel that diseases are connected to environment pollution and to extreme poverty; these diseases have a history. We like Dr. Gregory need to stop seeing diseases in isolation and learn the history of these diseases. Thus the spirit guides from the past are teaching the 3rd Dr. Gregory important lessons.

Morales believes that stopping the plague can only happen by healers who at the same time improve life for the poor and clean up environmental pollution. So the 3rd doctor Gregory must learn all the historical doctors' writing and the native traditions of healing before he can finally discover a cure. Alejandro Morales has written a brilliant and insightful novel The Rag Doll Plagues.

Nice Jewish Girl Gone Really Bad

Leslie Schwartz's novel Jumping the Green could be subtitled "Nice Jewish Girl Gone Really Bad" as the 29-year old heroine Louise Goldblum, a San Francisco artist, takes a walk on the wild side after her older sister Esther gets murdered. The heroine gets involved with a s-m relationship with a photographer Zeke who beats her up, humiliates her etc. The novel alternates chapters of Louise's anti-romance with Zeke with flashbacks to her childhood as the youngest sibling of 5 with two alcoholic parents in the South Bay suburbs in the 1970s. Actually, the best parts of the novel as these flashback chapters. Schwartz portrays the lost 5 siblings running abandoned by their present-but-absent parents in this portrait of the bourgeois-life-gone-wrong.

Paula Woods' novels about justice

Paula Woods writes a mystery series about an African-American woman L.A.P.D. detective named Charlotte Justice whose main concern is getting justice in Los Angeles. I've just read the 2nd and 3rd novel in the series: Stormy Weather and Dirty Laundry. Woods’ first novel, the excellent Inner City Blues, takes place during the devastating 1992 riots, but Stormy Weather takes places during the so called rebuilding after the riots.

Both of Woods' novels are good, fast paced detective stories. In Stormy Weather the heroine Justice investigates the suspicious death of a pioneering black film director Maynard Duncan, who is her father’s generation. Woods says as a child she was fascinated by black actors in early Hollywood films, so in this novel she gave these pioneering actors a history of their own, showing how these Hollywood black pioneers fought prejudice.

Also Justice’s supervisor Lt. Firestone has been sexually harassing Justice and Detective Gena Cortez, so Justice’s search is for personal justice as well as to solve the mysterious death of Duncan. The two women don’t trust one another but still suffer racial and gender discrimination in the LA.P.D. so they must unite to fight this harassment.

Stormy Weather establishes Charlotte's life as part of a upper middle class black family in Baldwin Park. The family scenes and conflicts are well drawn. The novel includes fascinating tales of how the heroine's parents, her uncle, and also the film director pushed their way into the upper middle class by sheer force, brains, hard work, and determination. Charlotte is always in conflict with her upwardly striving mom who doesn't like her daughter working at the L.A.P.D. because the mother thinks police work is too low class and too dangerous. Stormy Weather as an excellent detective story capturing the the history of African-Americans long struggle for decent treatment and opportunities in Los Angeles.

In Dirty Laundry, in contrast, Woods paints a good portrait of mid-1990s Los Angeles when detective Justice investigates the murder of a Korean-American journalist Vicki Park, who is working for a Latino candidate wanting to be Los Angeles’s 1st Latino mayor. What's great is the description of Los Angeles east of La Brea starting when a multi-cultural crew of cops--white, Korean, black--converge on the Koreatown location where the dead woman is found. During the investigation Justice works with Asian Task Force Det. Young "King" Kang, to help solve the crime.

Also, Woods highlights the dirty politics of the mayor race where twenty-four candidates –black, white, Latino, Jewish--are running to replace the retiring black mayor. Many of the candidates and their consultants--Latino, black, Jewish, Anglo-- collect dirt on each other and then proceed to spread it around. Dirty Laundry is the first book I've read to describe this new post-Rodney King riots Los Angeles multi-cultural world where opportunities abound for graft, corruption, honesty, and integrity. It's a fascinating read. What Woods also does well is have her heroine Charlotte Justice concerned with justice just like Chandler's once were. Woods is a novelist we need. Read her!

A.S. Byatt Misses the 1960s

I just finished reading A.S. Byatt's novel about the late 1960s called A Whistling Woman. Like many other people I loved her novel Possession, but A Whistling Woman doesn't quite measure up. The problem with this novel is it's supposed to be about the late 1960s in England but really has little to say about that era. The author so is resolutely anti-1960s one wonders why she wrote about that decade.

The story deals with a group of characters connected with the new University of North Yorkshire in the north of England: the Vice-Chancellor Gerard Wijnobel and his fellow scientisits at the university who want to put on a conference on mind-and-body connections; the rebel youth who set up an Anti-University next door who plan to disrupt the conference; Frederica, a TV personality living in London who has family near the university and whose TV crew will film the conference; and Joshua Ramsden, a very mad spiritual leader of a religious cult holed up in a farmhouse near the university. A. S. Byatt does know how to hook a reader into her plot. I excitedly read on waiting for the long-planned for confrontation between rebel youth and university scientists as well as for the religious commune to blow up. Byatt has some very amusing touches as the owner of the farmhouse where the religious cult lives has a sheep named Tobias who thinks he's a dog.

Another pleasure of this novel as well as Byatt's other work is her love of ideas and literature. She has characters refer to metaphor, 17th century English poetry, Alice in Wonderland--it's great fun to see characters know and love their English literature. So many American novelist seem afraid to write novels of ideas but Byatt seems to revel in ideas. Byatt also includes scientists discussing their work and it's also good to have their ideas, too.

One problem with the novel is none of the characters is very engaging. Joseph Ramsden, the leader of the religious communie, is the most fascinating character. Ramsden when a child discovered his mother and sister just murdered by his father. Byatt describes him as a fascinating mixture of deep religiousness and madness. After Ramsden becomes a spiritual leader, Byatt unfortunately drops him as an important character. Byatt is more interested in her dull bourgeois characters--her scientists and London arty bourgeois like Francesca, a TV personality, and her author roommate Agatha--and avoids going deeply into the really amazing characters whose actions drive the story: the rebel youth of the anti-University and the spiritual seekers in the farmhouse.

Another problem is many of these late 1960s literary and scientific ideas in which the older characters believe--in poetry, in psychobiology, experimental psychology, and English philosophy influenced by Wittgenstein-- were very limited to their time. At one point Byatt talks about professors in the 1960s liking 17th century English metaphysical poets--true enough--but neglects that the younger generation found these poets distant and remote and fled this
literature. The younger generation had little or no interest in the older generations' ideas.

Byatt only takes the ideas of scientists, professors, and media intellectual seriously while the author lampoons the ideas of the rebel youth and the religious commune. The novelist makes the youth sound like idiotic poor-mannered know-nothings. Yet these rebel young provide the novel's most exciting moments when they march on the scientific conference.

Most of the creative ideas by the late 1960s were coming from the youth at the Anti-University and the spiritual seekers like those in the religious commune. 1960s rebels made a real critique of scientists--for example, biologists for mistreating animals--but Byatt also describes the members of the religious commune as following a madman--so the religious people must be fools. Yet the religious ideas of Byatt's "fools" have also influenced Western religious life for the next three decades.

What about the idea of feminism? Byatt is first and foremost a feminist writer, incredibly influenced by the ideas of these late 1960s ideas particularly feminisme. The irony is thatByatt fed off the radicalism of the late 1960s which she is subtly denouncing in this book.

One good example is Byatt's treatment of the three main women characters. Byatt opens the novel with a chapter on Frederica and her young son; they are living with Agatha, another single mom with a career, and Agatha's young daughter. The household seems to work but Byatt always calls it an odd family. Jacqueline, a scientist at the univeristy, is the third working woman; she rejects marriage to a fellow scientist and instead concentrates on her research.

Throughout the novel there is some some blather about "Free Woman" who have careers and and also have romance when and if they want it. By novel's end both Frederica and her roommate Agatha have found mates. Frederica and Agatha are each pictured with new mate and child making a new family. Jacqueline is pictured as lonely nun devoting herself to her science. For a novel about the late 1960s the ending sounds like the 1950s: two good women each find a man while the woman who doesn't is sad, lonley creature. Blah blah blah. Byatt is taking a tiny part of feminism--the man cooks; the woman has a career--and incorporating it into the bourgeois marriage.

Skip this book. Go and read A.S. Byatt's Possession which is a wonderful literary who-done-it about literary scholars unearthing a romance between 19th century poets.

A Must Read: Lolita in Tehran

Azar Nifisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran is an amazing book, but the American reviews I have read focused solely on Nafisi, the feminist who teaches women in a underground literature class. These reviews miss the more important point: Nafisi is writing a memoir of herself and other secular intellectuals who first supported the Iranian revolution in which Ayatollah Khomeini gained power. Americans should read this book because we know so very little about Iran of the last twenty-five years. We should be wary: Nafisi is a flawed narrator, telling us only part of the story.

After receiving a PhD in English from the University of Okalahoma and getting married Nafisi returned to Iran in the spring of 1979. As Nafisi says, she returned at a crucial moment both for herself and for the new Iranian revolution. She was immediately hired to teach English literature at the University of Tehran. For two weeks in late January, 1979, after the Shah had been driven out, Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar, a democratic bourgeois liberal was prime minister, but most of the opposition including Nafisi herself had joined up with Ayatollah Khomeini against Dr. Bakhtiar.

Nafisi, whose father was jailed for four years by the shah, had been a student radical in Marxist Iranian student groups in Oklahoma in the 1970s and was all for destroying the “old,” which she and many other young Iranians thought meant booting out Bakhtiar, the liberal reformist. They wanted a revolution. Then Ayatollah Khomeini became head of state. When talking about her student radicalism Nafisi says, ‘”In the seventies—the mood—not just among Iranians but among American and European students—was revolutionary.” Not true. Radicalism among American students had peaked in 1970 and was subsidizing throughout the 1970s into reformism (only a really tiny minority of U.S. students were revolutionary). In the United States most young women in the1970s deserted the American New Left by the thousands to start reformist feminist groups.

What’s fascinating about this memoir is that Nafisi, the revolution’s supporter, started teaching fall semester 1979 at the University of Tehran where many of the battles of the revolution would be played out in the next two years. Nafisi says that at the university the Muslim students were a minority “overshadowed by the leftist and secular student groups,” but over the next two years Khomeini used the Muslim student groups and his militias to take over the university. Nafisi from her vantage point at the University of Tehran describes how the Khomeini government expeled professors deemed anti-regime, killed leftist students in demonstrations, arrested leftist students, jailed them for years and executed them. Khomeini consolidated his power over the country by purging just such leftists as Nafisi and her students.

In the midst of all this one day Nafisi cancels classes to attend a demonstration of women protesting the government’s policies instituting the veil and “curtailing women’s rights.” Her leftist women students followed the line of their Marxist groups denouncing the feminist protest as “deviant, divisive and ultimately in service of the imperialists” and supported the government. At the protest Nafisi saw vigilantes attack the women with “knives, clubs and stones.” That meeting was a turning point.

She herself first ran into problems teaching Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Two powerful Muslim students repeatedly attacked the novel in class as immoral, decadent western literature, so she had her class put the book on the trial. In her defense of the novel in class Nafisi says Gatsby had a dream of the past that ignored reality in present—living in the dream killed him. She then compares her generation of revolutionaries to Gatsby: “What we in Iran have in common with Fitzgerald was this dream [of revolution] became our obsession … this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in realization, for which any amount of violence might be justified or forgiven ….” She believed that she, her leftist students, and her Muslim students were all being devoured by their dreams just like Gatsby was. Soon she and her two women professor friends were expelled from the university for not wearing the veil.

To me, this section of the book titled “Fitzgerald” is the most moving and enlightening.
When Nafisi first returned to Iran she had been a leftist who wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Mike Gold, the proletarian novelist and literary critic (actually I love proletarian literature as I left the bourgeois feminists to write about working class women in literature). By the time Nafisi was thrown out of the university, she had abandoned the working class Gold for bourgois writers who focused on women—Jane Austen or Henry James with his strong women characters in his novels Daisy Miller and Washington Square or Nabakov’s Lolita—as well as Fitzgerald.

Nafisi does for me the impossible: gets me interested in Henry James, a writer I have always ignored. She does this by showing how the four writers—Nabokov, James, Austen, and Fitzgerald—all opened up democratic space in the novel where women as well as men had liberty, integrity of the self, choices to make, and the right to happiness. Nafisi says what she likes these novels is summed up in a comment on Henry James: He always had a protagonist who desired “to preserve a sense of personal integrity in the face of outside aggression.” Nafisi becomes a celebrant of these bourgeois novelists who give their characters liberty--the right to protect themselves against outside power.

I think Nafisi is a fine literary critic but often this book lacks humility of self-analysis and reads like one long rage against Islamic fundamentalists. The closest she comes to self-analysis is when she analyzes Gatsby and her own use of the dream detached from reality. Did she regret her past actions being in coalition with Khomeini? She eludes to it but avoids dealing with it head on. She never plainly discusses when she ceased supporting the Islamic revolution and instead became a celebrant of the bourgeois novel of civil liberties.

Nafisi’s book isn’t George Orwell’s Homage to Catelonia or Richard Wright’s American Hunger. Both are great books because they have self-analysis showing how the heroes disillusionment with Communist led to their leaving the party. Even after they split with the Communist Party, Orwell was still a socialist and Wright a fighter for civil rights. Their books leave us not with rage but with self-analysis and humility. Nafisi lacks both the self-analysis and humility. Her book misses greatness.

But Nafisi gives us Iran, a country we need to know here in America as we’ve been cut off from any knowledge of them for 25 years. In 1987 Allameh Tabatabi University promised to hire her if she wore the veil. She made the compromise. Some of her former students rejoined her classes, telling her of years of their imprisonment; rapes in jail; execution of their friends. The suffering toughened the Iranian feminists, young and old. We feminists in the United States had a lark compared to them.

Nafisi describes how Iranianwomen students were still continually harassed at their college for being caught wearing pink socks or lipstick. By 1995 Nafisi can’t stand the harassment at work of herself and her students so she resigns to start her underground class.

When she and her women students talk in her underground class, they never have political discussions. They discuss boyfriend jilting them, being sexually harassed, being beaten by their husbands—very intimate topics. I can not believe they never discussed their own political histories. These were women who were had lived gut-wrenching politics—some had been in jail. So why does Nafisi omit their political discussions? Did the leftists students ever re-evaluate their groups’ alliance with Khomeini in 1979-80? Who knows? Her seven women students, as my friend Keiko Amano said, lack character development and tend to blend into one another.

Nafisi gives fascinating descriptions of how she, her friends, her students and family committ small acts of defiance: her husband’s drinking bootleg vodka; her family has satellite TV; one female student wore outlawed pink socks; another young woman having red nail polish she hides in gloves when she walks on the streets. This part of the book shows the culture resistance in the 1990s—a resistance that must contributed to that political opposition by 2000 when ¾ of Iranians voted against their government.

Dear reader, this a book we should all read. Now over half of Iran’s university students are women. Our mass media is so ignorant of Islamic countries that they neglect to show us in Iran fundamentalists are clearly a minority. Maybe Islamic fundamentalists are minorities in all their societies as they are in Iran? Nafisi is surely not alone but part of a larger movement wanting to bring human rights and civil liberties to Middle Eastern countries.

It is who have to learn about them. Dear reader, you still must read this book if you want to understand more about Iran.

Dressing for Global Warming

It's been hot all week here in the West--really hot. I live on the 2nd floor of a two-story apartment so my apartment is hot all day. I need more hot weather clothes. I read in the magazine section about how to avoid heat exhaustion.

Last summer was one long, hot summer with horrble hurricanes battering Florda. Same this summer. More hot! More hurricanes! Scientists say maybe bigger hurricanes are caused by global warming but Bush says no. How about the heat waves? What's the connection to global warming? I bet there's a connection. We also in L.A. might have an energy shortage so we get warnings: "Don't use excess electricity! Turn off computer when not using it!"

So, we need to dress for global warming:
1. Bring water bottle with you at all times. Drink water. More water. Drink some more!
2. Wear a wide brimmed hat that covers your face. Those baseball caps don't cut it. Get a real hat with a wide brim!
3. Use sunscreen with high spf.
4. Don't forget sunglasses.
5. Light colors: white, beige, pastels.
6. Cottons and linens.
7. Wear light colored flowing light weight clothes. No dark. No black. Don't wear those black jeans! Forget about dark blue jeans! Think Arabs in long white clothing!
8. Bermuda shorts are back.
9. For men, tank tops, bermuda shorts, and flip flops.
10. For women, sundresses and sandals.
11. No necktie and no jacket in the office. Only short-sleeved casual shirts. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the government started a national "No jacket, no tie" campaign this month. The Japanese government wants public workers to leave their ties and jackets at home so that air conditioning can be turned down to save energy.
12. Don't get carried away with summer clothes in U.K. offices, particularly showing off the tatoos as U.K. bosses are often put-off by tatoos.
13. If it's really hot outside and you have nothing to wear, make instant cut-offs and tank-tops. Just take that pair of long pants and that much-too-big t-shirt you dislike and a scissors!
14. Light weight sarong--you need lessons to learn how to tie it to make five new outfits! Both sexes can wear a sarong in the South Seas so they can it outside of the South Seas, too.

Defending Abortion Rights

Last Friday from 5:00-6:00 I participated in the Progressive Jewish Agenda's pro-choice pro-abortion demonstration in Los Angeles at 3rd and /Fairfax near the Farmer's Market. It was a typical Los Angeles street corner demonstration with about 40 pickets on four corners; most were young women with a few men and middle aged women like me. A lot of cars honked in support, but a bus driver did argue with me, saying he's anti-abortion. Most people seemed supportive or neutral. A woman lawyer came down from the Writer's Guild (Screenwriter's ) across the street and held up a handmade sign. A male colleague of hers from the Writer's Guild office also came down. The woman lawyer asked him, "Are you going to join the line?" He said, "No, it's too noisy. The demonstration is making it difficult for people to work." This was at 5:45 pm Friday.

I carried two signs: one in Spanish and one in English. This made picketing harder work but I wanted to reach everybody so I held up my two signs. The Spanish sign said in Spanish, "Reproductive rights are human rights." Great idea. But if I'd make my own signs, I'd say: "Keep Legal abortion: it protects everybody's rights." I think so. People who are against abortions don't have to have them when it's legal. I respect that 100%.

I'd also have new signs: "Legal abortions save lives" and "Illegal abortion causes 83,000 women's deaths globally." Also true. I want to get across the message that so-called right-to-lifers are, I think, right-to-deathers--causing women's death and injuries by the thousands. I think the term "right-to-life" is absolutely untrue when describing those against abortion. I think we should change the image of the word "right-to-life" so it only applies to those for legal, safe abortion.

If we want to have more signs, we can publicly support national health care for all pregnant woman to save women's lives and reduce infant mortality. Since 50,000,000 don't have health insurance in this country (including a number of my friends) we have the highest infant mortality rates in the industrial world. How about a sign: "Reduce infant mortality: national health insurance for all!"

I think that the Republicans have been chipping away at abortion rights for a long time. We can get too involved looking at the trees--Bush's nomination of Roberts--that we loose sight of the forest--abortion rights are getting restricted over the last decade. In some rural areas, there are no clinics available, so poor women who lack money to travel to a nearby clinic don't have access to safe abortion at all. I think we need a strategy of fighting the Roberts nomination as part of an overall plan to reverse the trend against abortion and restore safe, legel abortion rights and access in this country. Also, Republicans support corporations which offer less health insurance to their employees--raising infant mortality. Republicans have policies which causes more infant deaths.

One way to really save lives is join with others this month in peaceful pro-abortion picket lines. It's empowering. It's envigorating.

Poetry as Revolution: Berkeley 7/17/05

BERKELEY POETRY CONFERENCE
40TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION

SUNDAY JULY 17TH 2005 10:30AM-5PM
AT BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS
CEDAR AND BONITA

'POETRY AS REVOLUTION'

10:30 AM THEME STATEMENT
LED BY PAUL SAWYER, MINISTER-POET
12:15 LUNCH DONATION
1:00 PM PETER DALE SCOTT
JACK HIRSCHMAN
DAVID MELTZER
KUSH
ALTA
JOHN OLIVER SIMON
SARAH MENEFEE
AL YOUNG POET LAUREATE CALIFORNIA

OPEN READING WILL FOLLOW THE FEATURED READERS

On the theme "Poetry as Revolution," it will bring together such notable Bay Area poets as Peter Dale Scott, Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Alta, John Oliver Simon, Al Young (poet laureate of California) Sarah Menefee, Kush, and others. They will read and dialogue about the responsibility of poets for envisioning and creating a transformed world community.

This Berkeley Poetry Conference celebrates the 40th anniversary of the renowned Berkeley Poetry Conference of July 1965, that brought together such legendary poets as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Alan Ginsberg, Ed Dorn, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Brother Antoninus, Philip Lamantia, John Wieners, Kirby Doyle and others. Coming from "the New American Poetry " movement, they stressed the spoken word beyond the printed page that engages the world and participates in the cultural revolution, then developing particularly out of the free speech movement in Berkeley.

As Charles Olson said at the time, "Words are value, instruction, action. And they've got to become political action. They've got to become social action. The radicalism lies from our words, alone… Poetics is politics, poets are political leaders today.."

To commemorate the radical spirit of these poets of this event 40 years ago, many of whom are no longer here in the flesh, this Berkeley Poetry Conference is being held Sunday July 17th at the Berkeley Fellowship.
At 10:30 AM, Paul Sawyer minister-poet, a participant in the 1965 conference and former minister of the Fellowship, will develop, along with musicians and other poets, the theme of "Poetry As Revolution" Lunch will be served at 12:15 and featured poets will carry on readings and dialogue beginning at 1PM.

Regaining Bourgeois Paradise in Los Angeles

I have to confess I just read with guilty pleasure Michelle Huneven’s second novel Jamesland. Of course, this is a Los Angeles novel, but for the longest while I read I debated with myself, so what’s so L.A. about this novel?

Set in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles, the fiction has three main characters: Alice Bloch, a rather lost young woman who is the great-great-granddaughter of philosopher William James; Pete Ross, a fat 46 year old mentally ill former chef who lives with his mom; and Helen Harland, the new minister of the local Unitarian church. These three become friends, bonding over Helen’s Wednesday night seminars where she has different speakers on the variety of religious experiences rather like an ongoing William James seminar—the author, of course, of the Varieties of Religious Experience. Never being fan of William James, I was amused to find myself in Jamesland—at one point the characters even go to séance.

I thought, couldn’t this novel be set anywhere? Helen is a new minister who goes to some small English town trying to bring God and spirituality back to the congregation who want none of it. Of course, I admitted, I did enjoy about reading about Los Feliz district which is near where I live. Like the characters in the book I, too, have gone on hiking dates in Griffith Park and have gone to those meals in nearby Armenian restaurants enjoying eating exactly the same food as the characters in the book. Huneven, who works as a restaurant critic, describes my favorite meal of lamp chops and rice at the Armenian restuarant.

What bothered me about this book is my suspicion is that really it’s about the restoration of the bourgeois paradise in Los Angeles. How could I, a child of the beats, like such a novel? Alice lives in her great-aunt’s expensive craftman house that she will one day inherit, but has let the gardens gone to seed, never used the fine silver and Limoges porcelain. She’s the bourgeois girl gone wrong: wrong job in a bar; wrong man who’s married. Her predicament is, of course, to go right. She needs to get another job so when someone asks her at a party or on a cruise, "What do you do?" she'll have an answer.

Minister Helen’s predicament is she wants to open her congregation of stubborn secular humanists up to religion that they resist. Finally, Pete Ross, a former chef who owned two restaurants before he cracked up, aspires to have a romance with a bourgeois woman. Well aware that the last thing bourgeois women want is a unemployed fat man who lives with his mom, Pete knows that in order to get his woman he needs to regain his bourgeois status as a man with an accpetable job.

Pete start’s cooking for Alice and Helen in regular Friday evening dinners, and in these dinners they all slowly regain bourgeois paradise. I must confess I fell in love with Pete: so rude but such a good cook! I loved following him around shopping for food, adored the menus and the descriptions of him cooking. Yes, I must confess, I was suckered into rooting for Pete as he has to prove himself in his new job as chef for an expensive new restaurant.

What could be more Los Angeles than this fixation on food that Huneven captures so well? The menus! The farmer’s markets! Opening night at the restaurant! Yadada yah! Yes, it’s a Los Angeles novel about this city’s two great obsessions: exploring 8 million different religions and eating good food. Yes, Los Angeles food has improved in recent years. One can even track bourgeois habits of Los Angeles in its differing attitudes toward food over the decades.

In the 1950s L.A. had only a food "good" restaurants specializing in French food, steaks, and Cantonese. Hippies, those great populizers, followed the beats in exploring mystical experiences from around the world and in eating foods from northern Chinese to Japanese to Mexican to North African to West Africa . Let's not forget two other California populizers: chefs Julia Child and Alice Waters

Huneven has perfectly captured post-hippie post-Child post-Waters Los Angeles 1990s bourgeois cooking based on farmer’s markets and multi-cultural French-Mexican-Asian-North African-Middle Eastern cooking. Yes, Alice and Helen love Peter's meals, each one lovingly prepared. Of course, when Peter meets a Persian rug dealer, he gets a new dish from him, a lamb stew, which he cooks. Yes, these meals are healing for all concerned: they cook and eat their way to sanity! Besides having better food, the new L.A. of Jamesland has much more racial and gender equality than segregated old L.A.--a gay minister substitutes for Harland when she's on vacation.

Jamesland is really a Los Angeles novel after all. This new L.A. of Jamesland has bourgeois Angelinos learning about each others religions in Wednesday night seminars and eating each other’s foods on Friday nights. Pete and Alice find bourgeois redemption. I can live with that. Now if only the Helen Harlands of the world, those stubborn spiritualists, can learn to appreciate secular humanists! The novel's flaw is that Helen isn't portrayed as the flawed comic character she is: one can't push one's spirituality onto others. But generally, this novel is a gentle bourgois comedy that ends well.

Happy July 4th!

What's patriotic?

The Ten Original Amendments: The Bill of Rights.

Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791.

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

AMENDMENT II

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

AMENDMENT III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

AMENDMENT IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

AMENDMENT V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

AMENDMENT VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

AMENDMENT VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

AMENDMENT VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

AMENDMENT IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be con- strued to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

AMENDMENT X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

Abortions save lives

Sandra Day O'Connor, a swing vote on the Supreme Court who cast the decisive vote to retain abotion rights in 1992, has just resigned. President Bush gets to appoint a Supreme Court Justice to replace her. This battle over the nominee will probably be heated all this summer.

I know a little about illegal abortions because I had one before 1972 and wound up hemorraghing, needing to be rushed to the hospital to save my life. Since this is so personal an issue, I paid attention to the death of Rosaura Jimenez, a young Mexican-American woman who lived in Texas after abortion was legalized. She couldn't afford a legal one so got an illegal abortion and died. Yes, women do die from illegal abortions even after the procedure was legalized.

What bothers me a lot is the characterization of anti-abortionists as pro-life. I find this untrue rhetoric. For 30 years statistics have shown that the legalization of abortion in 1972 has, according to the Guttmacher institute, improved " the health and well-being of American women. Deaths from abortion have plummeted, and are now a rarity. In addition, women have been able to have abortions earlier in pregnancy when the procedure is safest." The Guttmacher Institute says that rollbacks on abortion rights threaten this improvement in women's health and life.

The Guttmacher Institute gives specific statistics: "In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined ... to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200, but illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And these are just the number that were officially reported; the actual number was likely much higher." Again, thousands of women like myself were seriously injured every year by illegal abotions.

Anti-abortionists dispute these figures, and always ignore that the actual death figures could be higher even than Guttmacher Institute says. After all, abortion pre-1972 was illegal, and illegal activities are invaribly undereported. Thousands of women like myself were rushed to the hospital hemorrahging or with bad infections were also underreported because the reason for our hospital stays was covered up as mine was. Since abortion was legalized in California and a few other states beginning in 1967, one should use pre-1967 figures to gage the harm illegal abortion did to women.

Poor women and women of color had the toughest time getting safe illegal abortions. The Guttmacher Institute reports, "In 1962 alone, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. ...In New York City in the early 1960s, one in four childbirth-related deaths among white women was due to abortion; in comparison, abortion accounted for one in two childbirth-related deaths among nonwhite and Puerto Rican women."

Finally, even in 1972 with legal abortion many poor women had trouble getting them: "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in 1972 alone, 130,000 women obtained illegal or self-induced procedures, 39 of whom died. Furthermore, from 1972 to 1974, the mortality rate due to illegal abortion for nonwhite women was 12 times that for white women" (Guttmacher).

All the statistics show that legal abortions for the last 30 years have saved women's lives and reduced by huge amounts injuries from the procedure. Being pro-abortion is pro-life. It's about time we start saying being against abortion endangers women's health and lives. Anti-abortionists are not pro-life. We should quit calling them that. Having a legal abortion is ten times safer for women than having a baby in the United States. One last fact. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 80,000 women around the world still die each year of complications from illegal abortion. If anyone want to save lives, one could save thousands of women's lives around the world by getting them legal abortions.

Schwarzenegger gets an F in Education

Schwarzenegger was the commencement speaker June 14, 2005, at Santa Monica College, which he once attended in the early 1970s. Before he spoke, a overflow crowd of faculty, students, and community people went to the Board of Trustees asking the invitation be withdrawn, but the Board of Trustees refused. Then while he spoke about 300 people had a peaceful picket outside including four former mayors of Santa Monica-- Paul Rosenstein, James Conn, Judy Abdo and Michael Feinstein--while many inside the stadium frequently and loudly booed Schwarzenegger.

Since he’s been governor, Schwarzenegger has raised fees on college students, restricted access to public higher education, and cut the education budget drastically. Many Santa Monica College students want to transfer to UC, but Schwarzenegger raised fees 14% at UC (within the last three years fees have already rise from $14 to $21 for the community colleges). This fee raise at UC made it impossible for some students to attend. Keith Mason, a teacher at Santa Monica College and one of the rally’s organizers said, Schwarzenegger’s polices were like a Robin Hood horror film " where the governor 'steals from the poor and gives to the rich.'"

The day before the commencement, Schwarzeneggar unveiled his plan to call for a November special election costing the state over $60 million with plans to reduce the power of that legislature and states’ employees unions. He has specially targeted such “special interests” as nurses whose butts he wanted to kick as well as firefighters, teachers, and policemen. All the while he raises over $50 millions from huge corporations who get tax breaks in California.

Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said the state uses “students as cash-cows when finances go bad." Instead of raising taxes, Schwarzenegger raises student fees for higher education. At UC since 2002 fees have gone up 60% for undergraduates (up 14% in fall 2004 for in-state undergraduates). He taxes students, not the rich!

To make matters worse, Schwarzenegger wanted in 2004 to cut UC’s budget 7 percent. Schwarzennegger's cut in UC's budget forced an end to the 40-year historic promise in California that any student who does the work gets into higher education in this state. In the spring of 2004 over 7,000 in-state students eligible for UC were told they couldn’t go. Only by late July when the Democrats forced Schwarzenegger to restore UC’s funding were 7,000 students given places but it was too late for most of them. Those 7,000 students also had their lives disrupted by Schwareneggar’s budget cuts. When community college fees were raised from $14 to $21, over 125,000 students had been already driven out of college even before Schwarzenegger took office. Schwarzenegger continues to disrupt thousands of young people's lives by making even public higher education too expensive for them to attend.

Schwarzenegger also made a deal with the California Teacher’s Association in 2004 to cut the state’s education budget $2 billion, suspending the state's constitution to do so. What impact has the $2 billion cut in education had? Delaine Eastin, former State Superintendant of Schools said, “If you adjust for the cost of living, you can make the case that we are close to last in per-pupil spending in this country.” For example, California’s per pupil spending is around $6500, while New York spends nearly $11,000 per student. Schwarzenegger has the accomplishment of reducing the state's education budget to an ever lower level.

Schwarzenegger’s cuts will harm poor children the most. West Contra Costa Unified School District, an urban area encompassing some of the poorest parts of the San Francisco Bay area, was forced to cut its budget by $28 million over the last three years, eliminating all school sports programs, closing all its libraries and pink-slipping more than 200 employees in March, 2004. According to Shane Goldmacher in the August, 19, 2004, online Nation the cuts amount to nearly $1,000 per student over three years. Taking away students’ libraries is disrupting their lives to an incredible degree!

While rich schools will have parents raising money to make up some of the deficits, poor schools like West Contrast Cost Unified School District lack this parents’ base, so poor children will suffer the most. In other words, rather than raise taxes on the wealthiest (and there’s huge wealth in California), Schwarzenegger makes poor children suffer ever-worsening education. Schwarzenegger picks on poor children to carry the budget on their backs.

Goldmacher reported that "in May 2004, Field Poll, 62 percent of Californians (and a plurality of Republicans) said that taxes will have to be raised to resolve the state's budget deficit, but Schwarzenegger will have none of that." I have students in community colleges who weekly work 30-40 hours and then go to college. For thousands of self-supporting students, UC is now out of their reach. Schwarzenegger's policies make students subsidize the ultra rich in California. He seems to be motivated by shortsighted greed: at all costs never never raise taxes on those who drive $80,000 hummers, send their children to private schools, have 2 or 3 homes.

We should think about tens of thousands of students’ lives in California Schwarzenegger has already disrupted.Schwarzenegger's main accomplisment regarding education in California is to make a bad situation much, much worse. Yes, indeed, Governor Schwarzenegger has flunked education.

Celebrate Kenneth Rexroth!

Celebration of Kenneth Rexroth's 100th Birthday
Sunday, June 4, 4:00, Santa Monica Beach, Santa Monica /CA
behind lifeguard station #24, about 3/4 miles south of Santa Monica Pier parking lot just south of Ocean Park
A reading of his poems, free & open to th public

Worldwide celebration:
January 19th, 6 pm Kaminarimon, Sensoji Temple, Asakusa, Tokoyo, Japan
March 20th, 5 pm, Grey Area, All Areas, Oude Lelierstraat 2, Amsterdam, Holland
June 25th, 2-4 pm, Rexroth Panel, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont CA USA
August 22, 4:30, Muhinjuan, Doshisha University, Guest House, Kyoto, Japan
August 28th--all day, Wat Chai Wattanarm, Ayutthaya, Thaland

Kenneth Rexroth more than any other writer created the best in California culture. He was the father of the Beats in San Francisco, Long before Kerouac, Rexroth had hitchhiked across the country, working at odd jobs. Linda Hamalian has said, “Rexroth slipped into the spell of the American West, of the California spaces, the mountains, the forests, the wild terrain, and the Pacific Ocean itself.” He saw the divine in the natural world around him, and his poetry exactly captures the natural world he loved. Long before poet Gary Snyder Rexroth was writing an environmentalist poetry. He was a pioneer translator of Japanese and Chinese poetry into English, paving the way for generations to turn to Asian philosophy and art.

Rexroth was a populist, mystic, and pacifist, participating in radical protests from fighting for workers’ justice in the 1930s to the 1960s where he supported the civil rights movement and was against the Vietnam War. He declared that he was a radical, "a social outcast [who] identified...with the forces striving for a better social system, a system in which humanity and leisure for vital appreciation of the arts would be the common property of all men." He was always ignored by East Coast critics and establishment.

Linda Hamalian has said that Rexroth wrote poetry for

‘all producing classes of the west,’ the workers and the farmers the country depended on, using the words from factories, farms, and trades, as Whitman would have them do. Rexroth was pleading, ultimately, for the recognition of regional literary magazines filled with good writing. More basically, he was stating that in order for people to tap into their creative energy, and to respect, seek and support the art and poetry of others, they had to feel connected to their immediate environment. In a sense, Rexroth was redefining democracy in dynamic terms by asserting that a free country was a country that nurtured and validated an artistic sensibility in all people, a position that Whitman had articulated more than fifty years earlier in "Democratic Vistas."

He took his ideas into action in the late 1940s in San Francisco when he organized a salon at his house for new poets—the beats. In this salon Asian and Native American literatures were respected as much as the European literature. He started reading poetry to jazz. He started a poetry of democracy, of environmental sanity, of equality for all people. Yes, we should all celebrate Kenneth Rexroth.