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Politics

Moving the Goalpost

Next attempt at sending this:

“Moving the goalposts (or shifting the goalposts) is a metaphor, derived from goal-based sports, that means to change the criterion (goal) of a process or competition while still in progress, in such a way that the new goal offers one side an intentional advantage or disadvantage.”

Let’s give it a look – here are the original goals that were to be met to vote for the tax scam :

Well, McCain decided to forgo this vote.  The rest caved. Every single one. Collins is for me the worst of the traitors, because she once got my hope up. As the Maine media point out:

The Maine senator voted for the GOP tax bill earlier in December after securing promises from President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that Congress would pass three separate measures she says would mitigate the damage done by the repeal of the individual mandate. (Several studies have found that while the policies might prevent some of the large insurance premium hikes caused by nuking the individual mandate, they would do nothing to fix the large increase in the number of uninsured Americans or the threat of “bare” counties with no insurance options on the individual market.)

Collins has moved the goalposts several times since making these demands—first saying they had to pass before the Senate took its first vote on the tax bill, then saying they had to pass before the final tax bill came back from the conference committee, then saying they had to pass before the end of the year. Now, according to Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and other influential House members, action on Collins’ health care priorities will likely be put off until next year, long after she has to decide whether or not to vote for the tax bill. And now that Republicans no longer need her vote to get the bill across the finish line, it’s unclear whether the health care stabilization policies will be taken up at all.

Collins told TPM on Thursday that the Senate would vote to insert the provisions into the end-of-year spending bill, but refused to answer what she would do if the House voted to strip them out.

She did, however, complain that the media’s treatment of her was “sexist.”

Here is what happens when you play with the goalposts as demonstrated with photographs of random posts:

You cut people off from health insurance.

Infrastructure will crumble even more.

The democratic process will be stopped.

The frenzied feeding for the few will begin.

The future will darken,

The tears will flow.

Hope will wilt.

And all we can do is stand by and document, since we are no longer fairly represented in the process.

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Blanket of Fog

Not only is there concerted action to keep the facts of the new tax bill from the public, as some of the links below spell out (articles include conservative authors!)

WATCH: Republican desperately tries to avoid question about GOP’s tax breaks for the ultra-rich

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/12/18/the-most-infuriating-falsehoods-about-the-tax-bill-and-those-who-told-them/?utm_term=.fc64afafa79a

The fast summary of this link: At every step of the way the GOP has misrepresented the nature of the bill while individual lawmakers misled voters in insisting they would only vote for a tax plan under certain conditions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-7-myths-of-the-gop-tax-bill/547322/

It is also true that those who vote on this bill claim to not have the foggiest idea what they are voting on or who included items that would benefit them.

CorkerKickback: Corker, the only prior No on the bill,  will personally benefit by millions of $ from the last minute inclusions of deductions for real estate businesses. But it was all fog to him: asked by the Internation Business Tribune he said: “I had like a two-page summary I went through with leadership. I never saw the actual text.” That’s how the fate of millions of people gets decided….

Hillsdale Handout: Senator Toomey is the sole beneficiary of a clause that helps a school that he heavily supports, Hillsdale college. He was not “aware that he his pet project was the only beneficiary of the clause.”

Cornyncharity: Sen. tells that last-minute provision enriching & other GOP lawmakers was added to the tax bill as part of an effort to “cobble together the votes we needed to get this bill passed”

PolarPayoff: Sen Lisa Murkowski’s vote was bought with, among other things, renewed access to arctic drilling. She claims to be unaware of the consequences, not lifting the fog blanket even with the easy move to read the New York Times…. link below.

All we can do is hope that they all get sent packing and on to this road in 2018.

 

 

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Random Associations to the Republican Tax Bill

 

Yes, you read that correctly – this week will be devoted to strange associations to this monster of a bill, as they pop into my head. And they are not about low hanging fruit but real consequences for large and vulnerable populations in our country.

One thought that came to mind when reading the analysis of how the bill surreptitiously (or not so surreptitiously) guts healthcare is that people need to eat more fruit to ensure strong immune systems. Not that they will have the money to buy those fruit because climate change has affected the prices – we see a steady increase.

Changes in climate are decimating citrus fruit groves, apple orchards, avocado farms. Factors involved are increased heat; increased chill; fires; floods; increased frequency and strength of storms, to name a few.

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/climate-change-what-it-means-for-fruits

Link below outlines the CA fire damage to orchards.

Back to buying fruit, now more expensive due to climate related shortages: even though the USDA strongly encourages people on food stamps to buy more fruit and vegetables (healthier, though less filling,) the folks who gave us the tax bill also plan to cut food stamps by 20 % over the next ten years.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tax-bill-entitlement-programs_us_5a280417e4b02d3bfc371f17.

I guess we will have to resign ourselves to seeing fruit not as the real thing, but in abstract representations: check out these Japanese shelters.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/konagai-japan-fruit-shaped-bus-stops

Or visit a banana museum:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/international-banana-club-museum

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bananenmuseum

Or stay in a fruit shaped guest house at some fancy Asian resort:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/banphasawan

And just think how many people will profit from the tax bill, so they can stay at the above resort in Thailand… (the very ones who had the funds to stay there all along.)

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Gratefulness

For the week of Thanksgiving I will list some of the things I am deeply grateful for. As per usual, they are all over the map, which is reflective, I believe, of an interesting life rather than a scattered brain. Or so I tell myself.

I’ll start with the folks at Dark Inquiry who are living proof that you can marry arts and politics in ways that matter (one of my own quests). They are models for applied activism, not just for moving something in our heads.

They set out with a project called White Collar Crime Risk Zones. https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com 

It took the fact that police departments across the US use software to anticipate hot spots of street crime and turned the concept on its head for us to anticipate where white collar crime might occur. The police software is, of course, guided by algorithms that use biased data sets focussed on poor communities and communities of color. Dark Inquiry reappropriates this algorithm applying it to the community at large. If you click the link above, and allow access to your geographical location, the map will provide white crime targets in red. It is funny, cynical, thought-provoking – and based on the systems art of Hans Haacke, who did something along those lines tracking a particular NYC slumlord in the early 70s. Here is the map that came up when I engaged with the website.

Today’s photographs are of some of the PDX sites above in deep red…

The collective has now turned to a practical, political matter – the fact that multitudes in this country cannot put up bail and so linger in jail before their trials. https://bailproject.org/the-approach/

The new app designed by them and offered as rhetorical software, is called Bail Bloc, conceptual art linked to digital activism.If you sign up to the app, a complicated process is started, all out of your sight, not interfering with what you do on the computer, but using its space for complex computations. Your donation of that computing power earns cryptocurrency that is pooled by the collective, exchanged into real money that is donated to the bail project.

The exact details, about the open source process and the collective, can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/can-a-social-justice-app-be-art?utm_source=Narratively+email+list&utm_campaign=ccb4f74bd3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f944cd8d3b-ccb4f74bd3-66322689

Full disclosure: If you are like me it will take some time to overcome a hesitancy to sign up for this app, since I have no clue what powers I really support in this process, what entry holes into my computer I offer. But I love – and am grateful for –  the idea that folks are trying to open-source help for those who need it most. I ask myself what is different for me who constantly answers to kick starter projects or some such? Fear of novel concepts like cryptocurrency or just being digitally vulnerable?

Thoughts to be mulled over while preparing the feast.

 

 

 

 

 

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Der Anschluss

Since Sunday you could not open the US or European newspapers I read and not find some speculative commentary about the  election results in Austria. A 31 year-old and his conservative party ÖVP won, closely followed by the neo-Nazi populist party FPÖ with whom they are in conversation over a coalition/majority government. Babyface Sebastian Kurz led his party into this win by aggressively pushing an agenda that focussed on anti-immigrant sentiment, Islamophobia and the restriction of refugee influx, including the closure of the Balkan routes which are safer escape routes for Syrians than crossing the Mediterranean. (Here is a profile published before the election. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/sebastian-kurz-hitting-the-austrian-election-trail-a-1172254.html

Add to that a decidedly anti-Semitic bend, overt racism and an anti-European agenda and you have Heinz-Christian Strache and his minions the FPÖ, now potentially governing with increased power. The FPÖ was already deeply ingrained in communal governments – their work there boasted of the fact that they refused housing for refugees unless the latter demonstrated fluent German, shortened any grants or expenses for cultural organizations that were deemed non-traditional, and established educational regulations that promoted exclusively Christian goals and information. Despite multiple scandals during their reign the people of Austria flocked to give them their vote.

Austrians have demonstrated an affinity for populist “values” before – when Hitler annexed the country in 1938 they were out in force welcoming him, and they ratified the annexation shortly thereafter with more than a 2/3 majority (the official NS version of over 90 % was debunked as falsified.) Much work has been done to show that later exculpatory attempts of historians around the Anschluss, claiming that the Austrians were forced into this mindset, were politically motivated and not true to the facts.

Here is a press photograph of the two women partnered with the respective election winners, doing a victory lap Sunday night – Blondies rule once again.

Attached are two good sources that describe the history in detail, with the Holocaust Museum providing background history.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anschluss-and-austrias-guilty-conscience-795016.html

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/anschluss

What gets to me is the new normal: when the populist Right got elected in 2000, the Israeli government threatened to recall its ambassador. Avraham Burg, the speaker of the Knesset, warned: “It’s very sad that 50 years after the Holocaust, the people of Austria are reluctant to understand the awful tragedy that the Nazi party brought to the world,” said Mr Burg. “We call on the world not to be silent and to strongly condemn the fact that a party which is very right wing and racist is going to be a legitimate part of the parliament in Austria.”https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/feb/03/austria 

Action, not just words.

And today: we wake up in our own country to the following tidbits: Right-wing twitter accounts associated with Scaramucci (remember him and his 15 seconds of fame?) post the following:

A Halloween costume manufacturer offers the following:

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/1.817676

And then there is this:

 https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/us-anti-semitic-incidents-spike-86-percent-so-far-in-2017

The rot refuses to die, no matter how much we want to tear it all down. Having been underground in the dark with optimal conditions for growth it is now an exploding fungus. The pretty surfaces of Innsbruck, one of Austria’s picturesque cities, cover harsher realities.

The monument below was built just after the war by the French, as a memorial to her fallen soldiers. Eventually it acquired the words “Pro Libertate Austriae Mortuis,” to honor all of  the war dead.
Close to the war memorial stands a much smaller memorial in shape of a Menorah for the victims of Kristallnacht, November 9 1938, initiated in 1997 (in a school contest!) The right-leaning Kronenzeitung came out with a complaint, predictably prefacing its concerns about money and questions about ulterior motives with “Nothing against memorials, but —.” The memorial features a menorah design, and a separate sign nearby with the details of the pogrom in Innsbruck. I unfortunately don’t have a photograph.

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Art and Politics (2)

Yesterday I mused about museums; today I’m thinking about artists. There is so much written about how artists engage in the political process that it is hard to choose what to highlight. In the end, I’ve decided to focus not so much on the making of art with political content, but the ways artists actually influence politics by entering into the public sphere.

My earliest awareness of artists’s political actions was in the 1960’s and 70’s around the persona of Joseph Beuys who taught and worked close to where I then lived. Among other things he was a co-founder of the Green Party, and his lectures focused on the need for space for creative thought which would help bring about structural change in society. His vision of the artist as a social actor has been enormously influential.

Here are some examples of others following later: As mayor of Tirana, Albania, Edi Rama, a former painter, decided to change the city with color (as well as a huge project of planting new green spaces.) The TED talk below has a short video on the project, and it is amazing. It changed the urban, the social and eventually the political landscape, quite literally. https://www.ted.com/talks/edi_rama_take_back_your_city_with_paint

Then there is Tania Bruguera, who announced that she would run for President of Cuba in 2018. Never mind that you can’t run for that office in Cuba…it is the political gesture of entering the public sphere as an artist to promote change. The link below gives an interesting overview of a life devoted to political rebellion.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/10/tania-bruguera-cuban-artist-fights-free-expression-160930124023219.html

An important support network for artists as activist is provided by the Creative Time Summits, annual conventions that gather international artists, writers, philosophers and political activists for thematically structured conferences. Their goal is to promote social change through art activism. Last year they met in D.C. before the election, inviting input to the theme Occupy the Future from citizens and grass root movements working within as well as disrupting the electoral process.  This year they met in Toronto to discuss Of Homelands and Revolutions, with a particular focus on indigenous people leading ongoing movements across continents.

The link gives a programmatic overview http://creativetime.org/summit/toronto-2017/

Here is one of their (timely) projects that caught my attention. It’s called Pledges of Allegiance – a serialized commission of sixteen flags, each created by an acclaimed artist. “We realized we needed a space to resist that was defined not in opposition to a symbol, but in support of one, and so we created a permanent space. The flag seemed an ideal form to build that space around both practically and symbolically,” says Creative Time Artistic Director Nato Thompson. Each flag points to an issue the artist is passionate about, a cause they believe is worth fighting for, and speaks to how we might move forward collectively. Conceived in response to the current political climate, Pledges of Allegiance aims to inspire a sense of community among cultural institutions, and begin articulating the urgent response our political moment demands.   

Pledges of Allegiance officially launched on Flag Day, June 14th. Each month a new flag will be raised on a flagpole atop Creative Time’s headquarters at 59 East 4th Street, and at partner sites nationwide. Here you can see the different flags so far and learn about the contributing artists:

http://creativetime.org/projects/pledgesofallegiance/

 

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Art and Politics (1)

Wouldn’t you know it. I thought I knew every major museum in NYC after having lived there for years and visited for many more. Turns out, I don’t – I have never been to the Queens art museum. This is a particularly regrettable fact given that the director of the museum is a woman of courage and deeply held convictions.

http://www.queensmuseum.org

Unlike almost all of her contemporary counterparts she is willing to engage in open politics – more power to her. The link attached below describes the role she has played in the last years and the causes she has fought for since Trump’s inauguration, the plight of the DACA recipients in particular. She is clearly paying a price for her outspoken involvement; although her Board seems to support her, various City councilmen are out to have her removed.

.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/arts/design/queens-museum-laura-raicovich-daca.html?_r=0

I know of only one other group of museums who were willing to step up and question the artificial separation between art and reality; see link below.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-entertainment-news-updates-march-museum-directors-react-to-proposed-1489682884-htmlstory.html

One can debate if the role of museums should be one of neutrality, as many insist, particularly the folks at the Smithsonian. The argument for taking the long view, letting art speak for itself rather than the museum speaking for or against political causes seems empty to me, when almost all museums show this or that work of political artists anyhow. If you curate shows that have political content, you might as well be open about where you stand regarding those contents. The viewers are smart enough to form their own assessments, as long as the opportunity to be exposed to differing points of view exist.

There will always be pressure from interest groups to have art suppressed – that has been true for as long as art exists. Just ask around Jewish museums in this country or in Germany, as one example. Or the Guggenheim, recently.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-spertus_21jun21-story.html

What we need now, in times where the role of art is undermined by those who have lots to loose with a more educated public, is individuals who stand up and speak truth; truth through the selection of what they are willing to show, as well as through directly addressing the relevant issues. Laura Raicovich is one of them.

Photographs are of street art found in various boroughs in NYC, most Bed-Stuy.

 

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The Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir

Show me someone’s blog that opens with an Emma Goldman quote, consider me hooked. If that quote refers to small communal interactions forming the kernel of possible societal change, consider me sold. Let me introduce you to the Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir.

Who am I talking about? A group of activists/artists who do both concert stage performances and agitprop actions to raise awareness of how we are mistreating our planet and our neighbors. They fight for earth justice, against consumerism, for first amendment rights and much more. Their recent visit to Portland was once again a coup by Boom Arts – bringing progressive artistry to an audience that is in need of and grateful for cutting edge theatre.

The NYC-based troupe is led by Billy Talen, an actor who uses comic theatre and music to get out the message – in ways that often risk persecution by the powers that be who are quite aware of how he lifts the veil on capital’s agenda. The link spells it out in more detail:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/27/reverend-billy-church-of-stop-shopping-black-friday

On Sunday night the artists met with members of our community, including Portland Resistance and Portland Tenants United for a community supper.

And since this week’s blog is dedicated to women’s issues, let’s focus on the women I encountered.

There were young women of the choir who managed to travel across time zones with infants and toddlers, putting in full performances, and still had the energy to meet new folks; young women who sang with beautiful voices.

 

There was the director of the company, who writes beautifully and provides organization and structure. There was her daughter who clearly shared her mother’s fierceness as well as the theatrical brilliance of her father.

http://www.revbilly.com/about_savitri_d

There were the Portland activists who lead the cause;

There were the folks from Boom Arts who surprise me every year with procuring ever better acts; doing their magic in getting people to return, fostering relationships, helping to keep the company afloat –  a special welcome here to the recent NYC transplant!

And then there was the kind of woman who models for all of us how to bring more peace and justice to the world in everyday life, managing the Sunnyside Community Center. She was celebrated and shown expressions of gratitude that her kind deserves and yet so infrequently receives.

It was an evening that conveyed energy, activism, community and above all hope – so direly needed in these times.

The troupe is off to England for their next adventure – friends over there, be on the look-out. These are performances you might not want to miss.

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On Lace and Limitations

 

I had never visited a bridal store until last Friday. My own wedding dress was bought off the rack at a Laura Ashley’s. The pastel flowery concoction received the dry comment of “You look like Alice in Wonderland,” from one of the more observant wedding guests.

(Yes, we do like jokes in our family…even for the official wedding picture)

Judge for yourself, but it is true that I was looking for adventure and I certainly share Alice’s curiosity and willingness to go to strange places.

Hilary Schor who teaches English and Comparative Literature at USC argued that Alice in Wonderland  can be read as a feminist text. Alice went underground to question the rules, is not punished for her refusal to obey commands and above all, gets away with her curiosity. Curiosity did not just kill the cat – think about all the stories where it was cause for the downfall of women – Eve, Pandora, Lot’s and Bluebeard’s wives – you name it. Curious women can, after all, acquire knowledge which in turn could threaten patriarchy.

Well, here it’s 2017 and it seems we are all going down the rabbit hole, encountering people as rabid as Carrol’s anthropomorphic counterparts. Just think of the debate around issues of equality in large corporations, or congress men calling for women to go back to being mothers and housewives, or women being advised by a female (!) Fox host “to engage in a little horizontal hula and then make him a sandwich,” or urged to be “the beta in a marriage…by Phyllis Shlafley’s daughter

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/is-this-the-most-sexist-fox-news-clip-ever-natural-state-of-women-is-to-be-the-beta-in-marriage/

I felt like an old grouch thinking these thoughts while photographing a radiant, beautiful young bride trying on her wedding gown. Her thoughts were on anything but the future of feminism, and of course they shouldn’t be. She was surrounded by lace, and satin, and pearls and all things glittery, clad in a modern gown equally romantic and sexy.

There will be time to think about it later. When the moment arrives, there will also be good books to read: the attached review spells it out in detail.

The future of feminism

And as a bonus we can throw in some thoughts on fake feminism.

 

The Sculpture of a “Fearless Girl” on Wall Street Is Fake Corporate Feminism

For now I wish the young couple all the best, and the kind of happiness I felt for 31 years now in a truly egalitarian marriage. (Do I hear someone muttering in the background that he’s doing all the cooking?)

 

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