George Bush talked this week about guest workers. It sounds so nice, so hospitable.

Deepa Fernandes tells a different story in her new book Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration. Peruvians and Bolivians invited to rebuild New Orleans went home broke and in debt. You’re welcome. Come again. In discussions with African American activists in New Orleans the workers are told, This is the new slavery.

Again, these stories have the power to convince the average American that the slippery rules made by their government are not in the best interest of human beings–that is, if you can convince them that the so-called guest workers are human beings. With white supremicists setting the immigration agenda, we have a few obstacles to deal with before we get to the point of basic humanity with some people. It is possible. I am thinking of Morgan Spurlock’s television show 30 Days during one episode of which a firm anti-immigration activist (a Cuban immigrant Minuteman, no less) lived with an illegal immigrant family from Mexico for 30 days. He may not have left his nagging anti-immigration views behind, but he certainly embraced the humanity of his hosts.

This is another wrenching story from Democracy Now yesterday. And there is a new shocking story today. Democracy Now is Fascism Watch Now. This story of immigration, the story of media consolidation, and the story of outsourcing the military make up the most important hour you can spend this week to stay informed about what happens when corporations rule the world. The wake up calls are sounding all around us.

read comments (0)

Last weekend the National Conference for Media Reform met in Memphis, Tennessee. Please don’t just pass over that information with mild interest. Video highlights and all audio are available for you to hear. Click. Listen. The depth of what is available is astonishing.

In particular, I want to mention Bill Moyers. He’s on fire, and I want you to burn with him. Yesterday’s Democracy Now! consisted only of headlines and a replay of most of Bill Moyers’ Plenary Speech to the conference (also available unedited). If you can spare only one hour listening online this week, listen to Bill Moyers.

Moyers hasn’t been silent since leaving PBS. He’s become even more outspoken than I recall him being in his years on television. The call for his return has succeeded. Bill Moyers will be back on PBS this Spring with “Bill Moyers’ Journal.”

A theme Bill Moyers has come back to often is the power of narrative. I’m sure I am not the only one who remembers his series from nearly 20 years ago, The Power of Myth, an extended interview with Joseph Campbell. It is clear to me that this experience had a profound effect on him and his understanding of the ways we use narrative. A speech he gave in December has been adapted as an article in the current issue of The Nation, “For America’s Sake”, published elsewhere as “The Narrative Imperative,” which gets closer to the heart of the matter.

What I hear Bill Moyers saying is this: we have the power, even the obligation, to change the stories being told us about our society. We should not sit passively listening to versions of how things came to be the way they are and why, versions that serve elites who hold money and power so tightly. This is what I have heard from one of my important teachers. Changing the stories is also an important means to change discussed in David Korten’s The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, a book that I read with a community group in anticipation of his visit to SLC last Fall (sponsored by the Sustainability Salon). Change the stories. How? There is no one answer.

After you are burning with inspiration from Bill Moyers’ speech from last Friday, what will you do to change the story?

read comments (1)

Jim Webb, the Virginia Senator-elect who narrowly defeated George Allen, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal this week on “Class Struggle.”

As one of the commentors when the story was posted at Buzz Flash wrote:

Think of it: a former Republican, and a Naval officer to boot, writing and speaking out for the working class!

It is clear from the piece that he doesn’t mean class struggle in the Marxist sense but a less violent and not particularly revolutionary need to deal with economic disparity in the U.S. He writes that class is becoming an issue like it hasn’t been since the 19th century. My knowledge of history tells me that class had not gone away during that period in U.S. society. What we can read here is a dawning realization of the simple fact of the existence of class in U.S. society. Class is obvious to many. I personally can’t see how it wouldn’t be, but some just don’t realize it is there even as they see its evidence all around them. Webb is saying, “HEY! Look at this or you’ll see the consequences.”

In general, I have found that people in the U.S. like to deny class. I found strong evidence for this in the years I spent teaching about class at university level. Based on polls conducted among them, most of my students called themselves “middle class” from families making $100,000+ / year. At the beginning of semesters, they told me class was not an issue in the U.S. A few students, sometimes those from the rare ~$20,000 / year families, rolled their eyes at this. Even fewer students openly dissented from the prevailing opinion. For the most part, they were the beneficiaries of the system. Denial worked well for them.

So, I did my best to introduce them to the world of diversity they hadn’t yet met. One of the resources I used often was the PBS site for the film “People Like Us,” a 2001 documentary shown on public television. The games and graphics gave me a way to approach the subject safely before jumping into the depths of poverty, corporate greed, income disparity, marketing of the middle class, and so on.

The book I read in college, the book that shocked me into awareness, was Paul Fussell’s Class, A Guide Through the American Status System, which is still in print in several formats.

It isn’t like class is out of the mainstream entirely. Last summer, the New York Times published an interesting series of articles on Class Matters. Minus the Flash graphics, the articles were then published as a book. It’s a place to start.

What Webb wrote is a short opinion piece. He points out that it is the elites who need to be educated about class and fairness or American workers will rise to demand fairness. I’m sure a few paragraphs can’t put a fine point on a topic so many have spent lifetimes and epics discussing. Still, I’m glad to see this new Senator implying that he intends to confront the issue.

read comments (0)