For a New Thrift. Confronting the Debt Culture: A Report to the Nation from the Commission on Thrift

Some of our colleagues are bringing increasing attention to the forces of structural violence which exercise their pernicious control through the creation of indebtedness.

The Institute for American Values and a collection of partners point out in this report, through a set of statistics and agencies not always brought together under one heading, that the collapse of mortgage lending, accelerating foreclosures, increased bankruptcy, monumental credit card and student indebtedness, widespread lottery, gambling, rental sharking, payday loan practices, when combined have an economic impact on the well-being of Americans that exceeds the impact of the cost of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. “In a recent 2008 survey, fully 58% of the public say that their incomes are falling behind the rising cost of living.” Unregulated, underreported, largely unacknowledged the paths to an economic meltdown testing the fragile nature of free market capitalism, democratic political processes, and environmental sustainability are just below the surface. An emerging focus on the intersection between militarism, materialism and race with the growing debt culture, is a field for important organizing efforts. Start your search at www.americanvalues.org. Share work you are doing in this area with others.

Afaa Michael Weaver. The Plum Flower Dance. While I have my favorite poets and follow them collection by collection, on rare occasions they have nothing new published when I am hungry for the poet, or someone simply appears in my peripheral vision with an asthetic that draws me in to explore. Such was Afaa Michael Weaver’s collection of poems published from 1985-2005. How he has eluded me I am unsure, but I do have some suspicions.

I have been struck a number of times in recent weeks at individuals being unnerved by the unspoken being spoken. It does have to do with breaking silence, but it is a silence between communities which is not held within communities. In the case of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his church on Chicago’s South Side the point is that the critique of race, U.S. policy, the issues of the marginalized and impoverished have not been ignored, they have been spoken. But much of the rest of the country has been deaf, purposefully deaf to that voice for a long time and would prefer to remain innocent of such sentiments an critique.

[I have heard similar concerns from some Iranian Americans who would prefer that there were no lifting up of the neoconservative calls to attack Iran; as if unacknowledged the threat would be less likely, rather than more.]

Weaver’s poem “Sears Roebuck” addresses the question quite powerfully for me.

Mama used the telephone to change her voice.
When she ordered something
from Sears, she got proper,
proper and strange sounding.
It wasn’t like Mama to be so fancy
‘cause she wasn’t that way
around us. I just knew
she was talking to a white person
‘cause she did the same thing
when the insurance man came.
She was like an actress,
figuring in her head this woman
she had to be for a few minutes.
I guess she did it right ‘cause
she took care of all her business.
Except it didn’t seem right to me,
to be more than one way.
Mama loved telephones, and
I grew up and found out most women
love telephones and talking.
Most men don’t have much to say,
unless they just bragging and lying.
Even then black men don’t change
as much as women do most times.
Daddy didn’t carry on on the phone
like Mama did. Matter of fact,
he didn’t have much to say noway.
He just sat around and read the paper,
but Mama would get on the line
and go through a million changes.
Still the one that bothered me most
was changing up for white folk.
I didn’t understand this English,
where it came from, where it could go,
or how Mama taught me translation.
p. 42

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Pico Iyer. The nexus of the coming summer Olympic Games and the weather catastrophes of recent months in China and Burma have opened a new window of curiosity and interest to the issues of Buddhism, Democracy, Globalization, Compassion and Spiritual leadership. Few are bettered positioned to provide insights than Iyer who met the Dalai Lama through visits with his father when a child and whose curiosity about the “East” has sustained him as a writer for decades, include frequent circlings through the presence of the Dalai Lama and Dharmasala.

The one passage that I am drawn back to repeatedly, in the face of repetitious innuendo that the Dalai Lama has political goals for an independent Tibet, is this one, which has both specific and general implications about paths to reconciliation and peace in the world:

“The Dalai Lama’s hope was to bring some of the light and clarity of the monk’s domain, “ultimate reality,” into the politician’s world of conventional reality; to be able, in effect, to stage a kind of Copernican revolution by getting us to see that the world does not revolve around the self, but the other way around. It was as if, seeing the forest through the trees, seeing the pattern and order, the possibility within the seeming chaos, he was arguing for a complete reorientation of the center of gravity in politics; while politicians squabbled about whether to paint the vehicle of society red or green, he was calling for a rewiring of the engine.

“O course we could win small victories against the Chinese, he was essentially saying to young Tibetans, as guerrillas do in Northern Ireland and Spain and Peru; but in the long term we would be losers, by squandering the respect of the world and sparking the rage of a nation two hundred times more populous than our own. Of course, we can see the Chinese as enemies, but if we do so, we are saying in effect, that we are going to spend all our lives in the midst of enemy forces; the better solution is to change how we think of the situation, perhaps by seeing that our real enemies are our own habitual tendencies toward thinking in terms of enemies. We can always see the decisive effects of action; but what underlies action, in the way of viewpoint and motivation and feeling, is where the real change has to come.” P. 226

Cancer in the Body Politic: Diagnosis and Prescription for an America in Decline. Peter D. Mott, MD. I am particularly impressed with the passion, dedication, and capacity of so many FOR members to invest themselves in research and publication at their own expense. I look forward to reviewing a number of such pieces over the summer.

As someone personally entering treatment for cancer (prostate, early detection, virtually fully curable), I was perhaps more readily drawn to Mott’s metaphor than I would have been otherwise. But our culture and times, between the aging of boomers, the advertising empire of pharmaceutical companies, and the political issues of health care, mean we are all familiar with much medical terminology, so the language works to make Mott’s case.

The chapters follow the path of analyzing and treating pathologies (in Part I Approach, Symptoms, Signs of illness, Diagnosis, and in Part II Treatment, Prescription, Follow-up visit). Mott, a doctor with a strong predisposition to analyzing and treating social and political ills, is a good writer. He also keeps the pamphlet brief , under 100 pages.

Most importantly Mott grounds his message in specific cases. This is a prescription for starting small and growing. Using Rochester as his long-term home town, and Latin America as his strongest interest area, Mott sets out a treatment plan that can be replicated anywhere. Call it a medical/political primer.

No matter where you are in engaging in local organizing, Cancer in the Body Politic is a helpful resource in your kit bag. Use it for study guides in FOR Chapters and other local groups, at churches or house meetings. Order copies from EPICA 1470 Irving Street, or from Peter himself (he’s suggested six dollars a copy) at interconnect_mott@frontiernet.net, or contact me at mjohnson@forusa.org.