it's been a long, long journey... way to go, bill

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After more than a half-century of similar proposals and efforts, healthcare reform is one signature away from being, finally, the law of the land. Far from ideal in its current manifestation, the bill is a vast improvement that will have profound benefits in the real lives of so many people who haven't seen much go their way in this society that has, over the last three decades, become increasingly good at kicking people when they're down. We're a long way from being the relatively civilized society that the world's other industrialized democracies are, at least in terms of guaranteeing their citizens care when they get sick but, albeit in the slow pace in which all evolution proceeds, we're on our way. The law is not what I, and many other liberals, wanted. The law is not what makes most sense for most Americans. But it has been kicked around, poked and prodded, grossly misrepresented, used as a proxy for genuinely vile sentiments, and generally mistreated and maligned by the likes of the noisy and obtuse "Tea Partiers," Fox News, the skilled and disturbingly carefree Frank Luntz, the small army of rabid radio and tv personalities on the right, the obscenely powerful insurance companies and their not-so-small army of well-paid lobbyists, and indeed the considerable, and considerably adroit, Republican political machine. And despite the short-sightedness of many, and its own long odds, what only weeks ago looked like a doomed bill, is now just a tiny, and certain, step away from being a law. And a law that would be almost impossible for the right wing to dismantle. Being mishandled, dirtied, and vilified seems to have fortified what looked like a pretty weak contender.

This whole process has reminded me of the Schoolhouse Rock episode, "I'm just a bill...," and this bill was certainly treated at least as badly as the humble little personification in the cartoon. And yet, it made it all the way to becoming, late last night, a soon-and-certain-to-be law, and as imperfect as it is, it has my affection. May it find love and produce single-payer offspring.

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22nd Annual World AIDS Day

Approximately 35 million people have died from AIDS-related illness since 1981. Most have been children and adults under the age of fifty. 

ACT-UP        UNAIDS       The Global Fund     All4Good      Angels in America     

speak OUT

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Possibly the best of all slogans or battle cries used by a movement, or an organization as part of a movement, is ACT-UP's "Silence=Death." And it's true and wise beyond the scope of AIDS, when applied to so many things. Art is perhaps the embodiment of the axiom as it, by definition, speaks, and often speaks "truth to power." Likewise, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is not just an oppressive military policy, but a dictum reflecting and endorsing a larger and dangerous worldview that gains support from the policy for its application in all spheres of life. It is in direct opposition to Silence Equals Death. 

To help extinguish the policy, and hopefully the larger belief system, make a brief visit to the Courage Campaign and sign a petition to do just that.

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sufferin' til suffrage

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between starshine and clay

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For Women's History Month:
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untitled by Lucille Clifton
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won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
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Also see Clifton's poems, "blessing the boats," "a dream of foxes," "poem in praise of menstruation," and essays about Clifton's representation of "the female experience," here.
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(Some time in March I hope to post a women's poetry reader. Any suggestions?--Let me know.)

rebel fronts

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For Black History Month:
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America
by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

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see also "Africa," "The Lynching," and "The City's Love."
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where's habeas?

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click to help find him

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o captain, my captain

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What greater thing has happened in this country and to this country and from this country in recent memory? And a Democrat-controlled Congress as well. How Rainbow Connection.

But Grrrr and shame on you to all those in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas who are responsible for the passing of the propositions to ban gay marriage. All that time, money, energy, and messing with Constitutions, and all those lawyers, Mormons, and political strategists and spin doctors for something that has the simplest of solutions: if you are against gay marriage, don't have one. Take a cue from South Dakota, where a proposition to ban (legal) abortion was defeated.

Click on the photo to go to change.gov, the website for the Office of the President-Elect. (How cool does that sound?)

It was an honor to be one of so many who was involved, even in the smallest of ways, in the fruition of the dream.

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shame, shame

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Last night before going to sleep, I was talking on the phone to a friend about the Presidential campaign, and at one point we were talking about where we have voted in previous years, what time of the day we usually vote, and maybe some other little personal Election Day traditions-of-sorts. We also talked about how easy it's always been for us to vote: how we've never encountered long lines, have never been hassled, etc. (We both have almost always been registered to vote in predominantly white, middle class, or upper-middle class areas. For example, for most of the years that I have lived in my home state of Pennsylvania, I have kept my legal, "permanent" address as my parents' address, mostly for reasons of convenience, because I used to move a lot. An added benefit of this, as I saw it, was that I could vote in the more conservative, suburban, swing-district of my childhood, rather than inside the city where I've usually lived and which never needed my liberal vote.) Then this morning when I fed my cats and brushed my teeth and just generally tried to wake up, I watched some of the film, Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, on television. I learned some frightening things and pondered some others:

Florida, 2000
Along with all of the other questionable election practices that occurred there, including the use in some districts of the confusing "butterfly"ballots, the many old, dirty, clogged, and broken machines (mostly in areas of many African-American voters, who tend to vote -- at approximately 90% -- for Democrats) that resulted in the famous "dimpled," "hanging," and "pregnant" chad, and the Supreme Court ruling to discontinue the recount there, a lesser known injustice occurred when about 20,000 legal voters were purged from the rolls because their names resembled the names of convicted felons, who in Florida do not have the right to vote. This decision to expand the list of purged voters to include voters with names similar to ex-felons was made by Katherine Harris, the Republican Secretary of State for Florida, and a leading member of that state's Campaign to Elect George W. Bush, at the time. About half of these 20,000 (non-felon) citizens denied their right to vote were black. (source 1)

New Hampshire, 2002
Allen Raymond, former GOP operative who was arrested for campaign "dirty tricks," recently explained: "What happened was I was contracted by the Republican National Committee to jam Democratic phone lines. So, there's only one thing that goes on, on election day, and that's getting out the vote. And, so those phone lines on election day were used to call people to remind them to vote, where to vote, incoming phone calls telling them where to vote, could they get a ride to the polls, that type of thing. And my job back then was to stop those phone lines from being able to make calls going out or coming in. And it was very effective for the bit of time that we did it." – In his new book, Mr. Raymond writes that these practices were implemented in other places, in other years, and some were sometimes widespread. (source 2)

Ohio, 2004
"People waiting in line nine hours to vote, some getting discouraged and actually going home without exercising their franchise."
- Tim Russert, NBC. 10:59 pm, Election night, 2004. (source 3)

"People waiting as long as fifteen hours, in line, because they only had two places [working voting machines] to vote
-Tom Brokaw, NBC. 11:38 pm, Election night, 2004. (source 3)

Tactics observed, testified to, and otherwise evidenced in Ohio in 2004: Voter intimidation, voters purged from the rolls, barriers to registering, poll observers banned from polls, voting machine failures, too few voting machines, redrawn precincts, pre-punched ballots, ex-felons (who are allowed to vote in Ohio) threatened, fake flyers with false information about when and where to vote, phone calls with similar misleading information, illegal recount procedures, Kerry votes "flipped" to votes for Bush, long lines.
That year, Ohio's top election administrator was also co-chair of the state's Re-Elect Bush Campaign. Bush won Ohio, without which he would not have won the election.
(source 3)

Sources: 1.) Recount, HBO Films, 2008
2.) Real Time with Bill Maher, 10/24/08
3.) UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections

To find out ways that you can protect your right to vote, help protect others' right to vote, or document anything questionable you witness, GO HERE and/or HERE.To read a few tips from Tim Robbins, GO HERE. To find out where to vote, GO HERE.

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happy labor day

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with love to street artists

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the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls

and tenement halls

- Paul Simon

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In Pittsburgh recently a nineteen year-old graffiti artist was charged with offenses that could have resulted in him spending twenty-five years in a maximum-security prison. The judge sentenced him to five years, which was met with sighs of relief from some who were somewhat sympathetic to the youth. I am going to guess that these people have never visited a county jail, let alone a maximum-security prison, let alone served any time in either. Five years is a long time. And for a relatively benign property crime. I suppose I should not be surprised: property is God in what is probably the most ruggedly capitalist society on earth.

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As a practical matter I certainly understand that without laws protecting property and proprietors, a necessary modicum of order could not be ensured, but I've always wondered about this idea of ownership. How can anyone really own much of anything? Whether one believes in God, or in evolution, or both, or neither.... no person ever created any of the land that now people in groups calling themselves nation-states claim as theirs, and within those nation-states the leaders and laws of those nations also claim to have the right to give individuals the right to buy and sell pieces of that land as one's own. It all seems quite arbitrary to me: how have some gotten that right to claim land as theirs, and the right to then sell some of that land to some chosen few? Victory in violent conflict. Might may not make right but it is the origin of property rights, which are then mythologized into something beyond question by systems of commerce, consumerism, language, the construction of hierarchies, and to reference a recent post, even pop-culture staples, such as Monopoly, to name just one icon to which we become habituated. For a rabidly supposed-Christian country, we might be in lock-step with a few conveniently chosen details from the Old Testament, but we're a long way from Jesus' commandment to give our coats, as well, to the person who asks for our shirts.

Last weekend I got involved in a somewhat heated debate about the subject of graffiti and street art. My attempts to assert the importance, the political relevance, the very necessity of art were countered by, "then they should put it on a canvas." To which I was unable to ever say, "and how many people would ever see it?" (Not to mention, "Not that it would give much art the exposure it can get on the 'street,' but does 'they should put it on a canvas,' mean you support greater funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and other taxpayer funded art initiatives, education, and distribution?" ) I did get to at least flirt with a discussion about how the very act of putting art in illegal places is performing one of the functions of art, which is to push the envelope, to cause questioning, to express and give form to dissent, but that truth didn't find any takers at the dinner table.

Artists in general don't get much love these days, as many of us endeavoring in poetry know all too intimately, but although our work may motivate rejection slips from editors, stir some unease in our mothers, raise a hair or two of controversy from time to time, and raise some random eyebrows a bit more often than from time to time, I don't think most of us are in much danger of being thrown in the Big House for what we write. At least not in this country. At least not yet. Let's take care to make certain that never happens by letting our lawmakers, as well as our friends, families, and others, know that while laws protecting property may indeed have their place, art is by far the more valuable commodity.

Both of the above by the artist a1one, in Tehran.

In Paris.

In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

An abandoned gas station rebirthed by Jennifer Marsh.


In Perugia, Italy; by Phorm.

In Lebanon.

In Barcelona.

And of course there are those masters like Keith Haring who "started," in part, on the streets. His work is now framed and "owned" by many wealthy collectors and some of the most prestigious museums in the world.

Many of the above images were found on the following sites: Graffiti on Oil , The Wooster Street Art Collective, and Art Crimes. Along with other sites like the Iranian Street Art Report, Dan Witz Street Art (he's amazing), and Urban Art Movement, they are really worth checking out. Wooster is an especially great starting point, and has many links to awe inspiring art and artists.

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blogging smarties

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READ THESE POSTS.

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The last special George Carlin did for HBO was called It's Bad for Ya. The following posts, I'm convinced, are Good for Ya.

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Life Above Ground , by Tim Keane

13 Facts About Bob Hicok, by Steven Schroeder: Not only one of the best things I've read about my favorite living poet, but hilarious too.

Sam Rasnake's series of posts, Music to Live By, as well as a photo and a certain quote from Pulp Fiction (okay, yeah, yeah, the quote's original source is the Bible, but it's so much more fun in this context. And I'm thinking maybe just maybe, disaoppointed with some of the writers who claimed to be speaking for God and penning GOD's literature, She created Quentin Tarantino.)

Civil Rights, Who Gets Them and How Often, by Amy King, who hands down has the best and dare-I-say most relevant and important blog in any sphere

Daniel Nester's Just on the Morning News: "Takin' Care of Jesus" with a link to Amy King's take on the subject, as well. Daniel Nester's project is good ol' political fun, and so is Amy's descriptive article.

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Michi Gabriel's just plain funny Sunday Morning Visitor.

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And if you haven't seen Nick Courtright's Tier 3 definitely check it out. It's a higher species than the blog.

Read a politically relevant take on Monopoly on Tim Keane's blog

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Also seen on the poetry blogosphere:

Michi Gabriel's little gem, "I may be the biggest female fool in the world, but at least i'm not a man"


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savage inequalities

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Within the United States:



• In 2004, the Average Income in the U.S. was $60, 528, while the Median Income was only $43,389. Since 2000, when George W. Bush took office, this gap between the mean income and the median income, which has long been the widest among rich countries, has grown even wider. After adjusting for inflation, the median American household earns less than it did in 2000, while the earnings of the richest Americans increased dramatically. (sources 1&2)
  
• U.S. labor productivity has increased by more than 15% since 1995, but the real incomes of the bottom half of American incomes have either barely increased or declined. (source 2)


• The U.S. average (or "mean" or "per capita") income is almost always at the very top of global rankings, but because its income distribution skews toward the rich, its median income ranks about tenth. (source 2)
  
• 42% of the world's billionaires are Americans, yet approximately one out of five American children live in poverty. (source 3, source 4)
  
• The poverty rate for children, at over 21%, is far higher than for any other age group. (Interestingly, the poverty rate among the elderly, after declining dramatically from 35.2 percent in 1959 to 12.2 percent in 1990, has since then been lower than for the rest of the population. And while senior citizens tend to vote at a higher rate than other adult age groups, children, of course, cannot vote. This is perhaps informative especially when considering issues such as health care: Medicare, guaranteed to all citizens over 65 years of age, is generally a much better form of insurance than Medicaid, which serves poor children, and it is also not guaranteed to even all children who are not covered by any other type of insurance (occasionally poor children, and often the "near-poor," or even children of lower-middle-class parents who cannot afford the rising cost of medical coverage.)) (source 2)

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(Photograph by Bobby Diba)
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• In 2006, for all full-time workers, men's median income was $42,210, while women who worked full time had a median income of $32,649. (source 1)
  
• More than two out of three adults who are impoverished in the United States are women. This higher incidence of poverty, together with the rising share of households headed by women, has led to what researchers call the "feminization of poverty," with an increasing fraction of the poor in female-headed households. In 1990 this fraction was at 37.5 percent, and it has continued to increase. (sources1, 2, & 4)
  
• The poverty rate among black households at 31.9 percent in 1990 was three times as high as the rate among white households. (sources 2 & 4 )
  
• The percentage of non-Hispanic whites living in poverty in 2006 was 9.3% whereas 25.5% of blacks lived in poverty that year, and 21.5% of Hispanics of all races were impoverished. The race with the highest likelihood of living in poverty was Native Americans: 26.6% of them lived in poverty. (source 1)
  
• The top 20% of income-earning households' share of all U.S. income was 50% in 2006, while the bottom 20% of households shared only 3.4% of all U.S. income. (source 1) (note: The data for the actual bottom 20% is most likely much more bleak, however, as it does not include the "absolutely" homeless, who are those individuals and families with no residence whatsoever (notice that the Census reports here on households), and most likely does not include most other homeless families and individuals who have some type of temporary residence, such as motels that charge by the week or month: As Barbara Ehrenreich explains in Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, "Long-term motel residents are almost certainly undercounted, since motel owners often deny access to census takers and the residents themselves may be reluctant to admit they live in motels, crowded in with as many as four or more people in a room." (page 140) And if the homeless were included, this would of course change the overall picture, making the inequities even more extreme, especially for the bottom 40% as some of those who the Census counts as being in the bottom 20% would then be pushed up into the next quintile as the homeless are usually the poorest of the poor and would be in the bottom 20%.
  
• Representative of all other recent years, in 2006 U.S. households shared income as follows: *top 20%=50% of income *The second highest 20%=23% *The middle20%=14.8% *The second lowest 20%=8.8% *The lowest 20%=3.4% (source 1) (note from above applies here as well)
  
• 50% of the children in the U.S. who drop out of high-school come from only12% of the school districts. These school districts tend to be disproportionately poor, as well as disproportionately urban and rural, and disproportionately African-American and Hispanic. (source 5)

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Globally:

• Of the 221 countries (most territories, such as U.S. Guam and Puerto Rico, are counted as countries as well) of the world, life expectency is highest in the western-European country of Andorra, where it is 83.52 years, while life expectency is the lowest in the sub-Saharan country of Swaziland, where it is 32.23 years. (The richest country, by many measures, in the world, the United States, ranks 45th, with a lower life expectancy than Bosnia, Jordan, Bermuda, and Guam, among others. ) Other countries that fare well include Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, France, and Canada. Other countries at the bottom of the list include Haiti, Afghanistan, and many sub-Saharan countries such as Niger, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Malawi. (sources 6&7)
  
• The total net worth of the 1,125 richest people in the world is $4.4 trillion, while 1.2 billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day. (source 3, source 8)
  
• The average American home runs a washing machine, on average, approximately two times a day, and runs a dishwasher slightly over once a day on average, while 12 million people around the world die every year from a lack of water. (source 8) (This data was particularly startling and sobering to me, especially as someone who spends probably 15 minutes every day just washing my hair. And this information doesn't include all water use such as showers, watering lawns, watering golf courses, etc., and doesn't include all of the other industrialized countries.)

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For more information or to find out how you can take action against such inequities, visit any of the following websites:
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Global concerns: Oxfam, CARE, CARE Corps, Kiva, ONE, Workers of the World, MercyCorps, Sweatshop Watch, UNIFEM, Women Thrive Worldwide

National concerns: Unite Here!, Union for Radical Political Economics, Citizens for Tax Justice, LaborNet, National Urban League, National Organization for Women, Sweatshop Watch

*Sources (with links where applicable) : (1) "Income, Earnings, and Poverty Data From the 2006 American Community Survey" US CENSUS BUREAU, pages 2-20 (2) Faulkner, L. "Race, Gender, and Poverty" Sacramento State Univ. Sociology Dept. (3) Kroll, L. "World's Billionaires" Forbes.com March 5, 2008 (4) Sawhill, I. "Poverty in the United states," The Library of Economics and Liberty (5) Bob Wise "An Hour on Education with Bob Wise and Wendy Kopp" Charlie Rose Show: PBS July1, 2008 (6) Wikipedia "List of Countries by Life Expectancy" (by CIA World Factbook) (7) Swivel... (8) Oxfam America Other sources: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development "World Economy: Frequently Asked Statistics: Earnings" ~Economic Statistics Briefing Room, The White House

Poet planned to be executed today: Please (take just seconds and) act now

An execution is planned to take place this evening at 6:00 pm (5:00 Eastern time) in Alabama, where, it seems, they just love killing people, especially poor black people. Similar to other years, this year they are second only to Texas in numbers of executions both carried out already and planned for the rest of the year. The man whose life hangs today in the political balance is Darrell Grayson, who has been imprisoned for approximately twenty-six years, and has spent much of that time writing poetry in his cell. He has published at least two chapbooks.

Please call, e-mail, or fax Alabama's governor, as part of a wide campaign launched by respected groups, such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Innocence Project, to ask Gov. Bob Riley to at very least postpone Grayson's execution.

From today's Birmingham News: "Representatives of a half-dozen activist organizations including the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on Wednesday launched an 11th-hour appeal to Gov. Bob Riley to stay the execution of Death Row inmate Darrell Grayson.

[Supporters argue] that Grayson could be cleared by DNA tests not available at the time of his 1981 trial. He is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. today.

[A PHADP Advocate stated that] Grayson, who is black, was pressured into a confession by white police officers, tried by a court that provided only $500 to be spent on his defense, and convicted by an all-white jury."

The then nineteen-year-old Grayson's lawyer was a divorce attorney, who, according to Project Hope To Abolish the Death Penalty , told Grayson to "throw himself on the mercy of the court and confess, even though according to witnesses he had been in an alcoholic black out the night of the crime with no recollection of the event." Other such information on the case is listed on the group's website.

To reach the Honorable Governor Bob Riley:
PHONE: 334 242 7100 FAX: 334 242 0937
WEBSITE: www.governor.state.al.us
EMAIL: http://www.governor.state.al.us/contact.htm

1 Dec.: 19th Annual World AIDS Day

CRY OUT










ACT UP

I'm Pre-Pregnant

I go barefoot a lot. I mean I love to dance around in my slightly-cowboy-slightly-R.E.M. harness boots, I have always made sure to have at least one pair of "these-boots-were-made-for-walking" boots, and I love putting on my little black dress and completing the ensemble with a pair of my two-and-a-half or three-and-a-half-inch-heeled "I enjoy being a girl" shoes. But when I come home, or after I've gone out to dinner and am taking a walk down city sidewalks, or decide I want to dance unencumbered, and many other scenarios, the shoes are off. Taking out the garbage, walking to the corner mailbox to send a letter, getting some fresh air with a walk in the rain, gardening, anything on green grass -- all done in barefeet.

But I think I might be wearing shoes a little more often now, because since the Bush Administration has now deemed me "pre-pregnant," simply because of my age and gender and the fact that, sorry Mr. President, I'm not currently pregnant, I refuse to be Barefoot and pre-Pregnant.

But maybe now that this new category, a close cousin, or mother, to the category of "pre-born," has been created, Mr. Bush will support tougher environmental protection laws -- since so many women are now seen as pre-pregnant with the pre-born, he of course wouldn't want them to be exposed to dangerous toxins and pollutants....? Curiously, um, no. But certainly he'll reverse the cuts in health care for poor or other uninsured pre-moms, right? No such luck. But wait, the vaccine for cervical cancer! Bush must have changed his position that this would just encourage more young girls and unmarried women to have sex -- I mean women with cervical cancer probably couldn't be considered pre-pregnant, so.... "So what?!" is I guess what our governing executive branch must think, because no, this vaccine is still facing all the same political obstacles.

But, seriously, it follows that men of a certain age group will now be considered pre-impregnators, and be reminded of their health responsibilities on cans of beer and packs of cigarettes....

Phew! I bet it was a close call, but at least for now, men can sigh a sigh of relief that they are still, well, men. Sovereign, self-determined men.

All of this political posturing on reproduction has reminded me of a poem I wrote several years ago, probably about ten years ago, after I inadvertently listened to Pat Robertson go on about women and their pre-ordained calling to "multiply" the number of little so-called Christians out there. Unfortunately, I could write this again now, not just prompted by the lectures of a conventional-wisdom-crazy, but by the positions of -- the Office of the President.

Moral Majority Dream

After falling asleep to the television, on which “The 700 Club"
was airing an episode about motherhood and women’s role in
society

I go in
not knowing if I will ever
come out
or come out the same.
Jimson weeds grow
from the ceiling, the tunnel
beats its heart over mine.
The Christian Army nurse sits
folding birds into nests.
She tells me it’s
Pregnancy Day
and my prayer time has come.
The screaming, swollen cat under the sink
turns quiet
and the nurse measures the needle
against my skin.
My stomach burns in its seizure
and swells with sweat,
still unholy.
The nurse, now proud with gospel,
leads me to the waiting room.
Pain sits squarely on my lap.
It unloads its thickening waste
and gives me a story I’m afraid to tell.
There I spend everyday
scrubbing Bibles and belt buckles,
and every night putting my pennies
into my pillbox, counting them up,
saving for the rainiest day to come.