If only it were so simple
If only it were so simple
by
Ken Melvin
The covid-19 pandemic has been difficult to get a handle on; so much unknown, everyday so much new info. It will probably take years for the world to fully to understand all that the 2020 covid-19 pandemic entailed.
The George Floyd protests are all too familiar. The gut wrenching images from Minneapolis angered the nation. I don’t know what it’s like to be black in America; don’t feel that I have the right to say what I think for fear that I might be wrong; might do harm; but there is a part of Black Americans’ struggle and of the protests that I feel that I do know something about; enough to offer my thoughts.
America is not doing well; hasn’t been doing well for more than 45 yrs now. Today, by any measure, even before the pandemic, 40% of our workforce is not really making a living. The extensions of this are monumental! Yet our politicians prattle on about the ‘middle class’ while for all these years the middle class has been shrinking before our very eyes; the poorer workers have kept getting poorer. America is, and has now long been, in denial.
For 45 yrs now, the middle class, along with all other Americans, has been, more than anytime since the Great Depression?, subjected to a selection process; a selection process that applies to all American workers. As there are fewer and fewer good paying jobs, the standards for hiring keep getting tighter. What standards you ask? Age, education, health, credit, social status, religion, culture, race, ethnicity, … make up your own. Yes, all are forms of discrimination, all are arbitrary; but as there are fewer and fewer good paying jobs there has to be a way of deciding. Universities do it, always have; there’s always been a selection process. Even during the Great Depression , if you knew the right someone, you could get a good job; meritocracy be damned. It is not at all as simple as ‘whitey’ has to give ‘us’ some of what their getting; it’s more that the whole working class is suffering and that those at the bottom are suffering the most. And, this will continue unless major changes are made to the economic model.
For upwards of 20? yrs now, we have had a lot of well educated baristas, cab drivers, … with really good social skills sharing one-bedroom apartments because they can’t find a job that pays enough for them to afford the rent on their own salary. We have a generation of well educated people who got knocked down in 2008 and who just got knocked again in this pandemic of 2020, who haven’t a prayer of ever putting anything together in their lifetime. These same folks owe a good chunk of the outstanding $3 trillion in student loan debt. Today, one must be under 35, no police record, no DUIs, no health problems, and have at least an Associates Degree to get a job as an oilfield roughneck.
This all in an economy that encourages consumption far beyond basic needs, beyond the income of many. Marketers use the media to sell the American Dream, to sow the seeds of ‘want’. There might have been a time when that ‘want’ translated into more low skilled jobs in Detroit, MI; Waukegan, IL; Cleveland, OH; …; but for the past ~35 yrs it has translated into more jobs in China. It is so hard to understand that for those with a job that pays less than a living wage, or, worse, no job or hope of a job, this ‘want’ might translate into stealing? Looting? Hey America! If you must give someone the ‘wants’; at least give them enough of an income to afford the necessities. Quit treating the symptoms while not addressing the underlying disease.
Reasonable people can and do make a distinction between those protesting, those who use the protest as an excuse to loot, and those who seek to leverage the protests and protesters to further a radical agenda. Reasonable people also find the nightly TV images of the looting and destruction abhorrent (the Media, by it’s choice of shots, is complicit) . Too often, politicians, use the looters and radicals as an excuse to crack down on the protests; avoid dealing with the underlying issues. Remember: Nixon used Law and Order to gain office. Reagan rode “The Free Speech Movement’ and ‘People’s Park’ all the way to the White House. Trump out racist the both of them. The Media need to step up (Zuckerburg are you listening?) All 3 branches of the Federal Government need to step up; do the job of governing. The Donald Trumps, the Mitch McConnells and the Bill Barrs of America are doing more harm than the protesters, than the looters and rioters. We the people need to step up; to be better citizens; don’t let ourselves be distracted as before. Just as with recent Gay Rights advances, advancing Black Americans’ Rights depend on changing the minds of the majority of Americans.
In times like these, we, the public, need to listen to the likes of Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo — https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/06/01/amanpour-houston-art-acevedo-george-floyd.cnn — We, the public, need to be able to distinguish between the protests and the opportunists. I found another interviewee from the same Amanpour & CO edition, DeRay Mckesson, equally impressive. https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/06/01/amanpour-martin-luther-king-iii-deray-mckesson-george-floyd.cnn Up until now, the Black Lives Matter movement seems to have suffered from a lack of leadership, focus. Maybe Mckesson will be the one. There was also this very haunting 5/28 Washington Post video of a Police Action in Midland, TX.
Police pointed guns at a man and his grandmother, video shows. They claim he ran a stop sign.
In 3rd world countries, bad economies and authoritarian police forces go hand in hand. They too are meant to address the symptoms.
Did a find-in-this-page search of the word “union” — not one reference. Apparently all of you 330 million frogs have been so slowly boiled in the disappearing labor union oil (for decades) — and don’t notice first above all things that union density is all of 6.2%; or let me state the converse that unionless workplaces in private industry are now over 93%. Just think about that 93% (soon to be 94%); but don’t think about it in context of any particular country — just think about the implications for an abstract country.
Could anything but EVERY social and political maleficence take deep roots?
Quick and easy way — will make Democrat and break Republican parties — to bring the temperature of the anti-union broth immediately return to comfortable room temperature:
And don’t forget to try this:
And this:
What it means to be black in America??? What does that mean or why does that matter??? You debase George Floyd the man, like many of a white man before him, who were murdered by crooked cops. You just don’t get it and it shows. This isn’t 1968 anymore. This also isn’t 1900. Dialectical nonsense needs to end, but you can’t do it.
Hey Bert!
if you want to know what it means to be black in America there are plenty of resources out there, I find it helpful to find a range of backgrounds: rural, suburban, urban, southern, midwestern, pacific, northwest, new england, educators, doctors, artists, white collar professionals, journalism that goes in depth on the housing , schooling, and environmental issues. This can build you a better mosaic for approaching the issues in the more helpful manner you’re looking for.
Also, I’ve found it even more helpful to befriend and be-colleague black Americans as you read more. In every part of the country I’ve been, black communities have been super loving, their functions super fun, and their centers for congregation super welcoming! You’re right, this isn’t 1968 or 1900-> many of the untreated issues from those times have evolved into worse, as well as dealing with the over-crowding, over-incarceration, over-pollution, and overwhelming disparity in access to tech are wholly new issues that we must now confront.
Hope this helps.
I substituted and volunteered the first 6 yrs of my now 11 yrs substitute teacher profession 2nd career; lived in Oakland for 10 yrs … I know a lot, just not enough.
… in ‘troubled’ schools…
Ken, how did you like your time in Oakland?
I have been thinking of moving to Oakland a lot when this pandemic is over, CA has decent local public health agencies and the legislatures don’t preempt local governments from making local regulation. I know gentrification is significant issue there but hopefully the activism and public interest spaces are still strong.
Idriss,
I can’t think of a more worthless effort than to try to educate BS.. He revels in his ignorance.
American’s have been inured to looting. How much outrage can one have against looters when their only offense seems to have been not forming a private equity firm first. It’s not that people are particularly happy about the looting, just that there has been so much brazen looting over the last few decades that a few turds smashing a store window to steal a television set is no big deal.
I’m sure you’re right EMichael, just taking some time to sharpen my pen. For example, It took me a good 5 minutes to grok your wordplay.
Kaleberg- there’s another interesting theory on informed comment about how we can actually draw the inuring to OKC and that’s why we treat unarmed civil rights protesters differently from armed reoppeners on state capitol. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/05/28/top-6-reasons-authorities-are-cracking-down-hard-black-protesters-while-treating
Hi Ken:
I am not an aggressive person in public as I find it has no value in dealing with others. Being polite and thoughtful tends to work unless they are there to rob you. Mostly what I have found when approached aby the police is an aggressive start to the conversation which is usually an accusation. There is never an introduction made, such as hello, I am officer so and so from such and such city, township or county. That first moment in the exchange is meant to set you at a disadvantage. What I have found is asking a question of them in return set them at a disadvantage, causes them to think, and interrupts their routine. Chances are they will either walk back to their vehicle and check your record first.
“Why did you full that vehicle through the Stop Sign?” I did not follow the vehicle through the stop sign. The person in front of me stopped in the intersection before I reached the stop sign and I stopped at the stop sign. Did you not see me make a stop?
It gives them pause to think.
I was in a level two prison visiting and the guard at the metal detector was telling stories on how they found a young woman carrying a child had drugs on her person which were discovered during a pat-down. He was making a big deal about it. I mentioned the studies which showed most contraband get into a prison as carried by the prison guards. I am surprised he let ne in that day. He kept refuting my comment to no avail. It is true.
There is a real lack of professionalism in the lesser law enforcement departments. It is as if they are at war with us. I do find the state police “typically” show more empathy in a stop.
For the record, I was a prisoner chaser in the USMC for a while, a job I despised as a Sergeant. I have been in every type of prison up to a level 4. I have seen the courts in action and witnessed the flow of plea bargains being made to clear the court schedule. The authorities almost always win under the threat of a more serious charge. Minorities are treated different than a white person of means (a broad statement).
There used to be beat-cops which I experienced in Chicago. They occupied certain busy intersections such as six corners on the northwest side of Chicago where the last Sears store closed not so long ago. I wonder if getting them back in the neighborhoods would foster greater empathy by them and greater respect by the people of the neighborhood. They should be a part of a community.
Thanks Run
Well said. Here, in the SF Bay Area, some depts. have improved over the years; often after huge lawsuits that left their cities bkrpt. — It was the cities’ fault, they didn’t pay a living wage, … so got cowboys. Now, they have to at least go thru an academy, psychological screening, …
It’s my feeling that the worm has really turned this time, no going back. Neede to; the hard right turns of the 70s, and 80s were at the root of the authoritarianism, I think.
Always pro-union, but some police unions got too powerful, wanted to run the show, manage the dept, the city.
Here, Berkeley’s is an example of how it should be; polite, always come up and say hi, …
Global corporate, private, federal, state and local debt and future pension obligations have reached a point which has created the current socio-political state. Expect a nonlinear worsening of the state of human affairs.
There is a bell shaped curve of behavioral activity in every defined subpopulation for every given condition. Are the police or health workers or the newly unemployed or opportunists undergoing conditional changes and more stress lately? Do they perceive their individual futures at more risk and uncertainty?
The world economy in 2020 is represented by a tenuously operating global service worker foundation and the creation of credit and debt by the base of that pyramid for attainable ‘substantially valued’ assets: automobiles, flat screen TV’s, furniture, cell phones, et. al. (and rent). Without the demand base to buy these products, the interactive system becomes unhinged. The entire global system and its assets are at a peak valuation based on progressively lower cost (interest rate ) and lowered valued debt (for the US since 1982). The global macroeconomy is in a most significant phase transition with pending massive accumulated debt default and re-equilibration of global asset valuations.
Yes, there is unusual stress in the system – and for the people who are part of it. The ‘solution’ is deterministic and naturally occurring.