Tell 'em about the dream, Martin.

There are so many events connected to the Civil Rights March on Washington that occurred 45 years ago this day. John Lewis resisting removing references to revolution and Sherman's March in his speech, Malcolm X ridiculing the march as a Kennedy tool, Kennedy staffers camped out by the sound system ready to pull cables if speeches wandered into unapproved territory, a president discouraging Martin King away from economic solutions. All of those events and many more stand out to me. Those and more:

Mounted in the eagle's eye of the Washington Monument, a CBS television camera showed viewers a thick carpet of people on both sides of the half-mile reflecting pool and all around the base of the Lincoln Memorial. At noon, nearly two hours before the rally began, the police estimated the crowd at more than 200,000 .... [T]he numbers reduced observers to monosyllabic joy. Within the movement, the gathering sea of placards and faces produced the most brain-numbing sight since the first ghost fleet of empty buses chugged through Montgomery.

An ancient man reached halfway across the world to fix the historical moment: W.E.B. Du Bois had died in Ghana .... For those who revered Du Bois, news of his death that very morning came as a shockingly appropriate transition. Gone finally was the father of pan-Africanism, the NAACP, and the Negro intelligentsia ....

King faced ... a giant press corps and listeners as diverse as the most ardent supporters of the movement and the stubborn Congress at the other end of the Mall, where by quorum calls sullen legislators "spread upon the Journal" the names of the ninety-two absent members who might have let the march distract them from their regular business. For all these King delivered his address in his clearest diction and stateliest baritone. Ovations interrupted him in the cracks of infrequent oratorical flourish, and in difficult passages small voices cried, "Yes!" and "Right on!" as though grateful and proud to hear such talk. From the front, a woman could be heard to laugh and shout, "Sho 'nuff!" when King told them about the freedom checks that had bounced ....

The crowd responded to the pulsating emotion transmitted from the prophet Amos, and King could not bring himself to deliver the next line of his prepared text, which by contrast opened its lamest and most pretentious section ....

There was no alternative but to preach. Knowing that he had wandered completely off text, some of those behind him on the platform urged him on, and Mahalia Jackson piped up as though in church, "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin." Whether her words reached him is not known. [Source]

Which Liberal Bloggers is the Statesman Talking About?

It was inevitable with the 3,000 liberal bloggers descending on Austin, Texas for a new-media conference that editors of the local paper, the Austin American-Statesman, would weigh in and take a few conventional mainstream shots at the bloggers.  However, I cannot get my mind around the editorial's criticism that progressive bloggers have some single-minded focus on Obama's flip flop on telecom immunity to the exclusion of other interests like the economy and rising fuel prices.

The bloggers I've read who are critical of the flip flop have not stopped hammering way on the economy or fuel prices or the war or the nations infrastructure or human rights abuses caused by "free trade" or any other significant issue.  I certainly have not.  These issues are not mutually exclusive.

It is no more a waste of time to oppose telecom immunity now than it was to oppose school segregation in the 1950s when the majority of Americans were ambivalent about desegregation.  And widespread dissent doesn't just emerge out of thin air.  It starts with a few early adopters before it goes viral.  In fact, it won't go viral without early adopters.

NIMBY Nomenclature

The label "NIMBY" is often thrown around pejoratively (usually to criticize someone for being unreasonable) so much that a while back I tried to qualify the term to show that there are times when it is such opposition is based at least as much on reason as on emotion. The latest neighborhood battle in southeast Davidson County over rezoning to allow a Christian halfway house has got me thinking about class issues and NIMBY as well as a more nuanced and accurate lexicon for social opposition to zoning issues.

Here is the beginning of a list of acronyms that start with the conventional label and introduce others that qualify the original:

NIMBY -- "Not In My Back Yard" -- the standard acronym for opposition to locating less attractive services in the neighborhood; more accurately applied to middle and lower class neighborhoods who typically face the prospect, but don't have hard currency to resist, and thus they turn to organizing social capital

AIMBY -- "Already In My Back Yard" -- qualifies NIMBY issues in those neighborhoods that have shouldered a large part of the social service load, and who want others without halfway houses and charities to assume their fair share of the burden; still more social capital, less hard capital

NEVIMBY -- "Never In My Back Yard" -- neighborhoods that are NIMBY along with possessing the wealth to insure that they can always buy their way out of social responsibility; they only organize social capital when hard currency fails to provide an effective fire break

If You're Going to San Francisco, Summertime Will Be a "Free Speech Zone" There

"Free Speech Zones" are just about a perfect match for "Free Trade," and today's San Francisco looks more like a redneck mother and less like some cradle of hippie love:

The city known worldwide for its spirit of protest and dissent has denied permits for demonstrators and plans to restrict them to "free-speech zones." People critical of China's human-rights record and spurred by the recent uprising and subsequent crackdown in Tibet are organizing alternative torch run events and rallies and, despite the restrictions, plan to line the route ....

city officials coordinating the main torch relay event plan to designate areas for people to protest the Chinese government or other issues. The designated "free-speech zones" have been used at large events in other cities but have not had a significant presence in San Francisco.

There's just something fundamentally wrong about San Francisco putting barricades around social protest.

The Important Story from Texas Tonight was Not What Happened at the Democratic Debate

It's what has not happened in most Democratic debates of late; nonetheless, they'll tell you what's really going on outside the halls of the Obama-Clinton sparring match in Austin:

The KatrinaRitaVille Express may sound like the latest funky South Austin happy hour hangout—and most of those are on wheels, too—but this old FEMA trailer from Mississippi isn’t here for the party. Derrick Evans has been touring his trailer around the country to raise awareness for the slew of problems facing victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the stagnation that’s taken hold in recovery efforts.

He’s here tonight with more than 40 people affected by the storms. They came by bus to draw attention to the storm recovery. So far candidates have said little about Hurricane Katrina in debates, and Evans says neither Clinton nor Obama have inspired much hope for his cause. “I wouldn’t say that any of them have sufficiently demonstrated a grasp of the depth of this regional crisis,” Evans says.

Neither Obama nor Clinton can afford to grasp any crisis outside of the crisis of superdelegates. It's why the struggle for justice and defending the welfare of ordinary Americans goes on with or without the Democrats.

Morale and Hope are Necessarily Distinct

Almost 5 years ago during correspondence with Paul Loeb about the question of hope in political movements, he asked me to submit my thoughts in essay form for a book that he was editing. I submitted something on the important distinction that I see between morale and hope, but as far as I know Loeb did not publish it.

The context for our discussions included the rising anger among moderate-to-liberal voters over the emerging realizations that the Bush Administration's justifications for war were built on lies. Loeb wrote that he was concerned that those who fought for peace were going to lose hope with the prospect of the 2004 elections on the horizon. I was concerned that Mr. Loeb was conflating hope with morale.

On the eve of Super Tuesday, I am concerned again about the way the word "hope" is being batted about the campaigns. I am once again concerned that "hope" is getting trivialized, shorn of its extraordinary quality in the service of a motivational and political purpose.

Here is some of what I wrote in 2003:

Morale has mostly to do with stopping wars and winning presidential elections for the time being. Hope is the constant, gnawing, driven awareness that the mere accomplishment of strategic and political goals is insufficient to the larger vision of justice. Morale depends on motivational leaders who keep the spirits of their followers from lagging. Hope already accepts that tragedy and defeat are a part of life and even so looks to the promise that right will overcome, if not now then later.

But conflating morale and hope as I believe some in political campaigns do is confusing the now with the later.

Hope and morale function separately:

I can have profound hope even at my morale’s lowest point. Likewise, I can despair of any ultimate hope yet gladly—even cynically—take pride in helping to leverage the end of a dubious federal policy. High morale and profound hope are not the same things. Every once and a while—and unquestionably the current situation is one of those “whiles”—groups need a morale boost. Usually, almost always, groups also require an erstwhile hope based on revelations that are, in the words of Michael Walzer, “already in our possession, incorporated, as it were, long ago, familiar and well-thumbed by now.”

Morale rises vigorous and new on the clarion call of an Achilles-like hero; hope is an old spiritual sung together in the depths of a Birmingham jail.

In spite of the historic nature of this election season, hope does not come from any presidential candidate, even as our morale may be lifted by his oration or the symbolism of her power rising:

One does not lift up people’s hopes from the top as one affirms their goals and lifts their morale. Hope is not detachable from the communities hopefully generated. Hope occurs most effectively in the face-to-face, familial, congregational, and associational networks that constitute the nanoengines of national and international movements. And hope is just as vital to social movements as morale is. Hope reminds us that successes and stronger social ties do not inevitably lead to greater levels of humanity. In fact, hope reminds us of Reinhold Niebuhr’s point that any group may at any time act more inhumanely than individuals—and “our” groups are not immune.

There is a chastened, humble quality to hope that is not the gloating, taunting hubris and self-pride of morale. Not that morale is not necessary, but that it is limited by hope's hard awareness of limitations and violations.

But most of all hope cannot be tied to winning more than it is tied to goodness:

Hope reminds us that when we lose (and we will lose from time to time), our loss cannot tip the balances ultimately toward injustice, because a good-bigger-than-our-own must triumph in the end. Hope causes us to reflect on the ways that winning may cost us more if we settle for less than we should in order to obtain greater power and influence.

And, if hope puts winning in a smaller perspective, I do not see the same hope that to which campaigns appeal. It feels more like hope co opted in the service of morale and triumph.

I remain unconvinced that hope and winning live easily side-to-side, because as the Spanish Catholic philosopher Miguel de Unamuno writes, once possession is achieved there is no longer a question of hope because possession erases hope. And yet, politics is first about possession and winning, and so, how can there be any hope beyond the ebb and flow of simple morale in political strategy?

As in 2003, I don't argue that we should not strive to win. And in 2008, I'm not arguing that people who vote sacrifice their hope. I merely maintain that we keep movement morale in proper perspective to extraordinary hope, which ought to temper rather than be swallowed by our responses to both winning and losing ordinary elections.

Remembering the Militant Moderate

An uncompromising call to arms:

[A] strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist .... This is why nonviolence is a powerful as well as a just weapon. If you confront a man who has long been cruelly misusing you and say, "Punish me, if you will; I do not deserve it, but I will accept it, so that the world will know I am right and you are wrong," then you wield a powerful and just weapon. This man, your oppressor, is automatically morally defeated, and if he has any conscience, he is ashamed. Wherever this weapon is used in a manner that stirs a community's, or a nation's, anguished conscience, then the pressure of public opinion becomes an ally in your just cause.

- - Martin Luther King, Jr., Playboy Interview, 1965

Homeless Tent City Dismantled Outside New Orleans City Hall and Landlords Are Needed

NOLA.com has the follow-up on the housing crisis in New Orleans: a tent city near City Hall is dismantled, as non-profits are used to find homes and channel short-term assistant to the homeless, including aid to the physically and mentally disabled. One non-profit leader told NOLA:

This was really a leap of faith .... It was a leap of faith by the nonprofit community that various pots of government resources that have been promised will be there when we need them.

Given the fiasco of emergency management and government aid under the Bush Administration, I would say that it is a leap over a bottomless pit of hopelessness without the hint of a safety net.

In the meantime, NOLA reports that the call has gone out for landlords who charge lower rents to provide homes for the homeless when non-profit money for low-cost hotel space runs out. Good luck with that. Landlords don't get to be landlords because of their philanthropy.

In related news, Sue Sturgis has a response to the New Orleans crisis from Naomi Klein, who has exposed the "Shock Doctrine" of "Disaster Capitalism." Klein underscores the triple shot of shock to New Orleans lower classes over at the Huffington Post:

1. Katrina damage and evacuation
2. Attack on New Orleans' public services and housing
3. Police violence against the bodies of protesters at City Hall

Remember that Klein addresses the way that modern capitalism, as influenced by Milton Friedman, emphasizes using disasters to shock people into compliance with and submission to privatization and market powers. Here's an excerpt from Klein's book regarding New Orleans:

It happened in New Orleans. After the flood, an already divided city turned into a battleground between gated green zones and raging red zones--the result not of water damage but of the "free-market solutions" embraced by the president. The Bush administration refused to allow emergency funds to pay public sector salaries, and the City of New Orleans, which lost its tax base, had to fire three thousand workers in the months after Katrina. Among them were sixteen of the city's planning staff--with shades of "de Baathification," laid off at the precise moment when New Orleans was in desperate need of planners. Instead, millions of public dollars went to outside consultants, many of whom were powerful real estate developers. And of course thousands of teachers were also fired, paving the way for the conversion of dozens of public schools into charter schools, just as Friedman had called for.

DemocracyNow.org has extensive coverage of the New Orleans unrest, including higher quality video from both inside and outside City Hall during the protest. One religious minister who was inside the City Council Chambers points to empty seats in the gallery that he claimed should be available to protesters who were locked out. Their coverage is much more comprehensive than the sound bites that are coming from most other sources.

Law Professor Speaks Out at City Hall Gates After New Orleans Melee

CNN reports that, despite the fact that lower class residents are being given vouchers as compensation for their demolished homes, rent is up in New Orleans 45% and the number of HUD units have dropped from 5,000 to 1,800.

Local TV Coverage of New Orleans City Hall Unrest

New Orleans' WDSU-TV posts their coverage of the protests gone violent and has reaction from the Police, Mayor Ray Nagin, protest leaders, and a City Council member: