What We Have to Do

I had been in dozens of schools, as a teacher, coach and administrator.  I had just finished an assignment in the toughest school in our district, Pioneer, a highly regarded Continuation School, when I arrived at my last assignment; a Superintendent Principal at a small mountain district in rural California.  

The continuation school won state honors under my leadership, but more as a testimonial to the good work the staff had been doing for years for “at-risk” students.  They were experts at taking angry young men and women, damaged children if you will, and getting them back on track to graduation; making citizens out of potential criminals.

And it was not for the faint of heart, it was not easy.  It was the hardest work I had ever done.  It wasn’t for everyone.  And it took courage and resilience to show up for work everyday and listen to the stories, that ultimately every time was a result of childhood abuse; sexual and otherwise, abandonment and poverty.

Take that and multiply it times 100 and you get working in racially segregated urban areas.  The violence is multiplied many time; the anger many times.  

Take that and multiply it by 1000 if you work in a Native American community.

That was my last assignment.  It was almost like by accident.  I had a serious conflict with my Superintendent in my Pioneer assignment.  He for some reason, wanted to seriously reduce our efforts to help at risk youth.  He started to dismantle what had been in evidence for years and I fought him.  It came down my leaving or lawsuits.  I took leaving.

And I wound up next to a Native American rancheria (reservation). The population was about 40% Native American, the rest very conservative ranchers.

I called it cowboys and Indians.  

The first fight I was brought into to deal with was a wake up call.  I used all the tricks of the trade I had used at Pioneer (an alternative school for tough street wise kids) and went nowhere.

They did not say a thing, they looked down and seemed to accept what I was saying as I suspended them for a couple days and sent them home after I tried to call their parents.  Parents very seldom could be found, we usually had one of our bus drivers drive them to the “res” with a van.  

I was told by my secretary, as they left, they had massively disrespected me.  “They were telling you to F off”, she said.  I said how, they were respectful, didn’t argue with me, took their punishment quietly.

She told me, “They never looked up at you, they looked down.  To a Native American that is the utmost sign of disrespect”.

I did not know that, and I am 1/16 Cherokee.  I didn’t have a clue what I was getting into.

And so it went.  It was many times worse than Del Palo Heights, where I started my teaching journey.  And when I tell people I taught in the “Heights” people shake their head and say “My God, you taught there?”

So I have been “there”, but never like what existed in the rural corner of California that had a reservation of many tribes existing in squalor, pain, and the lack of hope.

For two years I tried to learn.  I did what I could.  And I was amazed by the resiliency of the people, of how some were surviving just fine, and their children, both white and brown, were succeeding.  And the others, the suicides, the prostitution of 12 year olds, the little boys and girls running the streets of the reservation at 3:00 in the morning because their parents (whoever that was) was too wasted to take care of them; they still haunt my dreams even today!

And of the federal government, who ignored them.  Of the pathetic level of support for the people of the reservation who were basically in prison there.  

And the leadership of the reservation who worked hard for their people, who were supported many times by my staff, and who were finally graduating Native Americans from the school system; the first graduate was in the late 1990s, the district had been there for almost 100 years!

This is America...this is the America that is still there, that stands as testimonial to white supremacy of hate and racism.  And the other America that refuses to give up, that fights back, that kneels during the National Anthem to show America that we have a great amount of work to do.

I have no regrets.  I went into the monster.  Many do, and it breaks them, they quit because it takes courage, sometimes physical courage; it takes heart, and it takes a social conscience that is able to say, don’t take it personal, they don’t hate you, they hate “it”, in may ways the clown in the sewer from the movie, that seeks to kills us all with its hate and prejudice.

Only thing, the “clown”, it...has yellow hair and flies around in Air Force One.

We need a new effort in America...we have done good work, but we have just uncovered “it”...he still lurks in our hearts, we have a President who uses it, personifies it, dividing us for his political gain.     

But we need a new generation to go into the Heights, into the agony, the pain, and educate...educate...educate....teach the hopeless that there is hope.

As I walk amongst my fellow students at Sac State, and I see the effort working, I see diversity, Black, Brown, White walking to classes together; far more  diverse than it was for me as a graduate student 45 years ago.  It is working, we are getting there.

So keep kneeling at football games, keep reminding us that we have more work to do....to unite this country as a place for equal opportunity for all!

What we don’t want to do, is accept Trump’s negativity and his hate...and what YOU have to do is quit helping him...

FUBAR

The Vietnam War...

It smashes across my confidence, across my empathy, across my sensibility just as it did so many years ago.

The lying...and the absolute inability to understand a war for independence, much like ours, that America never did understand.  We could not understand national independence movements against a colonial power!   After our Declaration of Independence!  After those immortal words we were playing the role of England!!!!

And why we didn’t understand that is what smashes my confidence, crosses my empathy and crosses my sensibility now more than ever.

The belligerent confidence in the force of arms to solve problems is at the core of this.  At the core is are the scores of War Movies I watched, with John Wayne and others, the just war movies, as we destroyed Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo.

The Just War, the end to Hitler, the idealism of destroying fascism.  All those were thrown at us, especially in the good guy, bad guy depiction of the war that was spoon fed to us in my last year of high school.

In 1965 many of my classmates enlisted...many also went to college.  But the nation was ready for war, people even talked that it could erase the humiliation of the “Bay of Pigs”.  After all, this was another just war, using the force of arms to solve problems (Communism).

But in my first year of college, while debating Mitt Romney in a dorm room about Vietnam, I began to read about the history of Southeast Asia.  The nagging history of the Viet Minh, of the Japanese occupation, and of the desire of Vietnam to be independent of colonial domination.

I remember Romney, who openly talked about his father running for President in 1968, in response to the inconsistency of Johnson...The only inconsistency in Johnson was that he was lying so much he didn’t make sense.  The troops were writing home.  The war that could not be lost, was being lost.  And the cure was more troops.

Deferments began to be in jeopardy.  The small groups of concern became thousands of anti-war protests.  The reaction of being called a communist for stating what history has confirmed, Vietnam was the wrong war in the wrong place.

But we didn’t know that then.  There was the threat of Communism.  The Soviet Union supported Vietnam along with China.  This was a struggle of communism versus liberal democracy; of the good guys versus the bad guys.

Besides that, the college students protesting the war were only doing it to save their own skins right?  

But questions grew like, where was the threat to our true national security.  Like, why didn’t the South Vietnamese fight harder.  Why were there constant reports of betrayals, or running from the enemy.

And later, after Tet, the reports of American atrocities.  The thing went seriously sidewise!

By that time, the opposition was overwhelming.  The reports of heroin and other drugs running rampant in the G.I.s.  Of the dirty little secret that was so kept from us when we were young, that war ultimately cannot be justified.

And at the same time the Civil Rights Movement was gaining steam.  We began to see American’s original sin; white supremacy, as G.I.s shot the “little brown people” in a rush to build a body count; with the stated objective  to “kill them all”.

And, at that same time, Native American History was discovered, showing that same strategy had been used against them; that atrocity after atrocity was evident in an American genocide.

The officers, in basic training actually called hunting Viet Cong as Indian hunting...of Viet Cong territory as Indian Territory...the same kill them all approach from 1875 was being used in 1967!

And that was the stated objective of the American effort in Vietnam, kill them all.  

And that lost me.  They lost me while I was a soldier.  They lost me forever.  Genocide was what Germany did!

And my peers, many who served in Vietnam were lost for different reasons, but with the same result; a deep unabashed cynicism; a deep distrust of American government, a FUBAR reality.

And today we look up at Trump, the ultimate FUBAR reaction to a reality that you could make no other reason out of, than to say it was FUBAR....

The reckoning!

Relevant History?

Again, what Native American history really was a genocide which includes the destruction of culture and history in the victims.   A relevant and accurate telling of Native American History is one of a culture’s ethnocentrism, racism and greed obliterating another.  

The history was changed alright,  into a lie to hide this tragedy of humanity.  I am sure you are aware of the Doctrine of Discovery, which was used to seize lands from Native Americans who wouldn't or couldn't (language barrier) declare themselves Christian.  The Pope had declared that only Christians could claim land for their sovereign (the Pope) in the New World.  This was allegedly to keep European Nations from going to war over the "New World"....they did anyway.  

And this practice was the beginning of a systematic ethnic cleansing of continents of North, Central and South America.

After the Civil War, the task was completed under the guise of Manifest Destiny and spreading Democracy to Hawaii and beyond.  The reason this history has been changed and lied about is there is debt to be paid for  the land the Europeans stole, including California to Massachusetts and beyond.  Stole...like not paid for.  Over and over and over again treaties were broken, agreements shredded  because it was easier to exterminate the Indians and take their land.    And the land was given to immigrants who were fleeing the feudal system of Europe and Asia; providing the opportunities that are the backbone of American democracy…Problem is, the whole thing is a con, a cover for out and out stealing of land.

Have you ever been to an Indian Reservation or Rancheria?  It is one of the worst places on the planet...poverty, suicide, drug addiction, and death.  The effects of having a culture destroyed are still playing out.

You are right history should be studied in its entirety  The fact that Native Americans had wars against each other's tribes is true, but the casualty rates were far below the thousands who were continually massacred....the bounties that were paid...the annihilation of game (buffalo etc) to starve the Native Americans out.  

And to say not many Native Americans would not  give up the technology of today and actually like “progress"is excuse me...bullshit.  To even imply that Native Americans are better than they were before western "civilization" is so tone deaf white supremacist it  does not deserve a reply...But here it goes anyway.

I am part Native American, a Stanford Graduate with a Masters Degree and contributed 36 years of my life to educating young people....contributions of Native Americans are all over the place.  I like technology and the modern lifestyle as much as anybody else.  But I also have seen the reservation, I also am a descendent of a lynching.    And I think reparations need to be paid.  And I know lots of Native Americans who live in squalor who barely exist, some are now homeless, while their land makes a fortunes for the “others”.  

But the debt is still owed...reparations need to be paid...The land was not yours to take.  

And the tragedy is that there was plenty of land to parcel out to the Native Americans and acculturation could have been done so much better except for this:  white supremacy drove the interactions of the cultures from Native Americans to African Americans.  

The Doctrine of Discovery put white Christians at the top of society for no other reason that by superior force of guns, certainly Jesus is nowhere in this equation (in fact he would be appalled if he came back to witness what was done).

 It is white supremacy that drives even this discussion....you cannot see it I guess...because the cultural bias is so embedded that it is seeps out all the time.  White supremacy has tainted American History from 1492 on. 

Look, Western Civilization has done wondrous things...it also has caused two huge world wars, and RIGHT NOW has the world poised on the edge of nuclear annihilation.  

And, the climate RIGHT NOW is poisoned by warming that has obliterated Texas and is just about to destroy Florida, with more to come.  

I call what is coming the Reckoning...and the odds are, after just electing a mad man as President that whatever is left of the world will look back on what western civilization did to the Native Americans and what it did to the climate as a brutal attack as my ancestors said so eloquently on the "human beings”.  Western culture forgot a long time ago what it meant to treat people as human beings.  How else does the Holocaust happen?  What culture in history has done this to as many over and over again?  

History always needs to be relevant all right , and where we are headed I don't want to go....but the true, relevant  history of western culture is one of destruction, death, and …..A Reckoning of Biblical Proportions!

Convential Wisdom Bought and Paid For

Conventional wisdom can be a death knell for us all.  Special interests like big oil and gas can use it with deadly effect.

Right now we watch in horror as one hurricane after another explodes through the southeast.  We watch in horror as wildfires destroy hundreds of square miles, fed by temperature levels in the 100s.

We watch in horror as Africa and the Mideast struggle with violent upheavals fed by drought and famine.

And we elect a climate denier.  That’s right the United States, in a classic example of special interests (and I’m counting Russia here) went exactly the wrong way in combating global climate change, setting any kind of real effort to save the earth back dozens of years.  When Russia interfered in the election, by helping Trump, it did so for a purpose...Russia’s economy depends on oil and gas production even more than we do!  Global warming gets you arrested in Russia!

It is the same thing as electing Reagan whose first thing was to take the solar panels off the White House.  The message was clear:  coal is king...and global warming accelerated. 

He did that, like Trump pulling us out of the Paris Accords, because he was paid to do it. 

Both were paid in a manner of speaking by the oil and gas cabals, both here and overseas, that sees profit above everything.  Who knows, and they know, that global warming is a real man made thing, their fuel is what is doing it, but they don’t care….they will all be dead when it really kicks into high gear.

Only problem is, it is kicking into high gear RIGHT NOW!

So Trump, now becomes hurricane Donald, trying to show how well prepared we are, as global warming super storms virtually destroy the economy.

The hurricanes and the fires will cost trillions...the rise the the sea levels will be more...and we will soon join Africa and the Middle East and India; etc., in mountains of debt, and financial ruin.

And it will happen right now...Our debt ridden economy that cannot afford decent medical care, is being blown up right now by hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires.

But will we get out of our cars?  Will we demand mass transit and pay for it?  Hell no its all about me!

ME….ME….ME...ME….ME...ME...ME..

In football, where I  played and coached, that attitude has one result:  you get beat!

NO, because conventional wisdom, bought and paid for by oil and gas and coal, dictates that this is all a ruse, a China conspiracy according to Trump who destroyed American leadership in this battle for survival, by voiding the Paris Agreement.  Right there he probably doomed our grandchildren!  We do it everyday when we jump in our cars and drive endless miles to work.

It was not fair;  Trump lied. “I won’t be the mayor of Paris but the mayor of Detroit”...(Hell he won’t dare go to Detroit).

In fact it was fair, it did admit to the “developing nations like India” that the industrialized west had cheated and contributed the bulk of CO2 to the atmosphere, and now sanctimoniously wanted to curb emissions...so language was put into the agreement pledging help to quickly change to clean energy production for India and other “emerging nations”.  That “compromise” might of saved us…..until Trump voided the Agreement!

And Solar City and other clean energy companies led the charge.  The oil and gas companies pledged quietly that they would kill the Paris Accords PRECISELY because of the clean energy aspect, the compromise that got the Paris Agreement passed by all but two nations!

Killing the Paris Accord had everything to do with big oil, coal and gas!

Trump is a shill of oil, coal and gas.  He is owned by them.  The Secretary of State is a former CEO for Exxon for God’s sake.

And if you talk to the ordinary American they will tell you, with conviction, that the global warming thing is overblown, that conventional wisdom and common sense dictates that we are exaggerating.

Tell Texas that...tell Florida that.

Florida right now has to pump water off city streets in Miami everyday at high tide, because the ocean levels have raised so much due to global warming.  The Republican Governor of the state has kept this quiet, even threatening all state employees with being reprimanded if they even utter the words “global warming”.

And today, he is pleading with his citizens to basically evacuate the ENTIRE STATE!  How is he going to hide this?

And you, you keep driving...you keep ignoring the bus...you even make sure junior gets their car so they can drive to school like the “cool kids”...as parking lots burst and commutes go up to 100 miles one way everyday.

Try highway 80 lately from Sacramento to the Bay Area...try the Altamont Pass lately?

So we keep pouring CO2 into the atmosphere, at it was  106 in San Francisco and you are putting a gun to your grandchildren’s heads.

We can fix this...but we can’t do it until we stop electing Republicans….they are bought and paid for by oil, gas and coal…..

Some Democrats are too, but the clean energy industry has had to go Democratic because the Republicans are OWNED by big oil

And we can’t do it with Trump as President.

The Reckoning!