A Rainy Day in Sacramento

I am sitting here ruminating again during a rainy day in Sacramento.

The Washington Post as did the Sacramento Bee; carried a story of a young man who was gunned down in South Sacramento, an African American community, for pointing a cell phone at officers.   He was shot over 20 times in his own backyard.  The officers yelled “show me your hands” a couple times, with no wait time and shot 20 times....then they yelled, “show me your hands again and waited”..

Isn’t his a little out of order?  Of course, of course the officers were white and the victim was black.

The young man had two children and was engaged...He had spent time in jail for something, but was NOT a violent criminal.

So on it goes.  In the most liberal state in union’s capital....a white on black shoot...Black lives matter once again?

Every damned time this happens....every time.  And we just appointed an African American as Police Chief, the first one in Sacramento history.

And so it goes.  America’s original sin just goes on and on and on.

I am beginning to work on my class for CSU Sacramento’s Renaissance program (for next fall).  I am watching YouTube videos, what a great teaching tool, of the genocide that reduced America’s indigenous population from 20,000,000 to 200,000 in three hundred years (and they didn’t all die of disease either).  The genocide was planned and executed mostly by the most democratic nation on earth, one with a Bill of Rights, one who fought a Civil War to end slavery, one who is trying to “get great again”.  And it won’t...

It won’t because of what happened in an all black neighborhood to a 20 year old kid, who did not evaporate into space fast enough to avoid a hail of bullets.

He was showing the officers that all he had was a damned cell phone for Christ’s sake...and without a hesitation one of them yelled gun (in a second) and shot 20 bullets into his body.

And they were in a “tough” black neighborhood and they were white...and relatively inexperienced.

And they panted like dogs, the adrenaline was so high in them...and after shooting the guy 20 times THEN they suddenly slowed down the “show us your hands” mantra.

Watch the video if you doubt me.  Watch it....

We elected a white supremacist as a damned President in direct obvious backlash to the African American President who we elected in 2008.  There is no doubt that white supremacy elected Donald Trump.

It killed over 19 million indigenous people, it enslaved millions and 600,000 died in the Civil War, then Jim Crowe took over and over 2000 a year were lynched in the south, segregation in the North and the South, still gives us cities like Sacramento (and every other one in America) that have white zones and black zones (maybe they aren’t official like apartheid, but the cops in south Sacramento knew exactly where they were and behaved exactly as we would expect);  fire from fear and fire quick.

And of course I could troop out the statistics that actually show people of color are not as gun violent as the white supremacist majority.  I could show you all that..

I don’t want to anymore!   I am too sick and tired of this hateful country!

The Darkest Hour

Winston Churchill was a bent over old man, who smoked constantly, had a hair trigger temper and was so obnoxious that he couldn’t get selected Prime Minister for years.

Franklin Roosevelt was a crippled man, retritcted to a wheelchair who could drag himself around on braces that weighted over 30 pounds. Not healthy by any stretch of the imagination.  Getting him to a podium was a trial.  And most people knew the old man couldn’t walk.

Both leaders voices were shrill when excited, even annoying and did not work well in the new radio medium that leaders like Mussolini and Hitler used.

Hitler and Mussolini were like reality T.V. Stars,  their speeches were crafted by public relations experts using media, fire, masses of troops; etc to create an alternative reality of power and courage.

Propaganda had been used  in WWI, with mass delivery system of radio especially film, to convey the messages of propaganda all over the world.  The enemy was depicted with powerful stereotypes, war was made into a glorified adventure to get recruits; who were chewed up like mincemeat in the trenches of France.

And this was used by Hitler and Mussolini to destroy democracy and establish a totalitarianism based on war.  War was to be worshipped.  Both used makeup artists to embellish their features.  They jutted out their chins in a power mode, speaking to the camera....like reality T.V.

And the “lighting war” Hitler meant no more trench warfare, modern war was fast, decisive, and easy to win......at least at first!

The Darkest Hour stands in stark contrast to that.  It shows the reality of war.  It shows the reality of leadership.

Leadership is not easy.  And it is not always glorious.  Churchill was lousy speaker, Roosevelt was hiding a disability.  They were pitted against two of the greatest showmen on earth.

And what both of them had was the people on their side.  And not a people fooled or manipulated, but who through democracy was able to accurately predict the public consensus the public interest.

And that saved England...And that saved us all.

Look, leadership is not hoopla and staged demonstations of outlandish and sometimes funny statements.  Leadership is NOT telling people what they WANT to hear.

Leadership is telling people what they DON’T want to hear....of telling them the truth.

Churchill did it by getting on a subway and visiting with ordinary people.  His war cabinet was ready to quit, to surrender.  The Army was trapped at Dunkirk, the war was lost.  And he talked to some ordinary people, told them what the DIDN’T want to hear; that the war was lost and surrender or die was basically the choice.  And to a man/woman they chose fighting on....and that is what turned it.

55 million died in WWII.  And it was a DIRECT PRODUCT of a thing like reality T.V.  Experts in mass communication fooled millions into believing that Jews caused the Great Depression.  And Propagandists convinced the Germans to kill 6 million innocent people as a “cure” for the ills of Germany.

Of course it was all about power.

And Trump is all about power.  Trump can rip people apart in his staged, partly rehearsed public talks to the people, his Tweets, where he tells them what they want to hear, not what they don’t want to hear.

And our nation’s survival hangs by that thread!

It’s a Lie!

“They are stealing your jobs, deport them all” ....it is complex, all human conditions are complex; when a person gets up in front of you and over and over declares it is “easy” or “simple to fix”, they are LYING TO YOU!

Demographically the United States is entering an era of low personnel availability. The Baby Boom is aging and retiring in record numbers.  Birth control became available to the masses in the mid-sixties (most of you don’t remember because you weren’t born yet).

I remember the reaction!  Suddenly taking a pill was relative assurance that a mother could control how many children they had.  Remember this was in the 1960s?  That is just 50 plus years ago...

So before that era of real family planning started we have much of the Baby Boom, that are all in their 60s.  And they are retiring fast.

Leaving a demographic way short of the jobs that are available even with the reductions in some jobs caused by outsourcing.

So.....Trump is full of shit.

Yes he is full of shit.  Immigrants are NOT stealing “our” jobs.  Immigrants are filling a couple needs.  Unskilled labor still exists in the United States, in agriculture mostly.  And the drop in quite frankly white Americans because of birth control, has resulted in an net  labor shortage in unskilled labor in agriculture.

Ever wonder why California and other agricultural states have actually encouraged “illegal immigrants”?  Simply put, nobody is available in non immigrant communities to work in their fields!  It is really that simple.  I mean they advertise and without brown workers NOBODY applies!

Do immigrants take white Americans jobs?   Yes; in the high tech area.  Americans have an educational system they have ignored for years.  Conservatives have a political theory that calls for less government, and for some insane reason they have turned their scorn on public education...This has repressed teacher salaries and benefits, teachers are the first fired with state cutbacks (see Kansas) and so a flight from teaching is occurring right now.  Math and science teachers are impossible to find...simply impossible.

How do I know.  I do WASC Accreditation’s...there is an acute shortage of teachers for k-12 education at the crisis level!

So some districts are recruiting overseas.  Our largest competitors still believe in education.  They are graduating many more per capita math and science majors.  If you want a code maker you look to India or Pakistan.

But Trump was elected because of the false assumption that illegal immigrants were stealing American’s jobs.  That simply is a lie.

And now, with “full employment” he is pushing hard to deport millions, including Dreamers who were children when their parents brought them to America.  Many of these Dreamers are code writers in the computer industry...many are teachers who we desperately need.

And this with a labor shortage just beginning.  This will cripple the American economy fast.  It will retard any growth.  It is very serious and the blond wonder knows it.  But hey, it works right...so he keeps up the lie.  It gets white supremacy back in power.

It is all a lie!

Why Trumps Racism will Fail

America never was white...never.

The first obvious point is Native Americans were here first.  And there was millions more than most think.  And they were people of color.

White supremacy might have been here from the beginning, but only white people....NOT!

The immigration was heavy in African Americans; not voluntary to be sure, but heavy in people of color.

And up to  and including  Thomas Jefferson, intermingling of the races occurred early and often.  Several of “our founding fathers” sired children of mixed race...

White European women did not colonize early America.  Men at first were the only ones to survive.  In fact, early settlements were virtually all men.  

And it took months if not years to sail from Europe to the colonies.    And the natural happened with Native American Women because there simply no European women.  

I am part Cherokee.   My family tree shows a great great grandmother who looks more white than Native American.  Why?  Because the Cherokee inter married (it was not outlawed until much later) with white male settlers early and often.  Many Cherokees are as white (looking) as anyone...but have Cherokee DNA.  I have seen photos of Cherokee in 1900...they are all white!  But DNA shows otherwise!

Then there are the African Americans.  Thomas Jefferson again is a good example.  His wife passed away and he maintained a little disguised inter-racial marriage for years, with several offspring. 

This happened everywhere.  Sometimes it was tragic, white slave owners having their way with African women, but sometimes it was mutual; mixed race marriages were not uncommon; publicized yes rare, but existing nonetheless!

White supremacy and racism developed AFTER the influx of slaves and encounters with Native Americans.  By this time (the early 1800s) America already was a nation of immigrants and mixed race human beings.  The Civil War of 1860 was also a reconciliation of mixed race couples, some slaves were actually more white than colored because of the mixing of the “races”.  

Trump does not have a chance to make American Great (White) again...not a prayer.  America never was white!

DNA tests of any American citizen, who “thinks I am pure white” often is a real surprise, because interracial backgrounds often show up.  Racist white supremacists will go get a DNA test to prove their purity; and suddenly shut up because they aren’t white!

I have several friends who talk about the surprise they had when African American showed up in their DNA, or Asian, or Native American.  And in the West, Mexican Americans are almost universally mixed race; the Spanish intermarried in the Americas for the same reason their fellow Europeans did in the north, no availability of European women.

And what have we done as a result?  The leading economy in the world.  The strongest nation on earth.  And still, even though Trump is trying to destroy it, the longest running democratic government on the planet.

And sure enough, it is accelerating again.   The white middle and upper class long ago adopted a two children maximum in a marriage rule; assisted by contraception.  Immigrants and people of color not so much.  So more families of “color” are having more mixed race children than the whiter middle class (that isn’t all white anyway); leaving us with us.....

In California this has meant a minority of “white people” already and in the United States that will happen in 2030.  It actually already has happened, since many “white people” are actually mixed race and don’t even know it.

The fact is America is a melting pot.  Every few years a demagogue like Trump happens along and tries make political points by stirring the racist anti-immigrant pot.

And that is hypocrisy of the highest order since most of us are mixed race already!

The Art of Negotiations

Negotiations must assume a relative equality of the parties around the table.  This is critical to finding solutions that are being sought.  

I sat on many negotiation teams with CTA and later on management’s side of the table.  And nothing killed negotiations more than one side or the other dominating.

This particularly was the case early in the history of the Rodda  Act, in the 1970s, that mandated collective bargaining of educational workers in California.

Superintendents had almost unlimited power before that.  Most of the old guard, were used to having the veto power of any bargained agreement under the old laws of “meet and confer” which really meant meet and take what management gave you.

So an entire generation of Superintendents had to retire, being unable to understand negotiations.  Authoritarianism no longer was a successful model.  It never is.  

Even today, especially when Charter Schools get collective bargaining, people have to be trained in negotiating, reaching consensus; etc.  And the last school I was associate with was nearly destroyed because they refused to negotiate in “good faith”, costing thousands in legal fee and cut the school in half; a true train wreck.  

I offered to help negotiate the new contract with CTA, having the background.  A member of the board was so angry with me he even accused me of letting CTA in (I had nothing to do with it) and misunderstood what negotiations are.  He was an authoritarian and didn’t have a clue.  He saw negotiations as weakness, when actually it is a strength.  

It is a skill.  It does not imply weakness in fact, in our national system of checks and balances it is the ONLY way of getting anything done.  Politics is an art and it takes years to figure it out.  And to sit down with people you fundamentally disagree with but still come up with a functional law or policy is a skill.  It is NOT weakness...it is not capitulation...it is called governing. 

We are seeing that right now on the federal level.  Donald Trump, who was elected on the fabrication that he was a negotiating “genius” (The Art of the Deal), in fact has no negotiating skills whatsoever.  

He uses the outmaneuver techniques, in cornering the opposition and forcing them to capitulate.  This Art of the Deal to him is lying, cornering, and bull dozing the opposition.  

That may work for awhile, but not long.  Because it fosters the art of the pay back, which means the negotiations deteriorate into chaos, since neither side can trust the other.  In short, power politics does not negotiate well, it does not govern well.  

We see that now with the DACA issue.  Trump at first showed flexibility, but must adhere to his minority base, since that is the ONLY support he has left (his popularity is at record lows).  So he quickly backed away from a deal, and now is trying to blackmail the other side.  

He has threatened to go to the Supreme Court to invalidate DACA, after a lower court issued an injunction forbidding him to stop DACA.  He reasons (?) that if he can kill DACA that the other side will be forced to accept his terms to resurrect DACA (if he even wants to do that).

But, the other side is needed to keep the government open..which opens the payback is a bitch card for the opposition.  

What may happen is the “other side” will decide to not cooperate at all, and shut down the government.  This is damaging to BOTH sides and could be catastrophic to the country and is a direct result of Trumps inability to even know how to begin to negotiate.

In short, the authoritarian model is being followed to disaster  since that is the model of negotiations that Trump has followed his entire life.  It is not negotiations, it is bullying and it doesn’t work!

It has a pattern of destroying trust and building momentum in the opposition to pay back the arrogance.  So sooner or later, when Trump weakens, the payback will be swift and sure, and lethal politically.

But the damage done to the body politic to get there  will be huge. 

The nation hangs currently on having the government shut down because of this dynamic.  We have a President who is an authoritarian who does not know how to negotiate.  This may work for a shot time, he can bully his way as he did with the tax cut, but victories will be short lived because the social compact  (Trump has no idea what that is) will be ruptured.  

The losers in this are the American People, because governmental chaos will be the result; that kills markets and will ruin the economy...

Governing is a skill of statesmanship...Trump doesn’t have a clue.

The Dream is Still Alive

Does the Democratic Party ignore African Americans?  

History suggests not.  Most Americans do not even realize the fairly recent history of the two major parties in the United States.  In short, the party of Lincoln, thanks to Nixon’s Southern Strategy, has become the Party of white supremacy.  The Dixiecrats, that plagued the Democratic Party of a hundred years plus (including the Civil War) migrated in mass to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights and Voter Rights Acts were passed.  All of the work and sacrifice of Robert Kennedy and more so Martin Luther King, was discarded by the Republican Party, who cynically adopted lifelong white segregationists hiding as states right advocates; this lie was also used to justify the civil war by the way.

And the Democratic Party adopted the racial minorities of the nation; including the immigrants.

Look at its leadership.  Women and people of color are everywhere.

Now we get, “you haven’t done enough”, when the you is we.  California is a good example.  California’s Democratic Party is the most diverse on the planet.  Yet, it isn’t doing enough for people of color.  It isn’t, because the job is huge and will take time until conservatives are eradicated from the voting public.  

Why?  Look at the DACA fight right now.  The Republicans hold all three branches of federal government, so white supremacy is in power yet again; every bit as bad as Woodrow Wilson (a Dixiecrat Democrat) in 1918 (one hundred years ago.  And the Republicans, who everyday betray the legacy of Lincoln, refuse to do the right thing; opposing immigration, opposing human rights, renewing the war on drugs and African Americans; etc.

In short, they are attempting to roll history back to 1972.  

Voting rights have taken a hit, human rights have taken a hit, and recently a totally unfair and bigoted income tax cut was passed that attacks people of color.

And some, not many but some, people of color get sucked into this vortex of hate and actually vote Republican.

It is not hard to be hypnotized by the allure of Republicans with their free market mantra.  The problem is the economic system presently is set up to discriminate against people of color.  There are decades old systems in place to under educate millions of young people and doom them to a lifetime of poverty.  And if they commit a crime, the criminal justice system is set up to overly punish and incarcerate in a Jim Crowe system.

So where does that leave Martin Luther King’s legacy?  

The enemy is stronger now than ever.  That is because the Republican Party still is the bastion of big money, corporate power, that is controlled by white people who don’t want to share.  The Democratic Party is outspent constantly by the Republicans who have benefited by a conservative judiciary who fixed the system, leaving the Republicans to dominate in fund raising.

And gerrymandering and voter identification efforts have turned former progressive states like Wisconsin into seas of red where white supremacy reigns.

So what do we do?  How do we fight this?  

The answer is in the diversity that lies in California.  The slow but steady mixing of races (yes that term) that literally marries white supremacy away.  

It is very difficult to hate your grand daughter.  It is really difficult to discriminate against the family that sits right next to you in church.  

Martin Luther King envisioned this.  He didn’t talk about it much because the mixing of races was very bad thing in 1968.  In fact, interracial marriage was not approved by the Supreme Court until 1947!

But it is coming. California is now a Caucasian (whatever that is) minority state.  People of color dominate demographically.  

And the Democratic Party has responded, opened its doors and embraced this diversity.  

But many are still left behind.  And that is not the Democratic Party’s fault anymore.  The corporate class, that is still hard right Republican, work tirelessly to preserve white supremacy; fighting through election spending to create a huge red mass in the the rural states and regions of America.  In states like Pennsylvania for example, Republicans have convicted poor whites that the reason they are poor is not because corporations have sent their jobs overseas or to robots, but because of the Democrats who allow immigrants into the country.

There is not a drop of evidence that this is true, in fact the country right now has a shortage of skilled labor that is about to drag down the economy.  It isn’t the immigrants.

But Donald Trump got elected with America First in areas of high unemployment because white uneducated middle class people are taught by the Republicans that the party of the New Deal has abandoned them.

In some ways that is true, racially the Democratic Party has abandoned them, by becoming the most diverse party on earth.  But economically not so; the differences between big money support of the Republicans and the small donor base of the Democrats is stark.

But Donald Trump is President and both houses of Congress have white supremacist majorities.  So the devil is still alive and well in America.

What to do:  persevere, never quit, keep voting, keep organizing and finally if you have a white friend who is a bigot (or a person of color for that matter) unfriend them.  That’s right, stop being around them.  They are sick with a illness of white supremacy and fascism that frankly is terminal.  They simply have to die off, which they are by the way.  Sadly many of them are/were my friends.  But as they age, they get harder in their racism; so we have to wait for them to die.

Sound harsh?  It is.  But for the young, the millennial generation, its up to you to get political, to vote, to register Democratic and work within the Party to get the things done you deem necessary to kill white supremacy forever.

Dr. King truly believed you can change people’s hearts.  To some degree, with people who are capable of it, this is possible; but for most, they are sick forever.

The only way to beat them is like we have done in California, bury them in votes.

Terms of Nativism

Not to lessen the impact and the wrongness, moral bankruptcy racist pig that Trump is, but he was elected remember?  Somebody voted for him.  What has happened is NOT a surprise and is the rule rather than the exception.  

This means he got more votes according to a racist system (electoral college) that was established to keep the slave south in the union.  He is a minority elected President, he did not get the majority of the vote.  

But I digress.  Trump is not alone; never think that.  He reflects a long tradition of nativism and bigotry toward immigrants.

Your ancestors and mine were called these things over the years as they sought to assimilate.  And on my Dad’s side, those who were already here got names flung at them, as well as bullets, in the carnage that is sometimes America.

Germans:  Huns, Krauts, Mofs, Boches, Nazis....

Italians:  Wops, Dagos, Greaseballs, Guineas, Goomba

Jews (you can add nationalities if you like):  Kike, (Polish Kike) , Yids; etc

Irish:  Micks, Maddy, Prod, Taig

English:  Brits, Limeys...

White southerners:  Rednecks, Hillbilly, White Trash, Trailer Trash, Cracker, Hick, Bumbkin, Peckerwood.  

Africans:  The N word in every way possible, Mother F...era...Blue, Homey, Home Boy, Boy...etc

Vietnamese:  Gooks, Kinks, Slopeheads....

Native Americans:  Redskins, Diggers, Savages

Japanese:  Slant eyes, Yellow, Japs

Vile wrong and makes your stomach churn....But 30% of Americans believe in the President who just went there, who was elected with the promise to “put them in their place”, who promises to build a wall, to discriminate, to “Make America Great Again”.

But the fact is all of you reading this know the words above very well...many of you have even used the terms, or for sure have heard them used.  Some think they are colorful.  For some, you use these terms and a fight is coming.  For others, a bullet.  

Will he...will it work?  Do we need a purge?  Did we in the past?  

Nativism rears its ugly head in America every generation, sometimes worse than others.  There are dozens of reasons for it, in spite of the absolute fact, that we are a nation of immigrants.

The exception of course are Native Americans who have been attacked with straight up genocide and cultural destruction.

The history of America is one of violence and racism.  We all are racists to some degree, you can’t live here and not be racist.  It is an illness that veers us closer to fascism all the time; it is a doorway to fascism....ask Germany and Italy.  We make tribes of people, we stereotype, we use hatred to win, to divide, get elected.

Every once in awhile a person will come along and take advantage of this hatred and racism politically.  That has happened again with Trump.  He was elected with a racist vote.  

He won an upset because of the racism he espouses.  He worked for years on the “birther” non-issue, coupled with overt immigration racism, to win the Republican nomination and later the Presidency.  He used the white supremacists’ backlash to gain just enough votes to win the electoral college (a system of electing a President that was originally made to support slavery).

This is not an accident.  America knew what he  was doing when Trump was elected....he plotted the whole thing out....but as before, once the genie is out of the bottle, the consequences could be dire; including war. 

Now it up to America to right the ship...to do what we have done before, rally the country to put down Trump’s nativism and racism.  We can do it peacefully or with war.  

Be ready for both.