OurFuture.org Blogs: Sally Kohn

Exploiting Poverty Caused The Financial Crisis

Sally Kohn — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:41:30 -0400

Sure, the CEOs and hedge fund managers were greedy. There’s no question that wealth and the pursuit thereof led to the sub-prime fiasco and the decline of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch and more. But what’s really at play here is persistent poverty and Wall Street seeking to make a dime off the poor, consequences be damned, while Washington looks the other way.

The sub-prime crisis is the result of good people getting bad loans. Loans that triple or quadruple in interest rates, riddled with small print, are unbearable by most homeowners. But they are particularly unsustainable for low-income families working two or three jobs to make ends meet. Still, lenders scammed hardworking families with the promise of owning homes they really couldn’t afford. And then greedy Wall Street managers, looking for a new way to squeeze a buck from an already bursting-at-the-seams economy, bundled up these bad loans into worse securities, sold them off, and tried to gain a profit as our national economy lost its shirt.

We could have averted the current financial crisis by creating affordable housing and good jobs, strengthening public education and providing health care and child care for all families, to help hardworking Americans thrive in the middle class instead of being pushed into poverty. We could have averted this crisis if we really cared about all families owning their own homes and created nationwide programs including affordable loans. (Even subsidized loans in the first place would have cost taxpayers less than what we’re now spending bailing out Wall Street.) We could have averted this crisis if we put the needs of the majority of American families ahead of the needs of a small minority of greedy investors.

Now, 8,000 American families a day face foreclosure. But instead of prioritizing poor and even middle class families who are increasingly struggling, our government is spending billions and billions to bail out the Wall Street firms that created this crisis. Instead, we should be spending our taxpayer money to help the families who were taken advantage of in the “anything goes” unregulated financial system that years of misguided never-really-did-trickle-down economic policy created. These families need the government to help re-adjust their mortgages and cover bridge payments to avoid foreclosure.

The fundamentals of our economy are not sound. Real wages for the majority of American families have been declining while CEO salaries are at an all-time high. Health care costs and college tuition are crippling more and more families. The middle class is rapidly disappearing, and more and more of us find ourselves struggling while the gap between the rich and poor grows.

Instead of allowing Wall Street to profit off of poverty, we should fix our economy once and for all, to work better for all of us. We need universal health care, including a government-funded insurance option, to help families get out from under mounting health care debt. We need policies that reign in scam lending, from housing to the credit card industry. We need a nationwide living wage and a massive public jobs program, to address underemployment in our unstable economy while helping build essential shared infrastructure like public transportation and schools. We need new trade and immigration policies that work for working people on both sides to the border. And we need new corporate rules of the game that make big business accountable to communities and workers, not just greedy investors.

Wall Street and conservative economists have insisted that, in our laissez faire system, everyone is on their own. The poor were left on their own, to fend for themselves against twisted economic structures backed by the biggest institutions on Wall Street. Washington never left Wall Street on its own, and as Wall Street’s scam deflates, Washington is coming to the rescue. But shoring up Wall Street won’t make our economy work. We need to ensure that a greedy few can’t exploit those who are struggling. Without poor people, this crisis would have never happened. If we prioritize ending poverty, and preventing more and more Americans from slipping into poverty, we can be sure it won’t happen again.

Defending Community Organizing

Sally Kohn — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:54:07 -0400

In her Republican convention speech, Gov. Sarah Palin said:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.

If the candidates are going to start attacking each other personally, why can't they leave hard working community organizers out of it? It's ironic that as both parties are focused on change, community organizers --- the ones who actually patch the holes and our democracy and help Americans demand change --- are now a political football.

I have the privilege of working everyday with community organizers across the country who wake up everyday burdened by the very real responsibilities of the people in the communities around them for whom our economy and our government isn't working, and hasn't worked, for a very long time. This election, the ranks of poor people, communities of color, factory workers, single moms, elderly Americans, janitors is swelling to include the vast majority of Americans who now realize that our economy and our democracy just is designed to benefit an elite few rather than all of us. The change voters are talking about this year builds on the shared problems community organizers have been helping people identify for decades. The change voters want builds on the solutions community organizers have been nurturing and putting into place, building the leadership of everyday Americans all across our country to demand that America work for everyone.

I thought I'd share this statement, released today, by Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Center for Community Change:

When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn't attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition --- one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors.

All across the country, in every state and every community, there are community organizers helping people find shared solutions to the shared problems they face. The candidates for President and Vice President should be working to solve our shared problems, too, rather than attack others who trying to do the same.

From winning living wages to expanding affordable housing to improving the quality of public schools to getting health coverage for the poor and elderly, community organizers have made and will continue to make our communities and our country better for all of us.

The values that community organizers and grassroots leaders represent are not Washington values or Wall Street values but American values, that we care for each other and look out for each other and know we're all interconnected and have a valuable role to play in making our country work for all of us. Candidates should be courting these Community Values, not condemning them.

How's about instead of debating the relative merits of community organizing, the candidates take a cue from community organizers and start talking about the real problems Americans are facing and the real solutions we need? Maybe then candidates could make as valuable of a contribution to our nation as community organizers are making every day!

Beyond The Clintons: The Unity Democrats (and Republicans) Need

Sally Kohn — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:39:15 -0400

All eyes are on Denver and whether the Democratic party will unify around Barack Obama, healing rifts that remain from the protracted primary fight. But the focus should be on unity of values and purpose, not just candidacy. By now, we all know American voters want change. But what do they mean? It’s not just a change of leaders, continuing the same time-honored Washington tradition of sticking ones finger in the air to see which way the wind blows and calling that leadership (while continuing to the same, old politics behind the scenes). Voters want to change the wind. The parties should listen and unify behind the public (read: catch up).

For years, conservative and corporate political interests have convinced us that America is a dog-eat-dog nation and that poor jobs, foreclosed homes and no health insurance for some and mansions and yachts for others is perfectly fair and just. Liberal politicians, too, have talked about leveling the playing field and helping Americans compete --- presumably against one another --- as though life is some kind of game you either win or loose. But as working class Americans consistently find themselves on the losing end of a corporate paradigm stacked against them, and as a nation we find ourselves consistently slipping in the global economic medal count, we realize this winner-take-all game metaphor stinks. It’s not exactly Monopoly when you’re playing with people’s real families and homes and health care. Voters want an economy and an America that works for everyone, not just a handful of winners.

I’ve heard this sentiment from voters and community leaders across the country, from Iowa to Maine and from New Jersey to Colorado. Take Janice “Jay” Johnson, chair of the Virginia Organizing Project, a statewide grassroots organization knocking doors of more than 300,000 voters in that battleground state. “Virginians understand how we're connected to each other, and how healthcare is connected to good jobs and good jobs are connected to public education,” Johnson says. “That desire crosses the red and blue parts of the state. Our Community Values Voters are part of a larger trend that will change Virginia and the country this election.”

In two important ways, the “Community Values Voters” Johnson is talking about exhibit a unity that the parties haven’t come around to yet.

First, they oppose scapegoating. In the past voters have been swayed by the “ignore-your-problems-and-focus-on-this-shiny-thing-over-here” device, be it gay couples or undocumented immigrants --- the parties trying to obscure their lack of real solutions for middle class problems by erecting strawmen of supposed moral crisis that they can score points by slaying. Fortunately, an exciting moment for our democracy is looming as voters no longer seem to be moved by such scapegoating tactics. Polls suggest voters are trained like laser beams on the actual problems facing our country this election. Finally, candidates and the parties may have to address them.

The Community Values Voters Johnson is talking about are also united in their opposition to corporate orthodoxy. Even small children who can barely add are flummoxed by the fact that gas prices are rising at the same time as Exxon and other oil companies are reporting record profits. Anywhere outside Wall Street, that would be called thievery. Polls on everything from health insurance to housing reveal voters no longer place blind trust in the intentions of corporate America. And everything would suggest growing suspicion on the part of voters for political parties that are so beholden to corporate America that they are unwilling to change the laws by which they are governed and held accountable.

There’s a movement afoot in America. Voters of all stripes realize that America can be a better place for all of us --- that our politics and policies can help all of us do better, not just a privileged few; that in America, we are one big community and we can only move forward together, not by leaving some behind. Ironically, Americans have come to this place absent the leadership of bankrupt political parties that have been trying to court votes by not rocking the boat. Americans have come to this unity, on their own, because their collective ship is sinking --- and they blame the parties for drilling the holes. It’s no wonder that President Bush’s approval rating and the approval rating of the Democratic Congress are anemic at best. Voter displeasure with the current priorities of Washington is evident. What is not evident is whether the parties will wake up to the Community Values unity that is sweeping the nation --- and prioritize the kind of unity that has nothing to do with the Clintons and everything to do with the future of our nation.

Real Change Happens Off-Line

Sally Kohn — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:21:23 -0400

Today's American young people feel a deep connection to people in Tibet and Darfur, want to hold corporations accountable to environmental standards and worker justice, and value the role of government in meeting our shared needs. Yet the Internet tools that help Millennials appreciate our interconnectedness may actually erode the community values they seek.

The Millennials, or the cluster of young folks born roughly between 1980 and 1995, were raised between two conflicting phenomena. On the one hand, they have grown up with new technologies that have helped the world connect more easily; on the other hand, they have been raised alongside the rise of hyperindividualism in American culture that has isolated us from each other and the world around us.

As the Millennials were learning to walk, Ronald Reagan proclaimed that the only "excuse government has for even existing" is to protect the rights of individuals, not the larger, common good. Having once played a cowboy on the silver screen, Reagan helped transform America into a radical Darwinian Wild West. Industries were privatized, public school budgets and other social programs slashed, Wall Street given free rein. Reagan's British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, went a step further, declaring, "There is no such thing as society." In the neoconservative political vision of the era, people were left to fend for themselves.

At the same time, the world became more interconnected than ever. Technology allowed the Millennials not only to imagine the children in Ethiopia, but to actually see them and, eventually, become their friends on Facebook. Changing demographics made the new generation more comfortable with difference and diversity than their parents. Plus, technological connectivity opened the door to economic interdependence.

Today, workers in China rely on shoppers in Chicago; investors in Boston track the latest trends from Bangladesh. And, via their cellphones, the Millennials are plugged into it all.

The political aims and vision of the Millennials clearly buck the Reagan "rugged individualism" in favor of the community values of connectedness, inclusion, and mutual responsibility.

But social movements are based on collective action. The American Revolution, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and every significant social change movement in between and since has relied on community organizing, building mutually responsible communities to challenge the status quo.

On their own, for example, none of the activists in the civil rights movement had sufficient power and influence to end segregation. Coming together in local committees, led mainly by young people, they used the tools of face-to-face community organizing, developing shared strategies to address shared problems. And they took shared action; in sit-ins and Freedom Rides, they formed groups that were more than the sum of individual parts.

By contrast, Internet activism is individualistic. It's great for a sense of interconnectedness, but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and '70s did. It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there.

This is great for signing a petition to Congress or donating to a cause. But the real challenges in our society -- the growing gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of racism and discrimination, the abuses from Iraq to Burma (Myanmar) -- won't politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million.

Millennials are poised to lead us all to reject the hyperindividualism and isolation that has dominated our recent past and recognize the deep interconnectedness and mutual responsibility that is our present and future.

The lone cowboy story was a myth. Our greatest accomplishments, as individuals and as a nation, have almost always come from hitching our wagons to others and working together, not just in going it alone.

To avoid eroding the values Millennials so appreciate, and to truly influence the world around them, they must transform their online activism into off-line communities and build an effective movement for change. From church basements to campus meetings to voters' doors, Millennials need to add face-to-face action to their innate sense of community.

Sally Kohn is a senior campaign strategist with the Center for Community Change, which runs Generation Change, a training program for the next generation of community organizers.

Does Everyone Matter Equally?

Sally Kohn — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:06:54 -0400

From the superdelegate process to the farm bill to the recent raid on immigrants in Postville, Iowa, elitism is rearing its nipped-and-tucked head all across America.

How else can you explain anointing a handful of Democratic party officials to have more power in the nominating process than millions of average American voters? According to CNN, each Democratic superdelegate has more power than 13,000 primary voters. So just like George Bush was able to ignore millions of people marching in the streets against the Iraq War, the superdelegates are free to replace the will of the voters with their own whims. The idea that, like father, superdelegates know best, is anti-democratic and elitist.

The farm bill passed by Congress last week is no different. The New York Times notes that Safia Ali, a 25-year-old mother of five in Somalia, can no longer afford rice or wheat or powdered milk. The price of food commodities has skyrocketed in recent months, setting off a global food crisis. Safi Ali has not eaten in a week and her family is starving. The response of the richest nation in the world? Pass a food bill that increases cash subsidies to the very same large, corporate-owned farms that are manipulating crop prices in the first place. Between 1998 and 2007, profits of the agribusiness giant Cargill increased nearly 1000% --- from $280 million to a whopping $2.3 billion --- extorting from rising crop prices on the one hand and from taxpayer-funded farm subsidies on the other. Small family farmers in the United States and poor people here and oversees like Safia Ali are the victim’s of our government policies, not the beneficiaries. Politicians in Washington side with big business elites.

Also last week, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raided a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, and arrested and detained at least 300 undocumented immigrants but as many as 700. Workers at the Agriprocessor meatpacking plant were slaving away under extremely oppressive conditions --- in March 2008, the plant was cited with 39 violations of workplace health and safety laws. But rather than step in and twist the hand of the corporation to clean up its act, raise and enforce a minimum wage and provide good public schools and affordable healthcare --- the kinds of things Agriprocessor’s workers and everyone in the struggling town of Postville really needs --- government agents came with guns and handcuffs to terrorize the workers. (Any close-minded nativists who would argue that undocumented immigrants are the real criminals in Postville should kindly explain when pursuing the American dream became a crime.)

As a nation, we are more concerned with the few at the top than the many struggling at the bottom. It’s not just politicians who are guilty here. The majority of Americans are more concerned about Angelina Jolie’s shrinking waistline than Safia Ali starving in Somalia. Does Angelina Jolie matter more? Do the superdelegates? The corporate titans?

While donor-driven politics and celebrity-driven culture have always privileged the elite few over the many, it’s getting worse. It’s no longer simply that the rich and famous are worthier than everyone else. Increasingly, everyone else is worthless. The rise in reality television shows can be attributed to a growing sense, thank you Madison Avenue, that you only matter if you’re famous so now everyone wants to be. The staggering rise in CEO salaries, while real wages for most Americans have been stagnant or even decreased, is the direct result of the belief that the rich deserve to get richer at the expense of shared prosperity.

The plight of Safia Ali and the undocumented immigrants in Postville and even the discounted Democratic primary voters is not the result of a lack of hard work or personal responsibility, fingers we often point at those who are poor or disenfranchised in the United States. The plight of those at the bottom, a group growing bigger by the day as the economy tumbles and the middle class evaporates, comes because we think the people at the top are inherently superior --- and that elitism is cemented in our culture and in our policies.

Elitism is anti-American. When the colonists revolted against England, they were revolting against the idea that one person --- the King --- mattered more than the rest of them. And while we have stumbled gravely in our pursuit of egalitarianism --- from the very early mistreatment of American Indians to slavery to the examples above today --- the idea that we are all equally valuable and should be treated as such is emblazoned in the American story, our entrepreneurial independence alongside our deep moral commitment to be our brothers and sisters’ keeper. In the America we aspire to be, everyone matters as much as everyone else. We are all equal, interdependent and interconnected.

Undocumented immigrants have every much of a right to be in the United States as I do. That I was born on one side of the border does not make me fundamentally more deserving of the opportunities of this nation than anyone else. (In fact, arguably the fact that many immigrants have been forced to flee their home countries because of the disastrous economic and foreign policies of the United States, may argue for an even stronger claim than mine; having only ever benefited from America, I should be giving back not benefiting more.) Safia Ali, who has nowhere to which to flee, is no less deserving of food and shelter than I am, nor for that matter less deserving of a good job, a college education, or even designer clothes. And the superdelegates votes shouldn’t count more than yours or mine.

Those who are on top are not more worthy of being on top. Those who are on the bottom are not more deserving of being on the bottom. But until we really embrace the idea of inherent and equal human worth, in our hearts and our souls --- and not just among the people we know personally but for everyone, worldwide, no matter their situation --- the community values that America represents will remain a good idea on paper but warped and elusive in practice.

The War On Immigrants

Sally Kohn — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:27:34 -0400

When I hear the word “raid” these days, the first thing I think of us the war in Iraq. Something like, “US Forces Raid Shi’ite Stronghold of Sadr City.” I have images of American forces going home by home, banging down the doors, threatening anyone they find and taking away the supposed evil-doers.

But then sometimes I hear the word “raid” mentioned in my own backyard and the frightening thing is, the scenario isn’t all that different.

On Wednesday, federal agents backed by our precious tax dollars, banged down the doors of poultry plants in New York, Texas, Florida, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Georgia, threatening anyone they could find, dragging away parents without notifying their families and, all told, arresting more than 300 undocumented immigrants.

Their crime? Leaving their homes and everything they’ve ever known in search of opportunity for their families and crossing the treacherous desert boarder between the US and Mexico or overstaying their visas in order to work long hours for low pay at a poultry processing plant where, according to an expose from the Charlotte Observer worker protections are lax and severe injuries are common. The Charlotte Observer series is littered with stories and images of workers crippled by their duties, and stories of management cutting corners not only on safety but on appropriate medical treatments when problems do arise.

Remind me who the evil-doers are?

From the SWAT team raids on immigrants to the para-military Minutemen staking out the US-Mexico border, we’re turning our nation into a war zone in violation of every decent principle on which our nation was founded. Many Americans are not immigrants — Natives who were already here, those who were forced here. But many of us, including most of today’s anti-immigrant voices I’m afraid, are the descendents of generations who sought America’s shores as a refuge from religious intolerance or famine, who saw in our stars and stripes the twinkle of possibility that tomorrow might be better than today. The American dream may be the most powerful promise in the world. It is plainly un-American to hoard it for ourselves and deny it to those who seek it as our ancestors once did.

In the community called America, everyone is included. In the community called America, we treat everyone with dignity and respect. In the community called America, we are all striving to build a better America together. Last time I checked, we were proud to stand together for this vision, rather than breaking down doors and breaking apart families for daring to share the same hopes and dreams. Raids against immigrants are demeaning to the America I know, our moral character and community values. It’s time we end these stupid and violent raids for good.

You can pledge your support for fair and just immigration reform at www.BuildingAmericaTogether.org

Juan: Undocumented But Not Un-American

Sally Kohn — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:40:19 -0400

Click here to see Juan's video

The first thing I noticed about Juan when I met him is his presence. For a young man, just graduated from high school --- that period when most of us were shy and awkward at best --- Juan is confident and vocal, the kind of person with clear potential to be a leader in whatever field he might choose.

The second thing you notice about Juan is the sadness in his eyes. His country, the only home he has ever known, decided his potential is irrelevant --- that no amount of talent and passion and vision and drive could ever overcome the fact that he and his family once crossed our nation’s arbitrary borders without permission. It’s as though Juan the person doesn’t exist without Juan the paperwork. In our country, he’s treated as a number --- one to be reduced. Or feared.

Fear is one of the dominant motivating (and manipulating) forces in politics today. Some have tried to convince us that we should be afraid of immigrants, exploiting our fear about our jobs and our healthcare and the economy and pointing fingers at immigrants and saying they’re the cause of our problems. Ironically these are problems that have existed for years, deep flaws in the distribution of wealth and opportunity in our society, and undocumented immigrants are just the latest scapegoats. Remember gay people? Welfare moms before that? Fear is used to distract us while the real problems only grow.

The other motivating force is usually pity. But that’s not the answer either. Pity is equal parts compassion and isolation --- a sort-of thank goodness that’s not me, there there, and be done with it removal. The word pity actually comes from the Latin piety, conveying a sense of literal or spiritual superiority over the poor, unfortunate, pitiful soul. To pity Juan would be to rob him of his dignity and power --- and absolve ourselves of responsibility.

What else, then? The most mutually respectful of emotions, where your fate is entwined with another’s, where you could never be truly safe if they are in danger, truly free if they are imprisoned, truly happy if they are unhappy. We call it love. I don’t just mean romantic love (although I suspect Juan is single…). I mean the moral, even spiritual love --- a deep feeling of connection to other human beings, that their struggles are our struggles, their pain our pain, and that no one person’s happiness or security or hopes for the future can be rightly put above any one else’s. Just as the interests of billionaires should not be put ahead of people who are starving or losing their homes, one person’s claim on the American dream should be put above anyone else’s by simple virtue of the geography of birth.

At what point did we close the borders on the American dream? The ideal of America has never been perfect in practice --- our present is still stained by a past of Native American extermination, slavery and sexism. Yet we have always marched toward inclusion, sometimes slowly, sometimes begrudgingly, but always bending the arc of our nation toward justice, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. observed. When did the arc start flattening out? Did we decide we’ve dished out just enough love and justice, thank you very much, or certainly there’s not enough to go around? In a nation founded on the idea that freedom and equality and opportunity are renewable resources and the more the merrier, have we achieved “peak love” and tapped out?

The writer CS Lewis wrote, “We love to know that we are not alone.” And we are not alone. And as a nation, we are blessed by the bounty of generation upon generation of immigrants who have come to our borders and our shores to make a better life for themselves and, in so doing, make a better country for us all. It is the nation that, despite its hiccups and growing pains on the path to justice, is one that we should be proud to love. And Juan, like millions waiting at the gates of the American dream, loves his country and asks for our love in return.

Sign the pledge to support fair and just immigration reform and build a better America for all of us at www.BuildingAmericaTogether.org.

Poorism? What Is Inequality Coming To?

Sally Kohn — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:29:51 -0400

It says something about the extremities of inequality in our world when rich people are now paying money to take tours of poor people. An article by Eric Weiner in the travel section of the Sunday New York Times highlights the growing business of “poorism” --- taking tour groups to visit the world’s slums and shanty towns for a glimpse at just how bad things really are.

Troubling enough is the irony of tourists paying enough money to a tour guide to traipse through a poor family’s home that, if given to that family instead, might actually help them escape from poverty. One excursion cited in the New York Times article charges $7.50 per person to gawk at the Dharavi slums of Mumbai, India. Worldwide, 3 billion people --- nearly half the world’s population --- live on less than two dollars a day, including almost 80% of Indians and, most assuredly, 100% of people living in the Dharavi slums.

It’s not that rich privileged folks seeing poverty first-hand is a bad thing. It’s vital that everyone from titans of industry to those of us privileged enough to have a home and running water understand the true depths of poverty that exist on our planet, in our own backyards and on the other side of the globe. Yet when, day-to-day, the privileged are so removed from the poor that we need tour guides and travel itineraries in order to actually witness what poverty is, it says something about just how extreme inequality has become.

Consider the recently opened Liberty Hotel in Boston, fashioned by remodeling a former prison. With more than 1 in 100 Americans behind bars, there’s something sick about people paying $319 and up a night for “lockdown” in a prison-turned-luxury-hotel. Can you imagine young African American men --- 1 in 30 of whom are incarcerated, and all of whom face the ever-present threat of incarceration through racial profiling --- finding it “vacation-like” to spend a night in the prison-hotel, even if they could afford it? That those who can afford a $319-a-night hotel room at the Liberty find it novel reveals how insulated they are from the nowhere-near-novel reality of prison in the lives of many, especially poor communities of color.

Then again, maybe I’m being too --- oh, I don’t know --- moral. Perhaps poverty tourism and prison-chic simply reflects pragmatic, economic opportunism. After all, we’ve build a society and an economy in the United States where extreme greed is rewarded and, in fact, reinforced. The resulting poverty and suffering at the bottom is not only accepted but, by growing prison construction and cutting domestic social service programs and foreign aid, sustained. So in the otherwise-collapsing US economy, poverty may be just the growth industry we need! Better yet, we should continue to slash public benefit programs and programs that help the poor, to open up new economic “horizons”.

With that in mind, knowing that the chieftans of exploitation are always looking for the next big thing, here are some other “poorism” suggestions:

** Inside an ICE raid --- Be there as armed agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency storm the home of a Mexican-American family at midnight, tear an undocumented immigrant mother away from her citizen children and partner, lock her up in prison and send her back to Mexico to never see her family again

** Waterboarding 101 --- Learn what all the fuss is about when you get waterboarded for hours on end until you finally confess to something and are then detained indefinitely without access to a lawyer or any communication with your family

** Oh no, HMO! --- Watch as a middle class family takes their sick child to the doctor only to learn that their health insurance won’t cover the life-saving medicine their child needs, then in a real nail-biter, watch as both parents take second jobs and wonder: Will it be enough?

** Human Wrongs Around the World --- Travel on a secret CIA extradition flight with stops in Pakistan, Columbia and all the countries where your tax dollars are funding dictatorships and human rights abuses.

I suppose if you can’t beat inequality, profit from it. That’s the American way, right? Land of opportunity (though some exclusions apply). We could choose to distribute resources and opportunity fairly to everyone, create pathways to education instead of prison and poverty, and re-build an America where we put the common good and common needs ahead of selfishness and exploitation. Or we could continue to allow those who’ve risen to the top to systematically kick away the ladder of opportunity for everyone else. And then sell tickets and call it tourism.

Sally Kohn is the Director of the Movement Vision Lab at the Center for Community Change.

We've been going to movies about going it alone

Sally Kohn — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:13:34 -0500

Originally published Orange County Register, February 22, 2008

This year's most-honored films mostly are rather bleak. "If a movie-goer manages to see all the Oscar-nominated films, a generous dose of antidepressants will be in order," remarked Washington Post writer Robin Givhan.

With at least one survey finding 75 percent of Americans feeling that our country is on the wrong track, the trend toward gloomy movies may seem to be a case of art imitating life. Yet as the ideology of hyper-individualism runs its dangerous course through our politics and culture, the American public may be drawn to entertainment that depicts the future we're desperate to avoid.

In the 1932 film "Grand Hotel," Greta Garbo uttered her most famous line, "I want to be alone!" Yet, despite her anguished pleas for solitude, in the end Garbo's once-suicidal misanthropic character seeks out love and companionship. The tragedy of the film is that the companion she now craves has been killed.

Many of this year's films follow an opposite path. When Best Picture nominee "There Will Be Blood" begins, Daniel Day-Lewis' character is part of a community – trying to figure out together how to more efficiently extract oil from the earth. The film tells the dark tale of his descent into loneliness, as he pushes away – or kills – everyone around him. The tragedy is not that Day-Lewis' character ends up alone despite wanting community. The tragedy is that he chose isolation and then learned its consequence.

Films like "No Country for Old Men," also up for Best Picture, and "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" similarly progress from being stories of community – husband-wife, parent-child, sheriff-town – to everyone being on his or her own, fighting in isolation, one against the other.

Thomas Hobbes' "war of all against all" leading to lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" is a popular story line in our culture today. From "Survivor" to "American Idol," we enjoy watching people duke it out in mock struggles of life and death, or being voted off the show, which equals death in reality TV. But perhaps these films and shows are popular not because they reflect our lives but because they repulse us. For every Lone Ranger on the screen, there are thousands of families and communities pulling together and looking out for one another. Maybe we enjoy watching malnourished fashion models eliminate each other precisely because we can turn the TV off and turn to the people around us, safe in the knowledge that they help us when we're in need and help us achieve our dreams.

To be sure, individualism and community are not at odds. The Rabbi Hillel said, "If I am not for myself, who will be? And if I am only for myself, what am I?" Individual autonomy and expression are essential to a democratic society. Yet our increasingly high-tech, low-touch consumerist society has force-fed us the idea that we're nothing more than individuals.
This year's breakaway hit film was "Juno," in which a high school student who got pregnant by "connecting" with a schoolmate, decides to give her baby to a suburban mother longing for connection herself. Throughout the film, Juno's family and friends support her. It's the kind of movie that makes us feel good because it captures the world we crave, where the ideology of individualism succumbs to a deeper sense of interconnectedness. The same hunger for positive change and unity is clearly transforming political discourse as well.

In a moment of self-reflection in "There Will Be Blood," Day-Lewis' character confesses, "I have a competition in me; I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people." But then, foreshadowing his descent into selfish isolation, he says, "I can't keep doing this on my own." None of us can. And the moral of this year's stories is that none of us want to.

Can We Love Everyone? A Valentine to the World

Sally Kohn — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 08:05:51 -0500

I admit it's hard. Every day, several times per day, I stifle mean thoughts about passers-by. The S.U.V. driver taking up two lanes. The teenagers blocking the sidewalk. The person who keeps stealing my paper, who I've never even seen but bother to imagine just so I can be mad at them.

Remember how Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have." He had trouble just co-existing with everyone. So loving everyone seems a very high bar.

The Bible commands to love they neighbor as thyself. Clearly, Jesus' neighbor wasn't stealing his paper.

In theory we're all the same. All human beings have 99% DNA in common. Thankfully we don't act the same. That diversity propels not only biology but reality TV. But while some of us are light skinned and some of us are dark skinned and some of us like to flaunt our midriffs while competing for the affection of aging pop stars, we all need food and shelter and knowledge and joy and love.

Then why love myself more than my neighbor? Why love my mother more than a stranger in Africa?

These aren't just abstract moral questions. They have real implications. As a nation, we can only launch a war because (implicitly or explicitly) we love ourselves more than our supposed enemy. We wouldn't (or most of us wouldn't) launch a war against our siblings, so we must love our siblings more than Iraqis. Why?

I'm not talking about romantic, intimate love. I'm talking about the love of humanity, the love of compassion and empathy and community values, the love that makes us clutch our chests and catch our breath when we see families floating in New Orleans or digging out from earthquake rubble in Peru. It's what Martin Luther King, Jr., called the "love that does justice", that links us to each other in shared fate. When we say we love our country, this is the kind of love we mean. Why not love the world?

It's easy to rationalize why I would care more about my out-of-work uncle than the millions of Americans facing foreclosure. But that doesn't make it right. For too long, we have used genetics, national borders, race, class, gender and so many other accidents of birth to parcel out more love to some than others, perpetuating gross inequalities and injustices worldwide. We cannot shed love at the doorstep of our homes or the doorstep of our nation. Love can't just be a fad among friends. Love is giving. Selfishness and hoarding are its enemies.

The democracy Churchill spoke about and that we aspire to today can never achieved by a set of close knit, ruling elites. The idea of democracy is endlessly inclusive. So is love.

I don't have enough stamps to send a valentine to the world. And, anyway, the billions of people living in poverty and billions more at the teetering edge need more than candy hearts. They need those of us with an ounce of privilege or power -- whether because we're well-off or because we're white or simply because we're American -- to care as desperately about their plight as we care about the fate of our own children and act accordingly. With the globalization of information, the world is getting smaller. Whether around the corner, across the tracks or on the other side of the globe, our sphere of moral concern should only grow. And our policies of prioritizing the elite rich over everyday people, the worldwide, should be nothing more than faint memories. Healthcare for all, not HMO subsidies. Foreign aid, not foreign wars. Homeowner assistance, not Wall Street bailouts. Great public schools, not separate and unequal. Conserving our planet, not funding big oil. A path to citizenship, not a wall at the border.

Call your members of Congress and demand more jobs and better jobs for everyone in America and guaranteed healthcare for all, ensuring everyone is in and no one is left out. Send emails and letters to the editor when you see media pundits pushing us-versus-them rhetoric and trying to edge people out of the American dream. On Valentine's Day, imagine what a world of love would be like. And then challenge yourself to do your part.