| Number 173 | September 27, 2002 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, No limericks this week. Instead I offer the much-requested "Stroll Through the News with Nygaard." Even though it's been a long time since the last Stroll, this one is somewhat abbreviated, as I thought it crucial to get in the anti-war information and the information on the anti-racism training opportunity. Usually a "stroll" takes up the whole issue, but I fit in what I could. Since so much of my reporting lately has been on the war and other international issues, the Stroll this week focuses, for the most part, on things in our own country, including health care, taxes, spies, homeless people, and something called "Operation Graduation." I didn't used to give each entry its own headline, but I've been in the headline mood lately, I guess. I hope this doesn't prevent readers from making up their own amusing and/or revealing headlines. OK, no more room, gotta go for now. Keep the peace, Nygaard |
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Nygaard Notes #169 was entirely devoted to preventing an escalation of the ongoing U.S. war on Iraq. Go to the website and look again at the list of organizations doing great stuff: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jwalker2/nygaard_notes/ . There are lots of positive things happening in Minnesota, from activists sitting in at our Senator's offices to plans for full-page anti-war ads in the local daily papers. Here are some details to help people support the growing anti-war effort: CALL: Minnesotans who do not want the U.S. to go to war, call your Senators right now:
To find your representative, or if you live in another state, call the congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121 (if the line is not busy, ask for the office of your Senators or Representative), or check http://www.congress.org on the Internet for contact information. DONATE: Friends for a Non-Violent World will be placing a full-page ad in the October 3rd edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press opposing war against Iraq. I don't have the exact wording in front of me, but it follows the spirit of the "Not In Our Name" statement that I mentioned in Nygaard Notes #169 (address correction for NION info: http://www.notinourname.net/). For further details on the ad, call FNVW at (651) 917-0383. Or, you can just send a donation (minimum $10, please!) to: FNVW, 1050 Selby Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55104. Write the words "Bush ad" on the memo line. PROTEST: This Monday, October 7th, local anti-war activists will gather in downtown Minneapolis to demonstrate their opposition to the war frenzy. Here's the official notice:
Sponsored by the Iraq Peace Action Coalition. Monday, October 7 @ 4:30pm, Federal Bldg, 4th St & 4th Ave, downtown Minneapolis. |
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On October 15 and 16 the Peoples Institute for Survival & Beyond will be conducting an anti-racism workshop at the Sabathani Community Center in South Minneapolis. I went through the training many years ago and, unless they've changed a lot, I recommend it highly. I believe that their workshops are a good idea for anyone who is seriously interested in undoing racism and making social change (and, after all, we can't do one without the other). Billed as "an intensive two-day training to understand racism and what we can do to end it," the organizers operate from the belief that racism has been consciously and systematically erected and that it, therefore, can be "undone." They focus on history, culture, leadership, and accountability, and do it all with the goal of organizing for change. The People's Institute has been doing this work for more than 20 years. The organizers state their belief that "racism has been the most critical barrier to unity in this country and that it is the primary cause of our failure to overcome poverty and bring about justice in our communities." I'm not sure about racism being "the most critical" barrier and the "primary" cause of organizing failures, as it's hard for me to "rank" it above other forms of social oppression such as sexism, classism, and so forth. But you don't have to agree with every word they say in order to benefit from the workshop. I particularly think it is an excellent starting point for any activist who hasn't consciously worked on their own role in perpetuating racism. And that, I am afraid, includes many of us here in Minnesota. The workshop is intense, challenging, and will push a lot of buttons for anyone who attends. The cost is $250 per person, so see if your group or organization can sponsor someone. Whoever goes will bring back a bunch of good stuff to the group that sent them. For more information on the workshop, contact Sandra Richardson, Peoples Institute North, at 612-821-2358. Or, email pisab@thepeoplesinstitute.org. Check out the PI website at http://www.thepeoplesinstitute.org/. |
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Health Bargains Readers of the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") in the past few weeks may have noticed a quarter-page ad for CT scans, the technology—sort of like x-rays—that hospitals use to detect certain medical problems. "August Special! Buy One, Get One Free!" the ad said. I am not making this up. Whose Money Is It? In a NY Times story on a fundraising swing by "President" Bush to South Carolina at the end of July, Mr. Bush sang the praises of Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Sanford by saying "I appreciate having a man who understands the money he's spending as your governor is not the government's money. It's the people's money." Yes, let the people hang onto "their" money and they can build their own schools, and roads, and parks, and... One thing we apparently can't do with "our" money is make war. In another example of how the ongoing War Against Terrorism (the WAT?!) is providing cover for the "guns, not butter" crowd to divert public money from peace to war, we find the following quote from Minnesota Republican Senatorial candidate Norm Coleman, who is running for the seat held by Democrat Paul Wellstone. (This campaign, by the way, is filled with absurdities, upon which I will try to comment in the coming weeks.) In a July 3rd story, the local paper quoted Mr. Coleman responding to the request that he make a "no new taxes" pledge. These were his words: "I go in with the belief of no new taxes, but we're at war now. I want to be prepared that we can defend our country. I'm prepared to be vigorous, but I'm not prepared to be dogmatic." Where's the War on Poverty when we need it? Museum as Propaganda According to the New York Times of July 14th, the idea for the newly-opened International Spy Museum in the nation's capital "seemed almost a quaint idea when it was proposed in the mid-1990s, when the end of the Cold War suggested that espionage might be a dying art." But, of course, "everything has changed" since September 11th, so now "the United States is pouring billions of dollars into its spy agencies, and the museum's organizers hope to make clear to visitors that the work of American spies may never have been more important." The museum will also "honor the contributions of popular culture to the spy business," highlighting the work of, among others, Julia Child, Marlene Dietrich, and director John Ford, "who all worked for Western spy agencies." Julia Child?! Before you book your flight to go visit the Spy Museum, I recommend pausing long enough to read any of a number of credible sources that will tell you about the side of "Western spy agencies" that you won't find in this propaganda box. This is the side that includes CIA subversion of democratic governments, involvement in the international drug trade, political assassinations, and murder. Furthermore, I doubt the domestic spying section in the Museum will include much information on the FBI's record of subversion of legal domestic political groups and murder of U.S. citizens. So, read up before you go. "Picky" Homeless on the Front Page Item #1: On the front page of the New York Times of September 16 was an article headlined "Some In Shelters Are Too Picky, New York Says." The article reported on the city of New York's efforts to "eject" families from homeless shelters if they "refuse to take apartments that meet government standards." It seems that the shelter system in NYC is housing "a record 8,696 families an increase of roughly 33 percent from September of 2001." The article points out that this increase in demand is placing "strong fiscal pressure" on the system, meaning that they want to put some people on the street, despite the city being under court order to provide shelter to homeless people or, as the Times puts it, "those who say they have no place to live." What does the Times mean when it says homeless people are being "too picky?" (As the paper puts it, "It may seem strange that a homeless person would describe herself as choosy about where she will live...") Well, they only interviewed one person, a mother of six. "She doesn't want a neighborhood that is ‘druggy,'" the paper reported, and "She must live near a hospital because two of her children have asthma." She also mentioned the minor detail that it's hard to find a three-bedroom place that's affordable. This doesn't sound "picky" to me; it sounds like she's a concerned parent. Could it be that the Times, as well as the NYC Mayor Bloomberg, expect mothers to neglect their children's welfare because they are poor? Item #2: Now skip ahead four days, to September 20th. This time the story in the Times is about the city of New York agreeing to pay "millions of dollars in penalties" to homeless families due to the city's failing to house homeless families, in violation of court orders dating from 1995. The article appeared on page 26 of the Times, and in paragraph 17 of the 20-paragraph article one finds the following off-hand comment: "As of the last accounting, which was before this summer's record deluge of homeless families into the shelter system, the city estimated it owed about $3.5 million to an unspecified number of families." Hello? "Record deluge?" Since this was the second off-hand reference in four days to what would seem to be a major housing crisis in the nation's largest city, I figured I must have missed something over the summer. However, when I went and did a database search of the Times for the past four months, nary a comment about the "deluge" did I find. Nygaard Notes Alternative Front-Page Headline: "Homeless Families at Record Levels in City!" "Not Bad For the Army's Image" A small front in the military's ongoing battle for the "hearts and minds" of the U.S. public was illuminated, oddly enough, in the Advertising column of the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of August 27th. The column announced the coming of a crop of commercials that form "the second part of Operation Graduation," a joint campaign of the Ad Council (see Nygaard Notes #171) and the U.S. Army. The campaign—which is running on TV, radio, billboards, and the Internet—"uses humor" to "encourage students to stay in school." The Army's Naomi Verdugo is quoted saying "Anything we can do to get more young adults to graduate from high school means that the pool of people eligible for the opportunities the Army offers is larger." Ms. Verdugo, the only Army official quoted by the Times, is the "assistant deputy for recruiting and retention for the Army in Washington." This was interesting to read, given the comment at the beginning of the column that "the goal [of the campaign] is not to recruit troops." Maybe they mean that the goal is not to directly recruit troops. The Army spends $95 million a year on advertising to do that; the Operation Graduation campaign is only costing the Army about $1.5 million. Chicken feed to those folks. Times reporter Allison Fass comments (whether this is her own thinking or a paraphrase of something Verdugo said isn't clear), "In addition, promoting education in donated advertising space—with ads bearing the Army logo—is not bad for the Army's image." Not bad at all, especially if the Army gets to pretend that it's not trying to recruit troops, but simply cares about educating the nation's youth. |