Thoughtful Thursdays and racism, mentioning Dr. King’s Basic Income, in passing, and a Town Hall Link

It’s quarter to 5 P.T., so please watch the long-scheduled Biden Town Hall, and then read this post (I’d love to hear your comments on both, please…)

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This reference to the Basic or Citizen’s Income, as Dr. King called for it in 1968, is from his last book.

Here is where I am in wondering about some ideas I wrote up a while ago regarding community and safety:

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Economic Democracy, which as Dr. King pointed out, is the only true means of both riot prevention and thus of lasting social stability, requires a high level of cooperation.
Preventing torture and senseless killings, such as that of Travon Williams and others, depends on the existence and maintenance of respect and trust within and between communities such that that can then cooperate effectively to prevent the dehumanization and hate crimes which ultimately result from lack of understanding and cooperative interaction between individuals and communities

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So, it turns out that my reluctance to mention racism as an overt factor, possibly because I keep getting told that I don’t look Black enough, by non-Southern White people, to be Black, and that I’m too “high yellow” to be Black by fellow Black folks, yet called a Nigger (1981 VA) or told that “the races don’t mix” (1994 Baltimore), or that people wouldn’t want people like myself on their property (1995 Baltimore) by white southerners. So, not to bring up the Tragic Misunderstood Mullata (or Quadroon/Octaroon, in my case), I hate to say it but I have to say it: racism is involved here, in our dehumanizing of others, specifically of Black folks in the USA. People claim not to be racist or prejudiced, but say things like “los negros si son flojos” (Black people really are lazy), or that there is plenty of opportunity, they just don’t want to work: until I speak up and say, I am Black. Then I am often told to “contain myself,” or that I am simply imagining things.  Interesting how that works.  More on my continuing striving with community and not (intentionally, anyway) passing for White, next week, friends:

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) List four ways that you see racism affecting the world today.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

October, 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

Thoughtful Thursdays and a silly idea on marriage and community as helping each other

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Here is where I am in wondering about an idea I though up a while ago regarding community-based possible ways of helping singles find nice marriage partners (actually, I need to find that post on the Community Marriage Coop, but this is the why of it):

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Marriage and community: another reason for the importance of same-sex marriage, or why society must  support all marriages.

Society exists to facilitate the maximization of potential of each member of society.
Couples give more to society if the community (society in miniature, molded to a group) support and encourage the couple to stay together and contribute as a stable couple to society. A synergistic relationship forms where the couple gives more to the community, and is in turn reinforced by the community, enabling them to be more effective both as a couple and as members of the community. Both members of the couple and the community are able to accomplish more through this mutually beneficial relationship.
Marriage, for all couples, strengthens communities and creates synergistic relationships which keep us safe.

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I think I still agree with this: will find and post the explanation of the Community Marriage Cooperative if anyone shows interest in a comment on this post.

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different resources about same-sex marriage.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how you like each of the resources you found,  perhaps as an update on your GoodReads reading,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

October, 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

French Friday and Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last speech

I still agree with this:

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“The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create incomes. Now, our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth.”
…
“I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here?” that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. (Yes) There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. (Yes) And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. (All right)
Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated. … In other words, “Your whole structure (Yes) must be changed.” [applause] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. (Speak) And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. (Yes) And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.”

Read, Write, Dream, Teach !

ShiraDest
19 February, 12016 HE

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We need, more than ever, a Universal Basic Income.

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different sources for Dr. King’s speech cited above.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how you found each of the resources you found,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that uses those sources, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

October, 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

French Friday becomes Ike on War, on Hoshanah Rabbah, 5781

I had a difference of opinion with a friend some years ago, when I cited Dr. King’s last book, arguing that reducing poverty will lesson anger which leads to events like the Watts riots, the 1968 riots, and many others. This friend, who never missed a meal involuntarily in his life, ignored all of my citations to say “poverty does not cause riots.” Well, I think Ike also disagreed, as if Dr. King’s work wasn’t enough.

It is the last Chol HaMoed day, but also a half-holiday, of Sukkot, as we leave off celebrating the new year of 5781. And I’m having Cream of Wheat!

Here is a post I wrote a while ago that I think bears repeating:

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2006-05-31 12:20:00
A speech on the need for change, and yes, poverty does lead to terrorism (read Dr. Martin Luther King’s last speech)…
“With those kinds of numbers, it doesn´t take a nuclear scientist to figure out a smarter approach to improving our security situation. To quote President Eisenhower, speaking with far-sighted vision in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies… a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.””

Read, Write, Dream, Teach !

ShiraDest
19 February, 12016 HE

 

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Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of justice that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different sources of Ike’s speech cited above:

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how you like each of the resources you found,  perhaps as an update on your GoodReads reading,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that cites Dr. King or Eisenhower, tells a good story, or just makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

Sukkot, 5781

PrepTober, 2020, aka 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

Tr Tuesdays is now “True compassion” Tuesdays, on legal & financial self-defense, from Dr. King’s words we all should have read back in 1968 (or at the age to ‘get it’…) during Sukkot/Tabernacles…

Predatory Landlords, Debt, and Repairing the World

Here is an unfortunately still relevant post on tenants being evicted via bogus service papers, in the District, now, despite MD’s 2016 update requiring more evidence to file against debtors, apparently:

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Dr. King said that,

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. ”

The question is how does such “restructuring” happen?

Following up on my earlier post regarding debt as a problem of financial self-defense, particularly in the case of apartment renters who are forced to live in a lemon or face Breach of Lease, Biblical Law may have something to say about the long term consequences of artificially pushing people into debt (talking about otherwise frugal folks who do not spend profligately).

I respectfully submit that we have had one possible tool in our hands for several thousand years, and it may need to be examined in the context of our present debt crisis -the release of debts, both short term and long term, at different times.  Below is a handout from one of several talks I gave on the relationship between debt and community building, this one from the book of Deuteronomy: DCBM20August_Reeh_Class.

AfterNote: while debts do “expire” at different times in each state and DC according to the type of debt, only two states actually “extinguish” expired debts, and only Maryland prohibits lawsuits being brought against debtors for already expired debts!              Lawmakers in every country need to act to prevent this sort of financial and emotional bullying (in the case of landlords, offering apartments which do not suit, and then reneging on promises to fix issues, while in other cases, offering credit knowing that those who accept are at a relative disadvantage).

In the USA, each state regulates how long one can be sued for a debt, but even then, if the debtor does not know to defend, or is unable for some reason to go to court even if h/she knows, oftentimes creditors sue illegally and win. Now this cannot happen in MD, but the original creditors are still free to harass up to and beyond the Statute of Limitation (‘expiration’) of the debt.

May we look to our collective good, as one Human Race, and to the potential of each and every Human Being.

Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
ShiraDest

my resume: JonesPolicyResumePublic
June 26th, 12017 HE

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So, it turns out that ‘gutter service,’ aka tossing the papers in the gutter and telling the court the person was served, still happens despite what I read about some jurisdictions raising the bar for filings, and that default judgements are still rendered on faulty bases.   This is where both knowledge of the laws around specific debt-related issues, by locality, and the transportation and health to get there are critical. 

More on my continuing striving with legal and financial self-defense education next week, friends:

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and legal/financial self-defense that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different resources to tell the SoL in your state for the 4 types of debt,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how you found and whether or why (or why not) you trust each of the resources you found,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet about it, or just, tell a good story, that makes a difference.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE

(The current lesson plan since this post, and the second most recent lesson plan…)

Meaningful Mondays: Martin Luther King’s most famous speech treated as sacred text…

I recall being blown away when I first saw this poster, laminated and framed in the office of a synagogue, I think, or perhaps the Beit Midrash, study house, I no longer even recall where (DC, perhaps the DC JCC on 16th street?).

It takes the text of Dr. King’s famous “I have a Dream” speech, and treats it in the same way that the traditional Jewish texts treat the biblical text: Hebrew scripture in the center, and then comments by various rabbis all around it. Beautiful.

Here is the original.

some Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Download some speech or book, whatever you find meaningful,

2.) Read a section,

3.) Share your thoughts,

4.) Write a commentary that references a meaningful speech or book, or write something that tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Other ideas welcome on how to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail, starting with improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:

1. #libraries,

2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,

3. #UniversalHealthCare, and

4. good #publictransport

Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19

ShiraDest

Moody Monday: Martin Luther King -Rabbinical Commentary poster inspired a Novel

This famous speech made by Dr. King, treated as a sacred text:

MLK3speechHillelCommentaryStudy

inspired me to write my first practice Novel.   Everyone should write an autobiography and/or a novel.   Mine, an autobiographical novel (Biblical Science Fiction…), RealDraft6Creator Friend or Foe Beginnings,  can be available, if anyone wants to see it.

Let’s #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail and support these four key parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19
ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE

Black Women Writers at Work: Review of an older but very persistently worthwhile book

I am so glad I happened to see this book Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate
at the public library.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was moved with both recognition, and with fear, at Audre Lorde’s comment that “it’s scary because we’ve been through that before. It was called the fifties.” Then I was moved with that stirring to act, upon reading in print what I have known and been told in different words since Dunbar (High School): “My responsibility is to speak the truth… with as much precision and beauty as possible. … We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”
And we must not remain silent while the blood of our sisters/brothers/neighbors/communities/fellow human beings is shed.

Sherley Anne Williams reiterates this responsibility of a writer to write as well as one can and to “say as much of the truth as I can see at any given time.”

Although this book is dated, and does not include my favorite author (Octavia Butler), I am so glad that I read this book in spite of my initial misgivings. From Bambara’s hope that “We care too much … to negotiate a bogus peace,” to DeVeaux’s “responsibility to see,” I find my own compulsion to write validated by the responsibility of a writer to render individual expression into a universal expression, and to give voice to the voiceless/unseen/erased. To show the unspoken and to “empathize with the general human condition.”

Society needs all perspectives because without those perspectives, we are missing vast parts of what our society actually looks like, which leads to deep problems. Writing, as was pointed out, must transcend individual experience, but it also comes from and is filtered through individual experience, so we desperately, as leaders from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr to Octavia Butler have pointed out, need every point of view.

Last note (not in my GR review): I think that this book has helped me to see that my intended audience has two possibly conflicting sections –
I. those who have endured traumas in early childhood or also in adulthood, particularly due to structural racism, and
II: those who can change that situation.

View all my reviews

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness ,& #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4: (
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

April, 12019 HE

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I found this book after seeing Dr. King’s response to the question, during the Memphis garbage workers’ strike, of what it would take to prevent or call off his Poor People’s March on Washington: the answer was to implement the recommendations in this report.

via Review of a book worth buying: Separate and Unequal

Review of a book worth buying: Separate and Unequal

Separate and Unequal: The Kerner Commission and the Unraveling of American Liberalism by Steven M. Gillon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

How sad that the contents and conclusions of this report are still relevant, and still ignored, today, 50 years after it was released in response to the riots in Newark and Detroit of the “long hot” summer of 1967. I found this book after seeing Dr. King’s response to the question, during the Memphis garbage workers’ strike, of what it would take to prevent or call off his Poor People’s March on Washington: the answer was to implement the recommendations in this report.

The report was commissioned to find out what caused the rioting, not how to prevent further riots. The clearest distinctions between those who actively participated in the rioting and their neighbors who did not, at least at the start of each riot, was the trigger of having witnessed or experienced police brutality. But what primed that trigger for action was the underlying anger, poverty, constant discrimination, and despair to which the Black community in particular was subjected over a very long period of time.

The report called for various measures to be taken which would have improved the lives not only of members of the Black community, but also everyone else in the nation. Measures like the elimination of sub-standard housing in inner-cities, building new schools, health centers, and community facilities, and introducing a guaranteed minimum income would help all citizens, not only those bereft of resources and hope when they were freed with only the clothing on their backs, unable to melt into White American society. From the disrespect by police, to the lack of garbage collection in inner-city neighborhoods, Black Americans were fed up with White America’s deliberate disregard for “the realities of life for many poor blacks” in the United States. This anger, combined with the criminalization of poverty (which was just beginning to kick off the era of Mass Incarceration), the lack of Black faces in [the media, police, highly paid professions and other areas of potential] power, led to a sense of hopelessness and fear that non-violent resistance would never break down a system which was inherently designed to break down the Black community. Ideas like the War on Drugs, brought back by Reagan after the Carter years, and Law and Order, parroted by both right and left, muddied the discourse around solving the problems that led to the riots, instead creating a cloud of convenient reasons to blame inner-city Black communities for their problems while ignoring the structural issues that had created and perpetuated the problems since the slavery era.

The conclusion drawn by the report, above all, was that the entire nation needed education and “a richer portrait of life in urban areas” and to hire many many more Black police officers.

I think that many of the issues of perspective mentioned in the book by the author in his analysis of the report and its time are now beginning to be looked at again, as the discussion around White Privilege becomes louder and more mainstream. That discussion is a necessary but insufficient part of the solution to our current problems, which go back to pre-existing problems pointed out by the report. Please read this book on the Commission report (and also see Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin), and then, write your reps!

Pages I found especially relevant included:

P. 6: 1966 result of creation of ghettos by the 1930s-50s urban renewal aka Negro Removal all across the USA
** P. 12: What a contrast: only 1/100 white people thought that blacks were poorly treated in the USA…
***Ribicoff P. 37: recos…
P. 100: “in the ghetto” last garbage collection (if at all), police disrespectful, school & housing dilapidated
P. 228 (and the answer to that boot-straps baloney:) discrimination and segregation prevented many blacks from following the same patterns which had been followed by immigrant groups, and limited blacks to all but the lowest … jobs

Let’s #EndPoverty & #EndMoneyBail by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

March, 12019 HE

View all my reviews