How many angels can dance on the head of an oil rig?

On Thursday, when I turned on my radio, I was appalled to hear that the topic on the BBC program World Have Your Say was "Should we feel sorry for [BP CEO] Tony Hayward?"

Who cares? A more appropriate question might have been, "Is it time to nationalize the oil companies?" Or perhaps, "Is capitalism really going to kill us all, or is there still some way to stop it?"

Frankly, the rest of the commentary I heard on NPR that day was no better, dwelling on the comments of a particular Senator who had apologized to the CEO, on the Vice President's criticism of the Senator's apology, and on the Senator's subsequent apology for his apology, and how all this might affect the public image of yadda yadda yadda.

In times like these, encouraging thoughtful, concerned people to expend their limited time and energy considering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is almost worse than no news at all.

NPR features glib, hateful commentator on Arizona law

Dear Talk of the Nation staff,

I was pretty offended at yesterday's show on the new law in Arizona. You chose to feature a virulently anti-immigrant guest, presenting him as a learned expert. You had no other guest on the show to present a cogent opposing opinion. The host lobbed softball questions, staying within the smooth-talking guest's framing of the issue. Overall, the effect of the whole segment was of a clever and misleading opinion piece that came down on the side of racism and fascism.

What's so insidious about a guest like Professor Kobach is the way he deploys his legal expertise to make his extremism sound reasonable. In a calm, scholarly voice he called Arizona "ground zero" in an "illegal immigration shockwave." [1] This is inflammatory stuff, and patently untrue. The percentage of people in the U.S. who are foreign-born is lower today than it was in 1900. The country's percentage of immigrants is about average for an industrialized country [2]. An abundance of data shows that immigrants have net positive impacts on their local and national economies. [3] And so on.

A responsible journalist should challenge the guest on the counterfactual implications of a phrase like "illegal immigration shockwave." Mr. Conan let it pass, instead keeping his questions mostly in the abstract realm of constitutionality and federal authority. Allowing Prof. Kobach to frame the issue as an esoteric legal dispute -- "really, this law doesn't change that much" -- misses the forest for the trees. The story here is that the new law is the latest attack in an escalating war on immigrants, specifically Latino immigrants.

When Prof. Kobach went so far as to present the law as serving the interests of working people from the U.S. -- "a nation's first responsibility is to its own citizens, especially in an economic recession like this, when people are trying to put food on the table;" "And one way to get more U.S. citizens to work is to ensure that in the marketplace for jobs they are not competing with illegal labor" -- I was particularly dismayed that Mr. Conan did not challenge this fundamentally erroneous idea.

Once and for all, let's make it crystal clear: It is not migration itself, but the criminalization of migration, that hurts working people. The more civil vulnerability immigrants experience, the greater their exposure to workplace exploitation. And once the boss can get away with paying someone less, he or she can pit groups against each other to pay everyone less. That's why solidarity has always been such a vital principle in the labor movement. Any law that makes the lives of immigrants more precarious is a law that weakens the working class as a whole. By the same token, a law that completely opened the borders, according all working people the same rights and protections on the job, would tremendously strengthen working folks everywhere, including here.

I was sorry to hear that Prof. Kobach found it "amusing" that infrastructure in the Mexican state of Sonora is so decimated that it struggles to support returning emigrants. It is, of course, largely the impacts of NAFTA and the actions of U.S.-based multinationals that have plunged Mexico into such desperate poverty that people are forced to head north in the first place. That's not some cute irony; it is the heart of the problem.

Sincerely,
Alexandra Bradbury

[1] Transcript, "Controversial Ariz. Immigration Law Defended," Talk of the Nation, 4/30/10, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126390888
[2] Immigration Policy Center, "U.S. Immigration Policy in Global Perspective: International Migration in OECD Countries," http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/special-reports/us-immigration-policy-global-perspective-international-migration-oecd-countries
[3] U.S. Chamber of Commerce, "Immigration Myths and the Facts: Behind the Fallacies," http://www.uschamber.com/NR/rdonlyres/e33skwh6fpcle6afyoz44ysuqkmtjaq3wrlhszzufr2fyucjuaxk7dvtzuoin6bej7gje7isy2yo6rmc5hb6n4kxdje/14484ImmigrationMythFacts.pdf

Go ahead and close minimum-security prisons

In response to: "Oregon legislators consider bleak budget outcomes," Oregonian, February 3, 2009

[Update: A shortened version of this letter is published in the Oregonian, Sunday 2/8/09, as "Prison idea  a good one."]

Dear Editor,

The Oregonian reported on Tuesday that Oregon's lawmakers are considering an extensive list of possible budget cuts ("Oregon legislators consider bleak budget outcomes").

Reporter Harry Esteve opined, "The list includes some alarming prospects, including the possibility of closing public schools up to a month early and shuttering eight minimum security prisons and turning the inmates loose."

One of these ideas is not like the other. Closing public schools a month early is certainly an alarming prospect. But closing minimum-security prisons? Allowing thousands of Oregonians, mostly convicted of nonviolent crimes, to go home to their families? Eliminating an avenue for Oregon manufacturers to get away with subminimum wages and poor working conditions? That's just a good idea.

Guest letter from my dad!

October 1, 2008

The Senate voted tonight in favor of a huge bailout for some Wall Street gamblers who shot for the moon and missed. The Senate didn't deal with the real roots of the financial crisis--the decades of deregulation and dismantling of the Depression era legislation (such as Glass-Steagall) that had for years effectively prevented just this kind of crisis. Although some senators today acknowledged this underlying problem, they chose to defer any discussion on re-instituting regulatory laws until January. According to them, it was now necessary to pass some kind of quick fix, so that investors would not choose to make things worse. But why were the senators so convinced that it was necessary to pass something quickly, rather than deal with the root problems? Besides the obvious conflict of interest (too many of our legislators, of both parties, are heavily supported by the same financial interests that are being bailed out), there is also a fundamental problem with the irrational financial system that we have allowed to take control of our lives. Do we decide national economic policy based upon how to keep our citizens employed, housed or fed, or on manufacturing the goods that we need, or on what our health care needs are, or on how we can minimize the environmental damage to our planet? No. Instead our policy is primarily based on trying to second-guess how a bunch of gamblers, otherwise known as investors, will react tomorrow, or the next day, in their narrow little 'market place' game of trying to outdo each other in the accumulation of personal wealth. This is not rational economic policy. I urge our representatives in the House to do the right thing and insist on putting proven regulatory constraints back in place before allowing any kind of bailout for the Wall Street game-players.

Joel Bradbury

Campaign as horse race

Dear All Things Considered,

Last week, when Senator John Edwards departed the presidential race, one of your evening commentators remarked with bemusement that, although polls suggest voters care strongly about issues, we don't seem to be choosing our votes based on the issues at all.

The commentator went on to wonder which candidate would now receive the votes of white men in the Democratic primary. Would the voters' whiteness, or their maleness, win out? I listened on, but nary a word about where Senators Obama and Clinton stood on issues that might be dear to the hearts of white male voters -- who, like any other demographic of voters, are mostly working people and probably most concerned with affordable health care and affordable housing, good schools and good jobs, safety and support for older people and hope and opportunity for younger people.

Frankly, these candidates have not distinguished themselves much from one another on the issues. They do not present much in the way of coherent ideology or bold platform. They are all playing the public relations game. And you are no help. If the frontrunners are all proposing the same health care plan, and it is not the plan that two-thirds of us tell pollsters we want, then please, at least point out this fact! Perhaps our candidates can be embarrassed into courage, or at least coherence.

Instead, even NPR carries a stream of chatter about charisma, experience, and image. It is no wonder that the public plays the only game that is offered us.

Sincerely,

Safety must mean safety for everyone in our communities.

Testimony to TriMet board at public hearing on the future of Fareless Square

In response to: "Free transit rides may end," Portland Tribune, December 7, 2007

[See also Oregonian coverage of the hearing, "TriMet hears thud on fare plan," January 17, 2008, in which I am quoted!]

The Portland Tribune's recent assertion that “free rides increase crime and bad behavior on transit systems” would be laughable if it weren't so destructive. This is what is known as the misleading use of statistics.

Let's be clear: Increased ridership increases the number of incidents of crime on transit, of course. If the trains ran empty of passengers, we could eliminate crime on the train entirely. But we would also lose the public benefit of running trains at all.

In newspaper coverage, Tri-Met leadership's clearly articulated objective in cutting fareless hours is to get low-income people, homeless people, young people, “suspected gang members” -- and, the presumable subtext is, especially young people of color -- off the trains. But these are all members of our communities.

I ride Tri-Met's buses and trains frequently, often after 7 p.m., and I have never found that the presence of homeless people in any way impedes my use of public transit. Certainly, no one should have to use the train as shelter, and that's one reason to keep working to create affordable housing, living-wage jobs, and a stronger social safety net in our communities. But in the mean time, while people live through Portland winters on the streets, using the train as a shelter seems to me a perfectly reasonable choice. If I had to, I think that's what I would do.

It is hard to see how raising fares downtown does anything to address the recent, distressing violence at the Gresham station. We should address that violence more directly by building safer communities and staffing our transit facilities with additional well-trained, well-paid union workers – not low-paid, high-turnover employees of the irresponsible, corner-cutting contractor Wackenhut. But for heaven's sake, let's not take the public out of public transit.

I can't imagine that anyone thinks excluding gang members from trains will do anything but move gang violence into the streets and further marginalize already-marginalized young people. As our planet speeds towards ecological crisis and energy collapse, it is hard to imagine a more absurdly counterproductive public policy objective than getting young people to stop taking public transit. If we care about building a future Portland that is functioning and sustainable, we should support youth ridership and issue a free Tri-Met pass to everyone under age eighteen. Or indeed to everyone.

What will it take to make our trains and buses safer? In the immediate, probably more lights, more staff presence, and more riders, not fewer. If there's one thing city-dwellers seem to agree on about safety, it is that isolation is dangerous and crowds are more secure – because, by and large, our fellow humans are not threats, but allies. In the longer term, making our public spaces safer probably means putting more of our public resources into making drug treatment and mental health care available to everyone who wants them, dealing with the root causes of desperation and extreme inequality, and building an economy that works for everyone.

As a starting point, let us agree that public transit is not an island that we vote each other off of. Public transit belongs to everyone. It is a public good. If not enough of us use it, it loses its value for everyone. So let us look for ways to make public transit work for all of our communities.

The issues of working people are central feminist issues

In response to: "Women are never frontrunners," New York Times, January 8, 2008

To the Editor:

As a young feminist, I take umbrage at Gloria Steinem's suggestion that not to support Senator Clinton's bid for the presidency is to show insufficient radicalism (Jan. 8, “Women are Never Frontrunners”).

As bell hooks and others have pointed out, a feminism concerned primarily with “who must be in the kitchen or who may be in the White House” (Steinem's words) is a feminism relevant primarily to affluent white women. While Betty Friedan and others of her class struggled to escape their confinement to the domestic sphere, poor women and women of color were already in workplaces, struggling against many varieties of exploitation and marginalization.

Minimum-wage workers are disproportionately women. Working people without health insurance are disproportionately women. People reliant on our eroding social safety net are disproportionately women. Unfortunately, Senator Clinton is more conservative than other candidates for the Democratic nomination on these central feminist issues.