this blog won't fill your hole

Dear Democracy Now!,

Happy 20th birthday! I wanted to let you know how important your broadcast is to me. 

I grew up in a small suburb 15 minutes south of Buffalo, NY.  I went to a public school where several biology teachers didn’t teach evolution, and my AP environmental teacher didn’t believe in climate change.  I still had other teachers who were great, but much of my public education was biased in a way that I couldn’t fully understand at the time. 

My brother, Scott, was the first to push me to start questioning what I was being told. He would show me articles about what was going on in Darfur (this was 2005), and he had me read your book, The Exception to the Rulers.  He and I started a newspaper called “News for the Little Guy,” where we would have friends of ours write political articles under anonymous pseudonyms. 

Here is a photo of one of the cover pages with an article about Dennis Kucinich. The newsletter died after about a year but I was still very motivated and engaged by the journalistic work that you were doing.

I had to go through an intense un-learning of everything I was told as a kid. Between rejecting religion, and rejecting hurtful political ideologies I had a lot of work to do.  It is truly scary to look back and see how mainstream media shaped my worldview.  As someone who has since worked in an elementary school, I worry about the kids in that school and what they will think, or worse, what people will think about them based on the mainstream media’s messaging. Your show helped me to get through all of that, and still does. 

I can depend on Democracy Now! to get me honest coverage of situations throughout the world.  You don’t have to cater to invested parties. You ask the best questions, bring on the best guests, and travel to the most important locations to bring your audience the best possible news experience. 

The extent to which Democracy Now! has played a profound role in my life in unknowable. Thank you for everything you do. Happiest of birthdays, may there be at least 20 more to come.

step right up so you can see the scars left from deciding to flee a friendship so toxic, you could smell the gasoline where it was a crime to take care of me

step right up, come one, come all i’m the evil one, i made it fall it crumbled down like a building so tall though i tried for months on end to make it stall

what’s your angle? were you really that hurt did you feel like you got something you didn’t deserve did you wake up and think, “how’d she get the nerve,” you had it all figured out like an ancient proverb

but here’s the deal, you’re the one that lost out thrown out, tossed out, didn’t think twice about the repercussions of the hate you threw around left the space between us more profound

i get it. you think you had something stolen from you but the thing that was “stolen” was left behind by you you were the one that decided to make your desires come true meeting with different men and women, so you could feel anew

i told you exactly what my intentions were gave me your blessing, but i guess that’s a blur i guess honesty isn’t quite the word you heard when i told you about the path that i preferred

you knew where i was coming from, you knew the pain you knew my past that left me nearly insane the dark history that constantly creeps into my brain but you couldn’t have hindsight when you heard the new name

and all i could tell you was, “i’m sorry.” and it ate me alive trying to do all i could to make our friendship survive swarming around you, like bees to a hive pleading and gesturing like a pathetic hand jive

it’s taken me years to gain the proper insight that i did everything i could to make things alright that our friendship was toxic, unhealthy, and just not right it wasn’t just the drama that existed for a fortnight

It was a typical day in November.  I hit snooze a couple of times, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and packed my coffee, breakfast, and lunch for the day.  I threw my stuff into a paneer, and hopped on my bike towards the light rail station a few miles away. 

I threw my ear buds in after I hung my bike, settling into the comforting rhythm of the train.  Just like other mornings, I spent my commute mentally preparing myself for the day.  On this day, it was clear enough that I could look north towards Mt. St. Helens, and take a peak at the snow covered giant who exploded only 35 years before.

I worked at an elementary school in southeast Portland.  My role was to decrease the amount of verbal and physical conflict in the school, through play and cooperative games.  Sounds fun, right? A lot of times, it was.  My role was to give students tools they would use in games and apply them to their classrooms, and their lives. 

I was going through my plans for the day; a mental checklist of sorts.  I was nearing my stop and began to take my bike down from its hook, when I started to hear screaming.  I looked around to see where the noise came from.  A woman, with her back to me, was wailing on someone seated, screaming at them about $7 that was missing.  She gave more overhand blows to the head and face than I could count in the moment.  For me, it was happening in slow motion, and yet I felt completely paralyzed.  I saw the navy blue bubble goose jacket under those blows, and my heart sank into my stomach. 

Looking back, I wish I would have been more aggressive in that moment. Stepped in front of the woman to protect Matt.*  I heard him crying, heard him trying to defend himself as a 5th grade child.  I should have called 9-1-1.  But, my reaction was to get on my bike and race to the school as quickly as I could. 

As a mandated reporter, I knew I would have to report what I saw.  I think I had some faith in Child Protective Services (CPS) to handle the situation appropriately - but maybe that’s just an excuse to make myself feel better for not stepping in sooner. 

Once I got to the school, I went to our counselor’s office and let her know what I saw.  She went through all the details with me, and we both agreed we would have to talk to Matt before we called CPS.  Once he arrived at school, we called him into the counselor’s office.  He sat down, stoic and quiet.  The counselor asked him if his mother had hit him this morning.  Even though we could still see the salt stains on his cheeks, he denied everything.  He protected his mother. 

“Even if someone loves us, it doesn’t make it okay for them to hit us, you know that Matt, don’t you?” the counselor asked.  He nodded his head slowly, but I’m still not sure what was really going through his head at that point.  He went back to his classroom, and called his mom to tell her what happened, continuing to protect her. 

CPS came to the school that day, questioning both Matt’s mom and Matt about the incident.  With the two of them denying everything - especially Matt - it didn’t matter what I saw with my own eyes.  CPS couldn’t do anything. 

Over the next couple of weeks, various co-workers gave me more information about Matt’s past.  He and his mother were currently living in a homeless shelter in southwest Portland (about an hour commute by train and bus each way to school - making getting to school a daily challenge).  They moved there after his mother got out of an abusive relationship with a woman who they were living with before.  She was trying to get clean.  She had a slew of health issues that she can’t afford to take care of. Matt’s father was long out of the picture.  There was no other family to speak of.  She worked more than one job at times to make ends meet. 

Of course this kid was fiercely protecting his mother, he had no one else! Even though he was only 10-years-old, he must’ve have some awareness of the foster system, not to mention the intrinsic desire to stay close to one’s mother, no matter what.  Does that make it okay for him to stay with his mother while she is acting abusively? I don’t think so - I’m not sure.  But what is the best option for him, or kids like him? And how was I supposed to come into a school with the goal of reducing conflict, when conflict is the main language that these kids know?

My very astounding and lovely friend Liam Curley wrote this beautiful essay.  His description of “DOOM,” what I refer to (with myself) as the eternal sadness, is both hopeful and dark. I loved every word and I hope you do too. 

The Zika Virus has been all over the news in the past couple of days (especially because there was a confirmed case of the Zika Virus in Virginia -- watch out USA!) 

A small breakdown of what we know about the Zika Virus:

It spreads by mosquitoes (similar to West Nile)

There are no inherent dangers to people (that are already born)  -- some people come down with mild fever, rash, conjunctivitis, headaches and joint pain. 

The only caveat to that is that it affects babies when they are born - they are born with heads that are much smaller than they should be (aka microcephaly)

There is no cure and no vaccine at this time

World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan says the virus is "spreading explosively."

Australia’s Climate and Health Alliance executive director Fiona Armstrong said, "Zika is the latest example of the many mosquito-borne viruses which pose an increasing threat to humans due to warmer and wetter conditions associated with climate change."

Now - Microcephaly has been around for a while, but not in these numbers.

One of the hardest-hit countries is Brazil, where more than 4,000 babies have been born with microcephaly since October 2015.  There were only 147 cases in 2014.

Many Latin American countries are advising that women avoid getting pregnant until the virus is under control.  El Salvador was the first to push further (not quite to a ban on pregnancy, but almost) saying women should not get pregnant until 2018.

Okay so I get it, you want to control women’s bodies because having babies with microcephaly is not a good thing.  I get that.  Here’s the deal.  El Salvador has some of the lowest levels of access to birth control and abortion is illegal. So the same government that denies women control over their reproductive health is now asking those same women to control their reproductive health until 2018...

El Salvador is one of 5 countries left in the world that doesn’t allow abortion for any reason.  Raped? Nope. The mother will die? Nope. In fact, they take it a step further -- if a woman is believed to have an abortion she is thrown in jail, convicted of “aggravated homicide.”  This happens most frequently to woman who have natural miscarriages. Check out El Salvador’s Las 17 for more cases of that. 

Actually, here’s one short side-story of one of Las 17:

Maria Teresa Rivera is serving 40 years, the longest sentence of Las 17. She has a nine-year-old son Oscar, whom she has not seen for two years as she told his grandmother to save the travel costs for prison visits to buy him soap and schoolbooks.

In 2011, the sweatshop worker was suffering repeated health problems, with kidney and back pains, but was too poor to seek medical help so she treated herself with cheap painkillers. She did not realise that she was pregnant a second time until she lost the foetus through a miscarriage.

Bleeding profusely, she begged a relative to call the police to take her to hospital as ambulances are near impossible to find in poor areas of San Salvador. She fainted and when she came round, she too was handcuffed and told that she would be prosecuted for killing her unborn baby.  "I had no chance to explain myself to the judge as the public defender told me to say nothing," she said. "When they sentenced me to 40 years, all I could think of was Oscar. His father had gone and he depended on me. How would he survive? (Sherwell, Philip, The Telegraph)

So, when there is an actual biological emergency, with the rampant cases of the Zika Virus and microcephaly, El Salvador will still have these draconian laws. It’s not enough to not allow women the autonomy of their own bodies, but to imprison them for that autonomy and/or accidental miscarriage (endangering the life of their current children, if they have any - I might add).

Like many Latin American countries, El Salvador is predominantly Roman Catholic.  They condemn abortion judicially, on the religious belief that life begins at conception.  Although countless medical and scholarly articles have been written on the subject (an overwhelming majority agree that human life begins at ‘viability’ or when the fetus can live outside of the womb), this government chooses to follow religious ideologies over anything else. AND even if you do believe that - it doesn’t give you the right to control women’s bodies.  I’m not forcing you to get sterilized because harmful right-wing ideologies should be wiped off the face of the planet, so...

Additionally, because oral birth control requires a prescription that is hard to come by, and condoms are taxed at such an absurd rate that the poor cannot afford them, most women turn to permanent sterilization.  There is concern that sterilization is not completely voluntary by women (this 1986 journal was the first of its kind to raise that question).  But aside from that, even women who choose to have the procedure done typically turn to that option because other forms of birth control are too expensive/too hard to access.  Many times this procedure, even if voluntary, can be dangerous to the health of the woman. 

You may think, okay okay, well that’s just El Salvador and a handful of other developing nations. Nope.  While the United States legalized abortions in 1973, there has been significant push back by right-wing organizations.  Women who choose to have abortions are shamed, and health care workers who provide these extremely important procedures are targeted, both with physical violence and hate speech. 

Small digression - but it’s worth noting - even US policy around the world pertaining to women’s rights is heavily flawed.  Thanks to the Helms Amendment, which states: No foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions.

And now - when groups like ISIS and Boko Haram use rape as a weapon of war (this is by no means new - military groups have done this for a very long time), women and girls worldwide are being forced to carry the children of the terrorists who raped them and have a life-threatening pregnancy or risk a back-alley abortion that could kill them.  .

So - when the Zika Virus becomes rampant in the United States will right wingers cull their message to care for mothers infected? I highly doubt it. 

The United States does this odd thing (I’m sure it happens elsewhere too) where it represses, distorts, and, forgets pieces of history. 

We know this to be true.  The majority of public schools still glorify Christopher Columbus in their text books, and the amount of time since slavery doubles in people’s minds seemingly every ten years.  White people, especially white people in power, glorify Martin Luther King as the peacemaker, and not the agitator.  So when the #Blacklivesmatter movement disrupts a speaker, or has any number of peaceful protests, those in power are quick to judge them while invoking MLK, suggesting he would not approve of their tactics.  It’s just case after case of people forgetting and misrepresenting history. 

Similarly, there’s the denouncing of socialism.

*GASPS* ARE YOU A SOCIALIST?! (includes looks of disgust, etc. etc.) Does this ever happen to you at a gathering? OR -- better yet, are you the person who says that to someone?

Here’s the deal: the US of A is the one of the only countries [if not the only country] that is actively appalled by the word socialism - and is also the only one that conflates it with communism so freely and regularly. 

Let’s start here -- from Merriam-Webster --

    Definition of communism    

a  :  a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics b  :  a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c  :  a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably

Okay! So even communism doesn’t say - hey everyone we’re going to take away all of your rights and then kill a bunch of innocent people -- that falls under fascism.

IMO - Stalin can certainly be criticized (as he often is) for ruining communism for everyone. 

Communism, with its roots in getting rid of all private property, and having a totalitarian system of government has resulted in the ruling class of bureaucrats owning and controlling the nationalized property (at least that’s how it played out in Stalinist Russia). But -- even though I don’t consider myself a communist, we can’t suggest that all communist societies would play out in this way -- it’s just not truthful or helpful.

Okay -- now let’s take a look at socialism:

Marriam-Webster says:

In the many years since socialism entered English around 1830, it has acquired several different meanings. It refers to a system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control, but the conception of that control has varied, and the term has been interpreted in widely diverging ways, ranging from statist to libertarian, from Marxist to liberal. In the modern era, “pure” socialism has been seen only rarely and usually briefly in a few Communist regimes. Far more common are systems of social democracy,  now often referred to as “democratic socialism,” in which extensive state regulation, with limited state ownership, has been employed by democratically elected governments (as in Sweden and Denmark) in the belief that it produces a fair distribution of income without impairing economic growth.

So, in other words, socialism as it exists in democratic societies is called “democratic socialism.” So, in other words, SOCIALISM WILL NOT = DICTATORSHIP AND THE GOVERNMENT TAKING OVER EVERYTHING if it were to play out in the United States (a self-proclaimed democracy).  Now, I could certainly debate whether or not the United States is truly a democracy, but we will save that for another day.  What socialism will do in the US is heavily regulate the runaway train that is best known as capitalism.

Now - is socialism trying to uproot/replace/capsize capitalism? No. It. will. regulate. it. Trust me, I love my iPhone as much as the next guy (conflict minerals aside), and I don’t think the government will be issuing those any time soon through any socialist programs. 

Here are *just a few* of the socialist programs already in place in the US:

The MILITARY: (Cue the song: “Oh say can you see, by the socialist defense,” blah, blah, blah, you know the tune.)  Yeah - for some reason this is one that people all agree should not be in the hands of private interests (other than the weapons that fuel them) -- it’s a weird exceptionalism in that way.

Highways and Roads: Do you drive? Welcome to your socialist path!

Public Schools! At this point in time, 90% of Americans go to public schools and that number is rising.  I’m sorry, did you want to be surrounded by smart people or no?

The Police

The POLIO Vaccine

The Postal Service - yes this is a whole thing that is incredible and socially funded and is separate from the Ben Gibbard led band (although no one is upset about that, let’s be real)

The GODDAMN fire department

CIA and FBI

The free school lunch program -- YES kids in the United States STILL suffer from hunger [in 2016!]

Here’s one for you Repubs out there: CORPORATE BAILOUTS.  Yeah, corporate bailouts are as socialist as they come.  Repubs may not like socialism when it benefits the poor and the common peeps, but when it helps out their corporate donors it becomes as American as Johnny freaking Appleseed.

Anyways, you’re starting to see my point - America is and always has been rooted in democratic socialism. 

Lawrence Davidson writes:

The Great Depression was a real moment of truth for the capitalist West because it suggested to the open-minded that the free-market ideology was seriously flawed. Free-market practices had brought the economic system to the brink of collapse, and Russia’s newly triumphant communists represented serious competition.

Even though the media would suggest otherwise, we must be skeptical of capitalism, just like we are skeptical of any other -ism.  When Oxfam comes out with the research that the richest 1% of the population has more wealth than the rest of the 99% COMBINED, there is a problem.  When the richest 62 people in the world have more wealth than 50% of the world’s population, WE HAVE A PROBLEM.  As one of my extremely bright comrades said, “What does that number have to be before anyone gives a shit?”

It’s a good question - and not enough people are asking it.  It’s a common part of the Republican dialogue that Dems are looking for “handouts.”  IS THIS TRUE? NO!

Let’s start with the facts (yep I’m about to repeat myself):

THE WEALTHIEST 1% HAS MORE WEALTH THAN THE 99% COMBINED

THE WEALTHIEST 62 PEOPLE (this is only double-effing-digits, people) HAVE MORE WEALTH THAN HALF OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION.

“They must’ve worked hard for that money.” or “They must’ve not wanted it badly enough.” Let me take a minute and barf on your capitalist shoes.  You want to know who else works hard? EVERY SINGLE PARENT at the elementary school I worked at.  Most of them worked TWO jobs, where they showed up on time every single day, and were BARELY scraping by.  Let’s look at people who ate at the soup kitchen I volunteered at.  Person after person I spoke to had Master’s degrees (or higher) and fell into poverty because they became so sick that their health care bills turned their hard work into debt.  Let’s look at the people my age who bust their ass through school (with the idea when they entered school that it will get them a good job) are drowning in piles of debt and can’t find jobs in their field or even find jobs that pay a living wage. 

Working hard does not = being successful.  The odds are stacked in an extreme way, and democratic socialism only tries to MILDLY even the playing field.  And, it’s important to note, the inequality is even more extreme in communities of color.  Bernie Sanders has it right when he says no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty. And yet we see this for the majority of Americans.

Let’s take up the fight to destigmatize socialism and re-stigmatize capitalism.  Stay informed and bring it up as frequently as possible to the socialist-stigmatizers in your life.  The abhorrent level of inequality in the world is almost unfathomable.  *Almost.*

Two badass ladies teaming up to put this track out is NO JOKE! Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz and Lizzo get together, and make a track through using google docs -- what is the 21st century everyone?

So I’ve decided to bring back this blog.  There’s the whole, “hey why would you do something that no one will see” mentality gnawing away at me - but honestly that’s why I’m stoked about it.  Blogs are [much more] free of trollers who are just out there to make you feel like your opinion is terrible and that you have no use being on the internet in the first place.  Well to those people I say - cut it out! If donald goddamn trump can run for prez, you bet your butt I can put my feelings out there into the ethers for no one to see. 

Plus there’s so much to write about in 2016, right? The world is essentially breaking apart at the seams: physically, mentally, emotionally.  There’s the whole election thing (Go Bernie) too. And I’m in Buffalo now, which exciting for a few different reasons - including being able to work on various art and music projects.

Anywho - I picked this photo for my first post because the album art behind me is from The Decemberists newest album, called “What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World.” The whole album is beautiful, but a song called “12/17/12″ strikes a chord with me and the tone of this blog.  The world can be fucked (i.e. people walking into an elementary school and killing a shit ton of children).  That’s part of why we need to *try* to fill the hole left in our chests by these people.  This is my way of trying to do that.  As the title of this blog suggests, I will not succeed at filling the hole - but I’m going to try anyways.

Here’s what you shouldn’t expect from this blog:

Anything - expectation is the estranged father of disappointment (BOOM tricked you)

Here’s what you will get:

An inside look at my thoughts, feelings, analysis of life, and what projects I’m working on