Only What I See

Casting about the web—or a bookstore or library—I find so many writers conveying a scope of knowledge about our world far greater than anything I will ever know. I am reminded, again, that I can only write about the little piece of the world that lies within my line of sight. This is, perhaps, the best I can offer to the proliferation of voices all working on the problems our planet faces.

                                     

And so, I write about yesterday.                                   

My town is split down the middle. The affluence and security of the east side has a west side shadow where life can be very hard indeed. I have lived here for sixteen years, and yet rarely read or hear anything about why this schism is allowed to linger.

Sometimes east and west find themselves, like sand paper and a block of wood, chafing at each other. Yesterday saw an evening like that. And I played a small part in this friction.

My trade at this time is to work in a local store. Last night a customer returned to the store very upset because she felt the item she’d been sold was not what she had asked for.

She bought a large amount of fabric, took it home, and began to construct her garment, only to find that she had not received the number of yards that she’d requested. Relying on the abilities of the clerk to provide her with the number of yards she needed, she cut into her fabric before she realized that she had, in essence, been shorted.

To complicate her lack even further, she discovered she did not have her receipt. Perhaps she did not know the store policy about returning items. Perhaps she could not conceive that a clerk might screw up a yardage count when measuring fabric. For whatever reason, she did not hold onto her receipt.

So the woman arrived at the store last night with only the material she’d bought. The store’s policy is that returns can only be accepted if the customer has a receipt for her purchase, which seems a reasonable requirement unless you’re the one missing that little slip of paper.

But when the customer is black and the manager of the day is white, this scenario can bring difficulties that predate the return. And when black customers shop in our store and the managers and clerks are always white, that reality can affect how interactions unfold as well.

I was working toward the back of the store and, at first, did not directly interact with this customer. But I heard the rising sense of frustration in the voices of the customer and the manager. How many times had the manager been required to handle situations when customers argued that they should be granted an exception to a return policy? And how many times had a customer believed the store should understand why such an obvious failure by the store to provide her with what she needed made the store’s return policy look like an attempt to deny a clerk’s mistake?

The customer became very angry about her situation. She came and went from the store no less than three times, searching for the missing receipt, making sure to bring all the fabric she’d been given so it could be measured again, and then losing a replacement receipt—probably because she was so frustrated and angry about the whole situation.

To the manager, the woman’s stomping feet and raised voice seemed unreasonable. But what did this strong reaction really stem from? What kind of a day had this woman endured in our town before she attempted to return her fabric? She was so upset that by the time I interacted with her, I could find no way past her anger. She clearly needed her fabric last night. Perhaps she’d promised a garment to someone and was working to meet a deadline. Whatever her reason, she actually purchased additional fabric—without obtaining a refund for the material she could not use. The purchase came to a little over $9.00 and I watched as she dug through her pockets to pull out and unfold a $5, four $1’s and pocket change to cover her bill.

The store policy says that we could not give her a refund without a receipt. The manager has been granted no discretion for situations like these. I knew the manager would have gotten into trouble with the corporate office if she had accepted the return without that little piece of paper. 

As I rang up the customer's new order, all I could do was to say how sorry I was that we had not been able to resolve this situation to her satisfaction. But she was still angry. She would not really make eye contact with me. She asked for the phone number to our corporate office, which I gave her. But that was all she would say.

And I did not attempt to argue with the store manager about the course we were taking with the woman. I did not say, “You now, we’re talking about $9 here. But this woman is a customer of ours and she is a passionate communicator. Wouldn’t it be simpler to say that we must have made a mistake, give her credit for the return, and mend this breach so we could have a better day? In this case, what is served by enforcing the return policy? 

Though words were never spoken, I thought I could feel all sorts of assumptions flying through the air last night. Because of the split in our town, opportunities for black and white citizens, for economically challenged and those who are better off citizens, for west-siders and east-siders, to interact just don’t happen very often. We don’t practice communicating with respect and compassion often enough.

And because we do not speak with each other often enough, tense interactions like the one last night take on great meaning for both parties. They dig the ditch that separates us a little deeper.

If our store were locally owned the manager of the day might have had more flexibility to deal with our difficulty. But corporate structures are constructed so that individual initiative is very difficult to exercise. I guess if a corporation with hundreds of stores experiences enough $9 losses, those losses begin to add up. And corporations, because they are not people, choose to focus on their profit margins.

I wonder, though, if losing $9 last night might have brought far greater rewards to our store. What is the dollar value for goodwill? How much is it worth to build bridges, and to listen while entertaining the possibility that fostering a sense of respect for each other will be more valuable than enforcing a store policy?

Last night in my town, the west and east sides had a conversation. But our extensive history of not speaking with each other dominated that conversation. We, I am afraid, dug the ditch between us a little deeper.

Greenwash This

Jed Greer and Kenny Bruno’s book Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism expanded on the reports they had written for “Greenpeace Report on Greenwash” that was presented at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

For quite a few months now I’ve been contributing to actions intended to keep fracking out of Illinois. One of the most frustrating aspects of this work involves the choice by several very large environmental organizations to support efforts to regulate fracking. The majority of grass roots environmental groups in Illinois are promoting a fracking ban. To our great frustration, Illinois’ well-known environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Illinois Environmental Council believe that laws and regulations can be written to somehow keep fracking operations from polluting our environment and threatening the health of people and animals living in proximity to fracking sites.

Biologist and author Sandra Steingraber, born in Illinois but now fighting fracking in New York, knows all too well how effective legal opportunities for citizen feedback on fracking really are. Frustrated by the State of New York’s unwillingness to take the testimony of scientists seriously, Steingraber and other New York activists chose to block a corporate driveway rather than allow Inergy to proceed with its fracking storage operation. Informed and educated comments about fracking dangers were dismissed by state authorities. Steingraber felt only civil disobedience could communicate her message as widely as she believed it needed to be heard. She deliberately broke the law in New York and currently sits in a New York jail because she realized that current opportunities for citizens to provide their point of view on fracking were useless.

How is it that grass roots activists like Steingraber understand the futility of regulating fracking, or of participating in existing citizen comment procedures, while some large activist organizations still seem to think that fracking can happen safely if only the right regulations are written to control it?

The question brings me back to Greer and Bruno’s  book Greenwash. The oil and gas companies having mastered greenwashing techniques in the ‘90’s are again applying them to fracking. The problem is that the country seems to have developed amnesia when it comes to the concept of greenwashing. Maddeningly, many of the same corporations, those revealed to be destroying environments with one hand while they put out reports and ads describing their environmental responsibility with the other hand, are involved in the fracking industry. Shell and Mobil were separate entities in the ‘90’s. Now they are married to each other. And, unbelievable as it may sound, the marketing claims they foisted on us in the ‘90’s are being trotted out again in this decade.

And no one seems to notice that all of this is made possible by advertising agencies that design the glossy pieces meant to becalm troubled citizen hearts. The ad agencies get the up-with-people photographs taken, they work with corporate management and lawyers to write the language that, if not read very carefully, can sound like the corporations are really working to better their environmental records even as the same words promise absolutely nothing.

Don’t I seem to recall that business schools were going to teach ethics more effectively to their students following the Enron scandal? Who’s teaching these marketers and ad execs ethics these days? Ad execs should be termed media mercenaries, or creative hired guns, who will design a pretty brochure for any company regardless of its true contribution to climate change, pollution, or negative effects to human and animal health. Global energy corporations now create their public images using global advertising agencies.

And sadly, there is no attempt to rein in the indiscriminate creative genius of the ad agencies—in spite of our culture’s awareness that effective advertising can bring great harm. The U.S. may regulate what kind of advertising children are exposed to, or where cigarette or alcohol ads can appear, but that tacit recognition of the power of advertising does not extend to corporations that threaten the very existence of our planet.

Take a look at the language in a ‘90’s Shell advertisement:

“Caring for the world is a responsibility we all share. And it’s one we take seriously at Shell. . . In fact, as long as the earth needs someone to care for it, you can be sure of Shell.”

With this language comes a photo of a sweet little girl hugging a globe.

Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who lived amidst the devastation left by Shell operations in his country, had this to say about Shell:

“At the root of my travails lies Shell, which has exploited, traduced, and driven the Ogoni to extinction in the last three decades. The company has… left a completely devastated environment and a trail of human misery… I have one suggestion for those whose conscience has been disturbed by my story: boycott all Shell products.”

Mobil’s approach to public relations challenges took a more direct approach to the issue with this language in its 1991 Mobil World:

“[M]arketing is the part of Mobil’s business that’s most visible to the public. Most people…see advertising. This presents Mobil’s marketers with a unique opportunity to deliver their environmental message—an opportunity they’ve seized.”

Mobil in the ‘90’s claimed it intended to “target: environmental excellence.” Targeting extended to the firing of employees who dared to report on Mobil’s environmental missteps. Valcar Bowman, a former Mobil environmental affairs manager was fired when he refused to remove incriminating documents about air pollution from Mobil’s Torrance refinery. Bowman sued and eventually was awarded $1.375 million in damages.

How do we as a nation forget this stuff? And how in the world can any environmental group—or oil and gas company—possibly expect us to believe that with fracking everything will be different? The companies have already demonstrated in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, Ohio and North Dakota how detrimental fracking is for those states. Even the promises of jobs that are supposed to accompany fracking have failed to materialize.

And Illinois hopes to regulate this industry? Only oil and gas companies with their inordinate ad budgets could have gotten a fracking regulation law as far along in Illinois as this.

We need a moratorium on fracking—and on the public relations blitz that accompanies this mess of an industry. Promises that were false in the ‘90’s are still false, no matter how glossy the photos or sweet-sounding the hype.

Does Citizen Activism Work? I Must Wait and See

The phone rang about three weeks ago. The high school nurse was calling me to say that my son had been injured in a physical education class. He was in a lot of pain and his ankle was swelling badly. She asked that I pick him up right away.

Not an unusual occurrence for a family. As the high school principal would tell me later, “Kids get injured in P.E. class all the time.” Hmmm. But let that go for now.

What made this call unusual was the nurse’s casual admission that the class had been run by the National Guard, which had brought in an inflatable obstacle course for the kids to attempt that day.

“Just a minute,” I said. “Are you saying that the military was teaching my son’s P.E. class today?”

“Well,” the nurse said. And then there was a hesitation. I couldn’t really call it a pause. Just time enough for her to take in that my tone revealed I was less than happy to hear this information. Then she continued, “ They were all there.” By that I guessed she meant that both high school teachers and the National Guard were in the gym, but I didn’t pursue it at that point. I thanked her for calling and said I would be right over to pick up my son.

When I got to the nurse’s office, my son’s ankle and foot were indeed badly swollen. His pain was so severe that we had to get him to my car in a wheelchair.

Finally, my son and I were in the car and he could describe to me what happened. He owed his injury to an exercise designed by the National Guard.

The Guard arrived the day before to set up a chin-up bar and an inflatable obstacle course. Each day for three days the Guard was given the opportunity to put all P.E. students through the experience. My son’s understanding was that students were given the choice to sit out the exercise but would lose class points for doing so. I learned later that only some P.E. teachers docked points, but at the time my son was in the class he believed that his grade would suffer if he didn’t attempt the course.

In order to participate, the Guard said the students were supposed to be 16 and they were required to sign a waiver before they were allowed on the course. My curious young man wisely asked for a copy of the document he had been asked to sign. In spite of a tall stack of forms at his elbow, the Guard representative said he didn’t have enough forms to provide my son with a copy. Then my son, who had quickly read the waiver, asked if he should sign it. He is only thirteen. The Guard replied, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Just sign it.” And he signed.

Then he learned that in order to attempt the obstacle course, students were required to demonstrate some degree of fitness by accomplishing three chin-ups. Now, admittedly, our family is not sports-minded, but my son gave it a go. His injury resulted almost immediately.

The Guard’s chin-up bar, a portable exercise station, had a metal contraption serving as its stand. The long metal boxes on the floor at either side of the unit were not padded. And the students, who were about to attempt an inflatable obstacle course, had been required to remove their athletic shoes. My son was in stocking feet when he dropped from the chin-up bar and landed his full weight through his right foot on the metal edge of the supporting frame. Severe pain commenced within about fifteen minutes at which time he hobbled to the nurse.

I also learned that the Guard members were freely sharing with students that they couldn’t recruit this freshman class, but would return in their junior and senior years to sign up interested students. In other words, the Guard was being permitted to recruit new members while supposedly teaching a P.E. class at the local public high school.

The military already has a mostly omnipresent recruiting table in the high school cafeteria where interested students can talk with recruiters about how to enlist.

But this P.E. experience was very different than a recruiting table where students choose to approach—or not. In the P.E. class, the Guard had access to all high school students enrolled in P.E. this semester. And while the experience was described as a fun activity for the students, I immediately wondered why this was happening during a regular class period.

I have written a letter to the school principal, his teachers, the school district superintendent, and the school board describing his day in P.E. and my unhappiness that the Guard would be running such a class in the middle of the school day.

Initially, and based on the quick response from the high school principal, I believed my questions and objections were being taken pretty seriously. The principal claimed he did not know about the waiver and that if any waiver was to be signed the parents should have been signing it. In a second call, he claimed that the plan had been to send waivers to parents but that the Guard had run out of time. This back-peddling was my first red flag that the issues I’d raised were going to be down-played.

In the principal’s first call to me, he also insisted that the Guard was not recruiting during the class, and that what my son heard was just one guard’s choice to communicate such information. This explanation seemed like red flag number two.

The principal seemed persuaded by Guard personnel that the obstacle course was not a recruiting tool. I remained unconvinced of that and went on line to see what I could find.

On the web I found countless newspaper articles from across the country dutifully written by local reporters who describe in highly favorable language how much fun the obstacle course is. If they provide quotes from anyone, they are the words of National Guard personnel, students who choose to participate, or P.E. teachers clearly in favor of the event. None of these articles interview the students who choose to sit out the exercise.

The articles also often mention that the obstacle course is a recruiting tool for the National Guard. One such article from the Decatur Herald Review was headlined, “National Guard Visit to Eisenhower Presents Option, Not Pressure.” http://herald-review.com/news/local/national-guard-visit-to-eisenhower-presents-option-not-pressure/article_95bb8e5a-579a-11e1-bef3-001871e3ce6c.html. 

One article from the Vermont Guardian bore the title, “Prop or Propaganda? Guard Recruitment Effort Irks Parents.”  http://www.vermontguardian.com/local/122006/Recruit.shtml. Apparently, some parents in Vermont are insisting that the military keep recruitment out of the classroom.

I also found an example of a waiver used by the Montana National Guard. That form requires a parent’s signature if the student is under 18 years of age. http://senior.billings.k12.mt.us/senior/forms/National_Guard_Obstacle_Permission_form.pdf.

What I found on line clearly indicated that the word is out across the country that the obstacle course is a recruiting tool.

This information I shared with the principal and my son’s teachers the day after a second visit to an orthopedic specialist determined that his foot was broken.

The school nurse and one of my son's teachers answered my second letter. There has been no call from the principal this time. I will have to wait, I guess, to see if the National Guard is invited to the high school next year.

The New York Times reported on September 5, 2012 that our country’s poor economic situation continues to motivate young people to enlist. The U.S. Census reports that in 2010 406 active duty personnel were killed due to accidents, while 455 died as a result of hostile action. http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/12statab/defense.pdf. Interesting, isn’t it, that the military’s approach to safety (or the lack of it) is as likely to kill an enlisted man or woman as is an enemy attack? A National Public Radio report on January 14, 2013 notes that while the number of military deaths in Afghanistan in 2012 totaled 295, “the number of suicide deaths in the U.S. military surged to a record 349 last year.” http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/14/169364733/u-s-militarys-suicide-rate-surpassed-combat-deaths-in-2012. The statistic seems to suggest enlisted personnel in growing numbers find their situations so desperate that they take their lives. Finally, the National Institute of Health reports the Department of Veterans Affairs own statistics: that post-traumatic stress disorder (what was once called ‘shell-shocked’ in WWI) affects 31% of Vietnam veterans, 10% of Gulf War (Desert Storm) veterans, 11% of veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan, and 20% of Iraqi war veterans. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml.

Perhaps, the National Guard or other branches of the military should be allowed to recruit during the lunch hour. But at the next table should be an informational sheet detailing the risks the students will incur if they choose to sign up. I also hope responsible school administrators will bring in other ‘recruiters’ who will offer students an alternative to military service, the Job Corp, the Peace Corp., and an aggressive search for scholarship and financial aid opportunities so students can go to trade school or college.

My opinion on the current U.S. military is shared by a growing number of veterans. Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW) opens its web page with the following: IVAW Members are speaking out about their experiences in the military. They are shedding light on the stigma around mental health care, the economic factors that motivated their enlistment and the questionable methods of waging war in our current era.” http://www.ivaw.org/.  Impressionable young people should not be approached by the military during high school classes. And if recruiters are allowed into high schools, messages like those provided by IVAW should stand shoulder to shoulder with military recruiters and their literature or obstacle courses.

My son is one young man who was mildly injured thanks to a National Guard obstacle course, but he is perhaps emblematic of what can happen when the military, focused more on recruiting than on safety, designs an approach to training and/or service. Students beware.

What Does It Mean to Live in an Oligarchy?

When I took World History in high school, my very gifted teacher introduced the word “oligarchy” to our class. We were talking about the Middle Ages when a few nobles and clergy ruled the many people of Europe. How ordinary people’s lives unfolded was like a roll of the dice: if you were born in a community in which a noble or clergyman was somewhat interested in the quality of life enjoyed by ‘his’ people, then laws might be enforced somewhat consistently and people might have at least a chance of living decent lives. But if you happened to be born into a community in which nobles and/or the clergy were more interested in lining their sleeves with ermine and displaying jewels around their necks, you were in for a bumpy ride. You were going to starve to keep them in kid leather, delicacies for their tables, and glittering residences where they could throw parties for their friends. Oligarchs were never elected; they were born into their roles.

Sound familiar?

Oligarchy is not just for the Middle Ages anymore. Oligarchy is the term that best describes the current form of social control in the United States.

How else can we explain a country in which the will of the majority is set aside time and time again so that existing corporate interests can continue to fill their bank accounts?

How else are we to understand a country where elected leaders seem unable or unwilling to stand up to corporate interests, and who put the vast majority of Americans at risk by embracing economic policies that threaten U.S. citizens and what is most precious to us: our air, our water and our land?

How else do we explain a country in which a citizen’s political rights evaporate as soon as he walks within an employer’s walls? Where unions for the vast majority of working people have been undermined and no comparable employee collective bargaining system has replaced them? And where the rule of economic interests has grown so bold that they publish on their employee web pages requirements that employees not exhibit behavior or speech that would in any way undermine the goals of the company for whom they work?

How else can we understand a system in which the popular vote does not get us the president we want, or a system of government in which unelected government advisers have such influence over the development of public policy?

Those oligarchs who purport to rule us believe we are sheep. They believe we are incapable of understanding the complicated problems that we face. They behave as if they are certain that only they know what we—and our country—truly need.

We need to learn from what other countries have faced in recent times. When revolutionaries in South Africa finally ousted the white South African government and pulled Nelson Mandela out of prison, the world rejoiced. Finally, this country would be returned to the vast majority of its citizens. Unfortunately, the new government agreed—or was coerced—into accepting the advice of powerful economic interests in the country. Those interests claimed for themselves the control of economic power in South Africa. Those interests stymied the new government from making true economic change in the country and South Africa as a result is still trying to realize the dream of its revolution. A new government cannot effect change without the ability to direct its economic reality.

The same dynamic has been playing out all over the globe: in Greece, Spain, Italy, in many African countries, and those in South America. The governments in all of these countries have lost control of their economic systems. Their policies are being dictated to them by bankers or powerful corporations who insist that their economic well being is more important than the well being of the people.

Corporations are not people. Corporations are paper fictions that have been endowed with power.  They are designed to focus only on improving the bottom line. At least oligarchs of old were human beings. If they saw suffering they might temper their greed with concern for others. But corporations are not human. Their reason to exist, as defined by corporate mission statements, is to secure the most profit for their shareholders and/or owners. Managers must be creative indeed to bring public good into the picture. We are back to the Middle Ages when we must hope that ‘enlightened’ corporate CEO’s will consider the fate of citizens and their land—and not just corporate profit margins. Profit before people is the slogan for these entities. People with little forethought created these monstrosities and people with more wisdom should dissolve them.

Did you vote ‘yes’ on a referendum that created a U.S. oligarchy? Did you find yourself persuaded by a public debate in which the merits of oligarchy were discussed? Is your life better since corporate power and corporate dollars took over our country?

If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, you owe it to yourself to reclaim your power—and your voice.

The oligarchies of the middle ages were replaced, eventually, with governing systems that gave more of a voice to the people. We have been on a journey ever since to increase the amount of democratic participation in our systems of government. Sometimes the journey included smoke and mirrors, when we were given the illusion of democracy even as powerful economic forces actually controlled the government from backrooms. But today even a semblance of democracy is disappearing and it’s growing more and more difficult to pretend that the democratic ideals upon which this nation was founded—at least for some of its inhabitants—have anything to do with how decisions are being made.

If there is an issue facing your family, or your country, that you believe needs to be discussed, add your voice to the debate and don’t be shy about it. Write letters. Lots of them. Call elected representatives. Attend protests. Object loudly.

And most of all—if you can—get out from under the economic machine in whatever ways you can. Reclaim your power and your independence. Raise your voice. Take back your country. Discover what is means to live with dignity once more. Stop living in economic servitude. Stop living in fear. There are a lot more of us than there are one-percenters. We’ve just forgotten this lately.