Capitalism’s Ugly Underbelly

The faces of homelessness in Cape May, N.J. Photo by Donato Dicamillo.

As economic systems go, capitalism is a very good one. Countless individuals have been able to rise from the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder to the uppermost ones by dint of hard work, talent and perseverance. But unbridled capitalism can have the reverse effect, as former Labor Secretary and Berkely professor Robert Reich reminds us.

There is a middle ground that makes some Americans uncomfortable because it is equated with socialism. John F. Kennedy summed it up when he quoted from the Bible, “For those to whom much is given much is required.” Likewise, when Jesus said, what you do to my brothers and sisters you do to me.

The dichotomy that exists between the haves and have-nots is brought into focus by Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, a hugely successful money-making machine that doesn’t appear to share that view. The theme park was the subject of a recent study by the UCLA Labor Center, which found that one-quarter of Universal’s employees qualify for and rely on food stamps and help from local food banks. Many of the employees have been working 40 hours a week at Universal for years, and live in fear of eviction from their homes in Los Angeles County where there is an affordable housing crisis.

UCLA Labor Center’s project director Victor Narro said he was surprised by the study’s findings. “We suspected there were issues. But at these levels? Universal Studios is a major tourist attraction. It generates a lot of wealth. You wouldn’t think these problems would be so prevalent and intense there.”

UCLA has analyzed data about other corporate entities such as Disneyland, where worker conditions similar to those at Universal exist. Among the solutions UCLA proposed, in addition to raising wages, are providing on-site childcare and conditioning corporate tax credits on adherence to basic employee economic standards. This would mean that businesses whose lowest wage earners must rely on public assistance would not receive tax credits.

Universal and Disneyland are not unique. In businesses large and small throughout America, workers struggle to make ends meet. Unfortunately, for some the ultimate plight is homelessness. My home county Cape May, N.J, which is sparsely populated by about 90,000 year-round residents, is a microcosm of the bigger economic picture. In summer, Cape May is the place to be and the population balloons to more than 750,000. Several towns in the county boast some of the highest home values in the nation. Houses in Avalon, where Oprah once owned a property, Stone Harbor and the City of Cape May are priced in the millions and largely occupied only in the summer.

Meanwhile, just miles away from Avalon, Stone Harbor and Cape May City, there is an affordable housing problem and homeless population. It is one of life’s cruel ironies that there are people who are homeless in winter while just miles away, multimillion dollar homes sit empty.

Cape Hope is a homeless advocacy organization in Cape May County that is working to do something about the crisis, and offset county government’s failure to effectively address affordable housing and homelessness. The group’s president, Denise Venturini-South, outlined Cape Hope’s two-pronged plan to address homelessness in the area.

The first part of the plan is to open a community care center that Venturini-South said will offer “supportive housing services and homeless prevention.” The second part consists of long-term housing for homeless mothers and their children at a property donated by a local Baptist Church. Cape Hope is in the fundraising phase for each of the two projects. For information about how you can help Cape Hope help the homeless, visit https://capehopecares.org/.

The faces of homeless men and women in Cape May were captured with incredible clarity and perspective by New York street photographer Donato Dicamillo. With his lens, Dicamillo reminds us that we are all part of the human family, and that when one of us suffers, we all suffer. As economic systems go, capitalism is a very good one, so long as we remember, “For those to whom much is given much is required.”

Who Is Training the Next Generation of Conservative Leaders?

Bridget Ziegler, pictured above with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been doing her part to make America great again by standing strong with DeSantis in support of the “don’t say gay” law in public schools, and fighting to protect children from the influence of the LGBTQ community.

The co-founder of the ultra-conservative Moms for Liberty served until recently as president of the Sarasota County School Board. Ziegler currently heads up school board programs for the Leadership Institute, where according to her page on LinkedIn, she develops and leads the nation’s premier programs for conservative school board and education leaders.

Ziegler and her husband, Florida Republican Party chair Christian Ziegler, are a power couple and a force to be reckoned with in their tireless efforts to ban critical race theory, eliminate Black history and restrict the rights of trans people. Family values, no doubt, are the driving force in the Ziegler’s’ quest to return America to traditional values.

Training the next generation of conservative leaders is Bridget Ziegler’s tagline on LinkedIn. But her house of cards looks to be collapsing fast. News outlets report Christian Ziegler has been accused of rape. It’s also reported that he and Bridget have been indulging themselves in a three-way with another woman. The Ziegler’s even have videotapes to prove it.

I suppose the hue and cry from the far right will be that those scurrilous Democrats are at it again, trying to smear yet another staunch defender of family values. But according to news reports, the Sarasota County School Board is pressing Ziegler to step down. It’s also reported that DeSantis and former Florida Republican governor Scott Perry are urging Christian Ziegler to step down as chair of Florida’s Republican Party.

Bridget, in reflecting on a tumultuous past year, observed on her Facebook page, “The last year was certainly full of rough waters, challenges, and even a few disappointments. However, I believe it will prove to be the beginning of the most transformational years for the Sarasota County School Board, in which years of tolerating people, policies, and practices…will no longer be tolerated.”

Transformational, indeed. She does not, however, elaborate on the “people, policies, and practices” in question. Her use of the word “tolerating” is telling. What she’s really saying is that people with different points of view or orientation are not acceptable. This from a woman who reportedly digs getting it on with another woman and her husband. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, except for the obvious hypocrisy.

Ziegler’s words contrast with those of Tom Edwards, a fellow Sarasota school board member who self-identifies as gay, and who demonstrated empathy and kindness when he told a reporter in the wake of the Ziegler’s’ scandal, “If you are the parents of trans children, or if you are an LGBTQ+ adolescent, you need to know there is nothing wrong with you. You are right as rain. You are just you. It’s just a different orientation.”

In an ethical and authentic world, Tom Edwards represents traditional values and the conviction that we are all created equal. He stands for tolerance in an increasingly intolerant world. Edwards reminds us of how we used to be…a people that cared for and looked out for each other.

As for the Ziegler’s, a power couple and force to be reckoned with, I’d love to be a fly on the wall when their kids are old enough to ask them, “what’s a threesome?” And just like that, their star is plummeting. Now who will train the next generation of conservative leaders?

He Enabled a Monster, Now What?

Donald Trump enabled a monster, which reared its ugly head on January 6 in the Capitol, and he’s powerless to undo the damage. His so-called base, which includes conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers, is turning on him, as evidenced in his recent public appearances with fired Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly.

When Trump told audiences he received the COVID-19 booster shot, many of them booed him. Maybe they felt betrayed because he followed the science when it was in his own best interest, despite all of the disinformation he’s been spewing for years. The worm, it would appear, is turning.

Another Fox commentator, Jesse Watters, told the audience at Turning Point USA’s recent AmericaFest conference to “ambush” Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the foremost infectious disease experts in the world, with questions about the National Institutes of Health allegedly funding research at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Watters took his comments to the next level when he urged the audience, “Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming.” Once again, we are left to ask ourselves, in what alternate universe is this type of incendiary language acceptable?

No doubt Watters and the usual apologists will characterize the comment as rhetorical. Just like the comments made by Rep. Mo Brooks preceding the January 6 assault on the Capitol. “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Brooks bellowed. Or Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who told the same audience to engage in “trial by combat,” a comment he later said was a reference to Game of Thrones.

But there are far too many people who are easily manipulated, and who might take Watters’ comments literally. As it is, Dr. Fauci, a man of science, had already found it necessary to have the protection of personal body guards. Now Watters is encouraging people to “go in for the kill shot.” Hyperbole or not, Watters is irresponsible at best, and a ratings whore and hate monger at worst.

Trump, for his part, compressed four years of lies and disinformation into one speech on January 6. If you haven’t read the full text, it reinforces just how fanatical and determined he was about violating the US Constitution by attempting to overturn the results of a lawful election. An election that has been validated and upheld time and again by one court and elections board after another.

His remarks to the assembled crowd illustrate how he enabled a monster over a four-year period by continuing his practice of banging away at absolute falsehoods. For the record, early in his remarks Trump did say, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

But then he and his allies proceeded to whip the audience into a frenzy with all the usual dog whistles, warning them they were losing their country, their children were being indoctrinated and urging them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell. And if we don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump warned them.

Now, with COVID deaths in the US surpassing 800,000 and rising, Trump decided to tell his base he got the booster, as if that would bring them to their senses. What he doesn’t understand is that the monster he’s nurtured these last five years is more powerful than anything he imagined. He has let an ominous genie out of the bottle, and the genie shows no sign that it plans to go back inside.

Just ask Jesse Watters.

Ferlinghetti’s Marvelous Intoxicating Liquor

When asked whether poetry still matters today, poet, publisher, activist and cofounder of City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, told an interviewer that, hell yes, it matters.

Poetry, Ferlinghetti said, is “all the disparate elements of the new civilization, the new culture of the 21^st century. One of these days,” he continued, “the brew is going to coalesce into a marvelous new intoxicating liquor.”

Intoxicating indeed. For poetry has always been about evolution and revolution, whether of society or of the spirit. And as Ferlinghetti, who passed away yesterday at age 101 noted, it has always been, and will likely always be, the youth in society who take up the torch and carry it forward.

Ferlinghetti knew of whence he spoke, having nurtured generations of poets and writers including, in the early years, counterculture creatives such as Allen Ginsberg, Neil Cassady and Jack Kerouac among others.

The articulation of a new ecological and spiritual consciousness, Ferlinghetti observed, came out of the youth rebellion. And for decades they came to his bookstore and literary meeting place on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, Beats, then Hippies, and generations that followed.

He participated in and helped foment a revolution in consciousness, publishing Allen Ginsberg’s, “Howl, one of the 20^th Century’s most famous poems, which led to Ferlinghetti’s arrest for “willfully and lewdly” publishing “indecent writings”.

In Ferlinghetti’s view, poetry was insurgent art, as described in his 2007 work by the same name.

“Poetry as Insurgent Art”

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?

What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic

times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna

St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American

or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words….

These last few years, Ferlinghetti’s words seem especially prescient. “Civilization self-destructs,” and, “Nemesis is knocking at the door.” So, we look to those who would be poets, capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times. We need them to reconcile the disparate elements of the new civilization and “conquer the conquerors with words….”

Rush Limbaugh: For Whom the Bell Tolled

Whether you loved the man or couldn’t stand him, Rush Limbaugh was a showman who used the airwaves brilliantly, and he hurt a lot of people in the process. For decades he got away with the same shtick, masquerading as a conservative and ridiculing anyone and everyone who didn’t agree with him.

From scientists studying global warming to Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, no one was safe from his vitriolic barbs. He slandered Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute” on-air because she advocated for health insurance to cover women’s contraception. And he said former Philadelphia Eagle Donovan McNabb, who led his team to three NFC championship games and a Super Bowl, was overrated because the media wanted to see a Black quarterback succeed.

Limbaugh deserved an Oscar for turning in a convincing performance as an angry white man who was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore. But if his listeners, 72 percent of whom were men, thought about it, they might have wondered what someone who makes $50 million a year has to be so angry about? Or how he pretended to occupy the high moral ground and feign righteous indignation for so many years, considering he was married four times and was a longtime abuser of oxycodone, despite publicly condemning drug abuse.

Colleagues who knew Limbaugh back in the day remembered a young man who bounced from job to job. One former co-worker from his early days in radio said when Limbaugh had little or no following and was struggling for ratings, he made an off-the-cuff inflammatory comment on the air and just like that, the lights on the station switchboard lit up. Being a cagey fellow, Limbaugh quickly connected the dots. Controversy sold, and the more outrageous his comments, the higher his ratings climbed.

His main appeal was fear, which has always been a big seller, especially with people who are most comfortable with simplistic explanations. Limbaugh clearly understood that, and he made it okay for his listeners to cling to their personal biases. When his mouth got him into trouble, he shrugged it off with, “that’s not what I meant,” a familiar refrain, these last four years in particular.

He never did apologize or retract his statements about McNabb or Fluke, who he said wanted the government to “pay for her to have sex.” Limbaugh dug in his heels, despite a backlash of public opinion and advertisers bailing on his show, and subsequently said of Fluke, “She’s having so much sex she can’t pay for it, and we should.”

At the time, Georgetown University president, Dr. John DeGioia, responded to Limbaugh with a quote by St. Augustine, which is as true today as ever. St. Augustine’s words, DeGioia said, “captured the sense of what is required in civil discourse: ‘Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For then only may we seek it, lovingly and tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already discovered and possessed.’”

Limbaugh wasn’t interested in civil discourse, laying aside arrogance or seeking truth. He was emblematic of a society that has become increasingly hostile and divided. This week, when the bell tolled for Rush Limbaugh, his ratings no longer mattered and his considerable wealth could not insulate him from the fate we all eventually face. He was called to answer to a Higher Power, one that asks us to do to others as we would have them do to us.

Blameless

Morning light seeps into the woods behind our house.

Woods that were home to indigenous peoples long before

our history was writ large, superimposed on the land

and the people who lived here. It is my home, now.

And while I struggle with the brutal legacy of Manifest Destiny,

which our European ancestors used to justify genocide,

I am blameless. Instead, I see subtle colors teased from

each tree and plant by early morning light. When day is done,

a different mood descends on these woods. A quiet,

peaceful transition from day to night unfolds. The sounds of

geese and other creatures who make these woods their home

pierce the silence. Their sounds, and the distinctive quality

of fading light, soothe me. Still, there is a vague discomfort,

as if I am an interloper, albeit a blameless one.

A Christmas Wish and the Journey Home

Some years ago, a man I worked with at the New York City Board of Education who I greatly respected told me that most people just want to live their lives peacefully and with dignity. Over the years I have found Jack Wengrow’s words ring true no matter the era or current fashion.

Today we live in turbulent times when living peacefully is not always easy or even possible. Times, when our most humanitarian inclinations notwithstanding, the dignity of the individual is often trampled. Perhaps that is the way it has always been.

At this magical time of year, despite all that has transpired in the world, in my life and in the lives of family and friends, I still feel a sense of hopefulness. The music and tidings of joy proclaim a prevailing spirit of goodness and kindness that will ultimately transform the world.

Jesus, like the Buddha, was a light unto the world who transcended the limitations of religion. He spoke to the side of us that longs for peace and righteousness to prevail so that no one has their dignity violated. Jesus taught a better way, as did the Buddha. To live with compassion and love for one another isn’t a Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim ideal. It is a human ideal.

I hope one day we can embrace each other as pilgrims, and respect and honor the unique journey that each of us is on. We are all moving toward a distant star in our hearts, and there are many ways to reach it; there is no one true way. Despite all our differences, it may be that we are seeking the same thing after all, and when we discover it, we will have found our way home.

The French novelist Marcel Proust wrote, “We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, for our wisdom is our point of view from which we come at last to view the world.”  Wisdom, as the “Serenity Prayer” reminds us, is our point of view that enables us to recognize the difference between the things we are able to change and those we cannot.

My Christmas wish is that all the citizens of earth will one day live their lives in peace and with dignity. For family and friends, as we continue our respective journeys in 2018, may we have the courage to change the things in our lives and in our world that we are able to change, the serenity to accept the things we cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Namaste and Merry Christmas!

Did Donald Trump Wake a Sleeping Giant?

Yesterday was one of those days when I felt especially proud to be an American. As we walked west from Philadelphia City Hall topped by the statue of William Penn, a massive crowd was building around Logan Square for the Women’s March. Nearing the area, we were met by a sea of posters with messages that spoke of the deep concern many Americans have been feeling since the election of Donald Trump.

Soon all of us, men, women and children of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, approximately 50,000 strong, were slowly making our way along the Ben Franklin Parkway toward Eakins Oval and the Art Museum. It was a powerful experience, strangers packed shoulder to shoulder, all with the common goal of proclaiming to the world in a peaceful way – Women’s rights are human rights.

It was a cathartic experience, being with so many like-minded Americans and sharing my own misgivings about the next four years, though my concerns were not as great as some. Yesterday’s protest marches brought millions of strangers together, far eclipsing the crowds in attendance at Trump’s inauguration on Friday.

Even “alternative facts,” a new euphemism coined this morning by one of Donald Trump’s mouthpieces, can’t change the numbers or mask the divide that is growing day by day between Americans and their president. And he’s only been in office two days.

An acquaintance asked me, “Can you articulate what rights the group thinks are in jeopardy?” The short answer has to do with a woman’s right to choose, especially women from low-income backgrounds who rely on Planned Parenthood for a range of essential health services. But there is an over-arching question – why are so many Americans filled with anxiety over The Donald’s presidency?

For some, I think it’s as much about the climate Donald Trump is fostering in America as it is about specific policy concerns. After all, what kind of society elects a president who brags about the part of a woman’s anatomy he likes to grab, who refers to some women as a fat pig, and who remarked that if Ivanka wasn’t his daughter, he’d date her. And who can forget his disgusting mockery on television of a reporter with a disability?

It is painfully obvious that Trump does not share former President George H. W. Bush’s vision of a “kinder, gentler nation,” although he hasn’t yet explained his vision for America, other than to say he’s going to “make America great again.” The experience I shared yesterday with 50,000 fellow citizens made it clear to me that America never stopped being great, and that we do indeed have a kinder, gentler side to us as a people because many of us care about each other.

One march does not a movement make, and time will tell whether Trump woke a sleeping giant. I suspect that he has. I didn’t get the impression from the men and women I marched with yesterday that they’re going to go away any time soon. I know I’m not. Quite the contrary. One test will come in less than two years when mid-term elections are held. If yesterday’s marches truly herald a movement, there may even be some Republicans in the Senate and House looking for work.

Colin Kaepernick, Civil Rights Activist?

Last Sunday as I walked across the pedestrian bridge that spans the Delaware between Lumberville, Pa. and Bull Island, N.J., the American flag billowed in the wind in all its glory. It was the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, a somber day when we should all feel solidarity as Americans.

For some reason I thought about Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who has refused to stand during the playing of the national anthem before a game. That he is making a statement about the disproportionate number of black Americans who are injured and killed by police by refusing to stand for the national anthem is noble in a naïve sort of way. But as many others have suggested, there are other ways he could express his outrage at police brutality.

What turns me off the most is when he chooses to do so in the presence of members of our military who lay their lives on the line for all of us. Many of them are missing arms and legs lost on the battlefield, and yet they must stand silently by while Colin disses a symbol of the nation they served so valiantly.

I can’t help wonder if Colin is a committed activist for social justice, or a backup quarterback seeking to regain relevance after being demoted from the starting role? If that sounds harsh, other than taking a knee during the national anthem, what is Colin doing to further the civil rights of black Americans?

Since I don’t personally know him, maybe he attends vigils and demonstrations when the civil rights of black people are violated. Maybe he spends time in inner city schools and with community leaders and law enforcement engaging in meaningful dialogue about social justice and what needs to be done to heal divided communities. If that’s the case, then I take back the question whether he’s a true champion of social justice.

Even so, what Colin doesn’t seem to understand is that he isn’t dissing the national anthem or the American flag. He’s dissing what it stands for. He’s dissing the sacrifice millions of Americans – black, white, Hispanic, Asian, native American – have made over the last 250 years. Their sacrifices made it possible for him to get a free education and make millions playing football.

If for no other reason, it behooves Colin and his NFL colleagues who lock arms before football games as a sign of solidarity for social justice to step up their game, if they haven’t already, and lock arms at vigils and demonstrations to protest the injustices being done to black Americans.  It behooves them to engage in any of the many programs and initiatives throughout the U.S. that are having a meaningful impact on the unjust treatment of black Americans by police.

If they can’t make that commitment, then they should just play football and leave the cause of social justice to those who are truly committed and who are on the front lines working to make a difference.

Imagine

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than 35 years since John Lennon died at the age of 40. Every year throngs of people gather in New York City’s Central Park on October 8 to remember him on his birthday.

“Life,” John wrote in a song for his son Sean, “is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Life is what happened to John on that fateful night in 1980 in front of the Dakota Hotel in New York City where he lived. All these years later, I wonder what plans he was making the day he died. The music he might have written, the millions more people he might have touched…

Today’s headlines about young people who are virtually bullied to death scream out in stark contrast to John Lennon’s music. What an incredibly peaceful and tolerant world it would be, if children learned from an early age that, “All you need is love.”

But when some of our most public figures make a mockery of this vision of authentic humanity, it’s discouraging to say the least. We see people like Donald Trump, running for the highest office in the United States, bullying his opponents and spewing venomous words that incite. Or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who tells people who disagree with him to sit down and shut up. John must be turning in his grave.

Imagine, instead, a world in which a person’s manner of dress or learning disability doesn’t subject him or her to constant taunts. Imagine a world where a person’s sexual preference doesn’t signal open season to those whose own sense of inadequacy drives them to commit thoughtless acts.  Imagine a world where all parents teach their kids to live and let live, and to respect other people’s right to be different.

John wrote a song in 1968 that received both positive and negative reaction from music critics. He referred to the song as the best lyrics he’d ever written. The words have always struck a chord in me, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps that is part of the magic of “Across the Universe.”

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup

They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe

Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind

Possessing and caressing me 

I imagine a world in which we all have an opened mind, a world where we don’t feel the need to humiliate and demean others for who they are, and where we celebrate the things that join us together rather than waste precious time and energy fixating on the things that make us different.

Sounds of laughter, shades of earth are ringing

Through my open my open views inciting and inviting me

Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns

It calls me on and on across the universe. 

We are all called across the universe. We are all blessed with the Buddha nature. And we need only open our minds and our hearts in order to make the journey. Imagine…

Jai Guru Deva Om