Category Archives: Political

Hard Freeze

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Half shriveled, half thriving plantDecember’s cold snap has wreaked havoc in my garden. The salvia’s especially hard-hit, except for one bush. Half is shriveled and lifeless; the other half, nestled next to the house and under the eaves, is thriving.

As I survey the damage, my thoughts turn to the current debate on poverty. Are we as a nation doing too much–creating a culture of dependency? Or too little–abandoning those who need help? Are the poor lazy and deficient, or held back by circumstances beyond their control?

My salvia provides some answers. The difference between its withered and thriving halves has nothing to do with hard work or character, simply that one part benefitted from a little extra shelter and warmth while another was literally left out in the cold.

Just as it’s clear that protection from extreme hardship helped the plant, evidence is compelling that, by and large, anti-poverty programs work. Food stamps save millions of Americans from hunger. Unemployment benefits keep families afloat. Medicaid improves health. Not only do such programs provide an immediate lifeline, they also improve long-term outcomes, especially for children, who can suffer life-long effects from the toxic stress of poverty.

Yet unemployment benefits have run out for 1.6 million Americans. Further cuts to food stamps loom. Nearly half the states have refused to expand Medicaid. In some quarters, the war on poverty has turned into a war on the poor.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” goes the saying. There’s some truth that adversity fosters resilience: My salvia will regenerate, and most people will somehow muddle through our brutal recession. But too much adversity permanently stunts growth, even kills.

Just a little shelter and a little warmth during hard freezes, hard times—what a difference it makes when we bring everyone in under the eaves.

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“Hard Freeze” also just aired on KQED.

 

Goldfish

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goldfish

 A client once remarked, in response to another of my misguided attempts to get her to change, “I’m like the goldfish in a bowl of dirty water. Why should I change when it’s the water itself that needs to be cleaned?”

I pondered her words during two excellent recent events: CIP’s “The Neuroscience and Psychology of Resilience,” and TPI’s Fall Symposium, “The Trauma of Everyday Life: Perspectives from Buddhism and Psychoanalysis.” Both helped me appreciate the paradox of the goldfish in the bowl. Can either ever be free of the influence of the other? A pure holding environment is an illusion whose perpetual pursuit leads to misery. Besides, the excreting goldfish always pollutes the water in which it swims. Where, if at all, should we direct our clean-up efforts? My mind leapt from sanitation to sanity to the hyper-sanitization that comes from too much Purell and its psychological equivalent, too much positive thinking. A little murk, like a little dirt, is not only unavoidable; it’s good for us. We suffer less when we relinquish our quest for a world without suffering.

During the Symposium’s lunch break, someone at my table said, “I like this so much better than positive psychology–embracing rather than de-emphasizing darkness in our work.”

A second woman added, “But people shouldn’t brood too long, they need to move forward.”

She went on to tell us about two friends, both highly educated and well-established in their careers and lives until they were wiped out by the recession. Both had lost jobs, all their savings, their homes. One friend accepted what had happened with apparent equanimity, grateful for the $10/hour job he had just found. The other, unwilling (or unable?) to accept a drastically lower income, couldn’t find a job. Our tablemate spoke admiringly of her first friend, reprovingly of the second, whom she characterized as “angry and entitled.”

“Why shouldn’t she be angry?” I asked.

“Mindfulness training and jobs for all!” someone proposed.

We went on to discuss the increasingly toxic and polarized societal waters in which people seem more and more required to swim alone. Clearly the goldfish bowl needs a massive scouring. In light of that reality, better a resilient goldfish than a fish out of water, or out of a job! But how do we bring about enlightened social policy? When is equanimity an exploitable docility, anger the rioter’s rage that destroys one’s own community?

 

Health Care for the Holidays

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Covered California home page

A version of this piece recently aired on KQED’s Perspectives.

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With the holidays here, I know just what I’m going to ask my daughter for this year. Emma’s almost 26, and like a lot of young adults, she’s piecing together a couple of part-time jobs while figuring out what comes next. I don’t want her to spend her hard-earned cash on stuff I don’t need. Instead, I’m asking Emma to make sure she signs up for something she needs: health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

It’s true that the rollout has been riddled with problems, but the Affordable Care Act’s tremendous benefits remain. Besides, Californians are lucky to have Covered California, the state’s fully functional and easy-to-navigate healthcare exchange. Those who enroll by December 23 will be covered when the law goes into effect January 1. What better way to start the New Year?

Our family has already benefited greatly from the Affordable Care Act–it’s allowed us to keep our daughters on our plan until they turn 26. Soon, though, Emma will need her own health insurance. Before, she never could have afforded it. It’s hard to find jobs these days that offer coverage. Emma, like millions of Americans, might have been forced to rely on costly ER visits or the “Cross my fingers and hope I don’t need it!” plan. Now, under the Affordable Care Act, she and the many Californians like her who’ve risked disaster due to unattainable insurance will be eligible for expanded Medicaid, federal subsidies, or tax credits.

As parents, we make sure our kids are safe: teaching them to buckle up, wear bike helmets, and drive defensively. Grown-up children may think of themselves as Young Invincibles who don’t need insurance, but accidents and serious illness happen, putting health and family finances at risk. Here’s our chance to further guide our kids into responsible and secure adulthood, continuing to protect them by making sure they’re covered.

That’s why I’m asking Emma for the best present of all: good and affordable healthcare for her, peace of mind for me.

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Covered California: www.coveredca.com or 800-300-1506

Other states: check your local resources or www.healthcare.gov or 800-318-2596

Open enrollment period ends March 31, 2014

 

All Aboard!

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High speed train

According to congressional Republicans and right-wing media, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is a “train wreck.” Nonsense. What’s really going on is that hyper-partisans determined to thwart President Obama have been busy since the law’s inception laying dynamite on the tracks. Now they’re even threatening to blow up the government and the economy if they don’t get their way! These saboteurs hope to derail a reform that will make better and more affordable health care insurance available to almost all Americans, including 25-30 million who are currently uninsured.

So don’t trust the wannabe train wreckers for accurate information. Here are some highlights of what Obamacare actually provides:

  • Young adults can stay on their parents’ plans until age 26
  • Insurers can no longer deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, dump patients, or charge women higher premiums than men
  • Free screening tests, immunizations, and preventive care
  • Elimination of yearly caps and lifetime limits on insurance coverage
  • Closing the “doughnut hole” that leaves seniors on the hook for prescription drug costs
  • Making sure at least four out of five of your healthcare dollars go to ensuring your health, not insurance companies’ administrative costs or profits
  • Tax credits for small businesses providing coverage for their employees
  • Expansion of Medicaid for people making up to 133% more than the poverty level
  • Subsidies to make healthcare insurance affordable for low- and middle-income earners
  • Health exchanges in each state to make comparison shopping easier and to create large risk pools, thereby lowering the cost for those now at the mercy of buying individual or family plans on the open market

Obamacare will NOT force you to give up your current insurance policy, drive up medical costs, increase the deficit, put bureaucrats in charge of your healthcare decisions, or take away your freedom.

It WILL, however, make you free from anxiety should you get sick, have an accident, or lose or change jobs. Because Obamacare brings almost everyone under the protection of insurance, it also eliminates exorbitant costs of sole-resort, emergency-room care for the uninsured.

Let’s stop in their tracks those laying dynamite on the tracks. All aboard for affordable healthcare for all!

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Obamacare goes into effect January 1, 2014. (Some key provisions are already bringing relief to millions!) Health care exchanges open October 1, 2013, with the enrollment period lasting through March 31, 2014. 

For more information about Obamacare, the exchanges, how to sign up, costs, and your eligibility for subsidies, go to:

Contact your elective representatives to urge them to support Obamacare: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Suggested reading for more in-depth understanding:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/your-money/health-insurance/a-guide-to-the-new-health-insurance-exchanges.html?_r=0&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1380564316-6/3NmZyBAPPxs2/tTVLb/w

http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/node/3747

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114870/obamacare-exchanges-start-tuesday-oct-1-heres-why-theyre-worth-it

 

Commemoration

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I wrote this two years ago, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and offer it again today. 

Candle in the dark

As usual, I went to yoga Sunday morning, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Mostly I go for the effect on my muscles, not my spirit. But on this solemn day my yoga teacher lit a candle in remembrance, and invited us to practice Tonglen, breathing in all that is troublesome in the world, acknowledging it, then transforming it into compassion and peace on the exhale. After a few minutes, the class continued with its typical focus on backs, necks, and hips, or, as one member put it, “the usual overall soreness.”

At the end of the class, after the stretching and the Namaste, another member shared what happened to her Turkish and Egyptian friends ten years ago. They owned a restaurant in Manhattan, which they managed to keep open after the towers fell despite the chaos and lack of customers. Late at night three white men came in. They trashed the place. One of the owner’s friends managed to slip away and call the police. Soon the men who had destroyed the restaurant were apprehended and brought back to be identified before they could be charged.

“Yes, those are the men,” the owners told the police, who were eager to throw the book at them.

But the owners refused to press charges.

“This is a difficult day,” they said. “We understand their grief and rage. Let them go.”

Incredulous, the police did so reluctantly.

A few hours later, the three men came back with some of their friends, pressing upon the owners fistfuls of cash for the damage. The men helped clean up as best they could, and continued to come for the next several weeks until things were put right again.

Sometimes forgiveness is the most effective kind of justice. It is much more likely than hatred or revenge to spawn atonement. This is the lesson so often lost in our decade of fear and grief and war. But it is one worth remembering as we light a candle; breathe in trouble and sorrow; breathe out compassion and peace; and seek to ease the overall soreness of the world.

 

Greenwashing

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Laundry

I have a hunch why climate change denial still holds sway, and it’s not just because of the oil and gas industry’s lock on politicians.

It’s because of laundry’s lock on me.

Take, for example, one easy step I can take to save the planet: hanging my laundry out to dry. Since I work only part-time, live in a dry climate, and no longer have children at home, this should be a no-brainer. Especially since years ago young and enthusiastic energy auditors installed a retractable clothesline for free when they switched out all our light bulbs for fluorescents.

They did not, however, stick around long enough to do any laundry. Which is how I learned that wet clothes are extremely heavy. But hey, I’m game for a little upper-arm workout if it will keep me on the good side of Al Gore. Unfortunately, keeping the ton-of-bricks laundry basket on my good side as I navigate the stairs throws me out of alignment. Pausing to rub my sore back, I balance the load on a step. It tumbles down the stairs, landing on surfaces that are not, shall we say, as pristine as they might be. (Who can see to clean in my now-dim house? On the bright side, who can see the mess?) Since I’ve switched to washing everything in cold water, the damp clothes aren’t that clean to begin with, so what’s an extra patina of fine grit?

Plus, now I get to enjoy the fresh air! For a really long time! Seriously, what would have taken 30 seconds, including cleaning the lint screen before tossing the load into the dryer, now takes a good 20 minutes. And that’s if I’m lucky, with enough clothespins and line space to hang everything properly. More often I’m draping underwear over the patio furniture and hoping it doesn’t blow into the neighbor’s yard.

The slow-clothes movement continues, especially when I forget to fetch the lot in and leave it overnight. In the morning, the laundry is limp with dew. Nothing another hour or two of solar power won’t handle.

Voila! Limpness eliminated! In fact, my laundry is now as stiff as RyKrisp. This is fine for my husband’s underwear if I’m mad at him, but makes it hard to bend the towels over the towel racks.

So I unpin the RyKrisp and crunch it into the basket in preparation for the penultimate step of playing Green Goddess Laundress—lugging everything up all those stairs again, and slipping the load into the dryer for 10 minutes on Air Fluff (no heat, but alas, no more nice fresh air scent either). Then the grand finale: Sorting. Folding. Putting everything away. (This step is the same whether you’re green with virtue, or green with envy at those wasting away happily in their bubbles of denial.)

And that is just the first load of laundry.

How much have I saved? According to a Terrapass report from 2006 (presumably data collection discontinued thereafter because too many research subjects threw themselves down the stairs), air-drying 183 loads of laundry a year saves 1,016 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions and $63.88, not counting the trips to the chiropractor. But good news–it does factor in the cost of what the report refers to as the “clothes horse!”

Which you definitely will not be if you insist on wearing RyKrisp.

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What greenery have you tried, for better or for worse?

 

March

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http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/documented-rights/exhibit/section4/detail/washington-march1.html

Heartsick. That’s how I feel on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed, “I have a dream.”

My dreams are less inspiring. Last night I dreamed that my husband, his parents, and I were hiking in the remote countryside. Amid the beauty, we chanced upon secret military preparations for an airstrike against Syria, planes and boats amassed for war. Even though we had not come to this pastoral setting as intruders or to make trouble, we realized that we were likely to get arrested. My husband and his parents were unafraid, wanting to make a stand against armed conflict. I just wanted to get away.

My bedtime reading before falling into the sleep that produced this dream consisted of two fine articles: Rhea St. Julien’s, a writing acquaintance whose work I admire, and Patricia Williams’, a legal scholar and Nation contributor. St. Julien writes about what it is like to field constant compliments about her young bi-racial daughter’s mocha skin and gold-flecked afro, the bright happy-talk obscuring penetrating issues about race that nobody wants to address. Williams writes about how Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager shot to death by George Zimmerman, somehow became the one on trial in a courtroom saturated by tropes about gallant white men guarding against presumed-to-be-dangerous black men.

George Zimmerman sought trouble, and got away with murder. Trayvon Martin stood his ground, and paid with his life. In my dream, we also stumble into trouble not of our making, and are seen as intruders who must be gotten rid of. Standing our ground, or fleeing—which is the wiser course? I’m lucky that I can escape, in my white skin, facing down the menace that dreams are made of simply by waking up.

As I write this, President Obama, the man who embodies my highest aspirations and hopes and who now looks to be leading us into another foolhardy Middle East conflict, is speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate King’s speech.

I want to stand with the President, but can’t, because of Syria and the whole mess of dashed dreams. I want to stand against his foreign policy, but won’t. I do not wish to abet those who have not literally castrated and strung up this black man, but who have conducted a political lynching by delegitimizing him, hamstringing his vision and policies, rendering him impotent through sheer vitriol and obstruction. Just as an unarmed black teenager was somehow transmogrified into someone who deserved to die, our mild-mannered, thoughtful, centrist president has been contorted into the dangerous, dark other who must be thwarted.

My parents were lifelong civil-rights activists who moved away from the South before my older brothers became infected by overt racism. They worked tirelessly in the North to end housing discrimination that was every bit as hateful as the commonplace usage of the N-word they’d fled.

My parents also staunchly opposed the Vietnam War. They knew what it was like to revere their President for his domestic vision, and to break with him on foreign policy. I wish they were here now, not only to see a man they would have loved become President, but also to teach me how to carry on when faith flags.

I suppose it is something—quite a lot, really—that an African-American man has been elected twice as President of these riven United States. Just as it is something that many people at least delight in rather than revile a little girl with brown skin and golden curls. But there is so much more that lurks beneath the surface—war in the bucolic landscape of my dream; disillusionment in my reverence for my President; deep undercurrents of white-hot hatred despite real progress on race.

I would like to march, to take a stand, but I do not. I would like to embrace the progress we’ve made, and work hard to fulfill promises not yet met. Instead I lament, I mourn, I turn away from the world in crisis to the bright, happy-talk world of hair care and inconsequential blogging. In doing so, I turn away from despair, but also from hope, from determination.

I need a rally, a March on My Dispirited Soul.

Subversive

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Peaches

In honor of today’s news that the California Supreme Court has rejected another last-ditch attempt to revive Proposition 8, I’m running something I wrote years ago paying tribute to an unlikely pioneer in gay rights.

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My bathroom houses a miniature library of periodicals, from the literary to the political to the lifestyle-you-wish-you-had-but-don’t. Sunset magazine is my favorite leisure reading for those private moments behind closed doors.

But not for the usual reasons.

My home improvement skills end with changing light bulbs.

I use the water shortage as an excuse to let my garden go to seed.

I am too poor for a kitchen makeover of $50,000.

And who has time to cook?

What I really love about Sunset is that it’s been quietly on the vanguard of gay rights for years.

Readers are just as likely to find Craig and Jeff and their golden retriever in the sun-washed kitchen of their lovingly restored farmhouse as they are Tom and Judy sipping chardonnay with guests on their new deck.

A recent issue features Janie and Virginia and their eco-friendly paint company.

As the reader drinks in room after room of sumptuous color in the photo spread of their Portland digs, it’s clear that these women are not just business partners.

While some fan the flames of bigotry and fear, Sunset quietly broadcasts that we are all the same.

Well, almost the same.

The couples in the glossy pictures just have more disposable income and fewer dust bunnies on their gleaming hardwood floors than the rest of us.

As I read in the privacy of my own bathroom, I think of how irrelevant it is what others do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

Besides, Craig and Jeff, Janie and Virginia, Tom and Judy probably aren’t doing much of anything. Like everybody else, they’re too exhausted from hauling dirt and lumber around, not to mention cleaning up after all those fabulous dinner parties.

Let’s hope the sun is setting on ignorance and intolerance.

Meanwhile, I’m going to grab my magazine and fantasize about a better life to come–new kitchen cabinets, the perfect peach, and love and justice for all.

 

Homeland Security

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UCSB graduation 2013With Janet Napolitano leaving her job as head of Homeland Security to become president of the UC system, I’ve found myself imagining her transition as metaphor. How great it would be if this move symbolized a rebalancing of priorities, with public education deemed as important as anti-terrorism spending in keeping us secure.

Just a few weeks ago, my daughter graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She began her college career the same day general strikes were held on every UC campus to oppose slashes in public funding and huge tuition hikes. Protesters were angry that the Master Plan, which ensures affordable, excellent education as a linchpin of California’s well-being, had been betrayed. Over the next four years students continued to pay more for less, in part because of the recession, but largely because of anti-tax sentiment throughout the country. Austerity fervor led to widespread divestment in the programs and institutions that ensure a prosperous and fair society. For my daughter’s California cohort, this meant fewer course offerings, larger classes, more time needed to graduate, and huge debt—if students could afford or find a place among the shrinking slots in higher education at all.

In my daughter’s senior year, Californians, rejecting anti-tax absolutism, passed Proposition 30, interrupting the perpetual cycle of budget cuts and escalating tuition.

When we arrived for graduation, the mood on campus was festive and hopeful. Naturally, I was proud of my daughter as she walked across the stage to receive her diploma. But I was just as proud of the visionaries who devised the Master Plan, and of voters who finally acted to stop its dismantling.

The dream of ensuring opportunity for every student has been tarnished. Maybe it will shine again as we realize that Homeland Security includes taxpayer commitment to public education. After all, it’s one of our best defenses.

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This piece appeared July 29, 2013, on KQED’s Perspectives.

 

The Verdict

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George Zimmerman Not Guilty

There are factions, there are groups, there are people that would want to take the law into their own hands as they perceive it or be vigilantes in some sense. . . they will always present a threat to George and to his family.

– Robert Zimmerman Jr., commenting on CNN following his brother George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the Trayvon Martin murder case

Irony is not dead. But Trayvon Martin is. And so is justice.