Letting Go of the Shore

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

See who is there with you and celebrate.

Excerpt from "Message of the Hopi Elders" 1

Losing your job? Hours? Benefits?

In Washington State’s capitol this week budget proposals included attacks on negotiated union contracts, across-the-board reductions in teacher pay, increased class sizes, and divide-and-conquer tactics through the elimination of salary step increases for experience and education with exceptions for math and science teachers.

Also this week, I learned that my job will be taken by another librarian who will be transferring from her school where the library program is being cut to half-time. There might be a half-time position for me elsewhere in the district, but I won’t know for another week or two. Stay tuned.

All because of the national/state/local budget cutting frenzies.

On Thursday’s program of Democracy Now! I listened to several people being interviewed about the state of the economy and our budget woes.2 I give you quotes from three DN! guests as a window onto directions some people think we should take. Sometimes I think we are clinging too tightly to our familiar, but corrupt, shores. Myself included. I’m beginning to think that maybe we should look to the collapsing economy with open arms and welcome the opportunity to dream a new dream, as suggested by 96-year-old Grace Lee Boggs (see below). The quotes that follow represent, for me, the gradations of letting go.

Letting Go of Corporate Welfare

CONGRESSMEMBER RAÚL GRIJALVA, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus: [In the People’s Budget] we put things on the table that are not part of the other budgets. We say that $30-$40 billion a year in subsidies to Big Oil and Big Gas need to be on the table, and cuts need to occur. We put on there the tax breaks that corporations have that take their jobs overseas; we put that on the table. We put military spending and the wars on the table for reductions. The difference is that fundamental, that we are putting items that are taxpayer-funded on the table that lobbyists and corporations do not allow to go on the table.

JUAN GONZALEZ: …isn’t it time, perhaps, for a lot of these young people to do what was done in the '60s with the Freedom Riders? And basically your state is really the new Alabama, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio is the new Bull Connor. Isn't it perhaps time to shut down Phoenix, to declare a Dream Summer in 2012 in Arizona and have tens of thousands of young Latinos converge on Arizona in the midst of a presidential election year and force the entire country to deal with this issue?

Letting Go of War

REVEREND JIM WALLIS: The framework in this debate is just wrong. The Republicans say, "We have no money, and we have to cut everything." Democrats say, "Well, yeah, but not that much." And then they fight back and forth and threaten government shutdowns. Really, it’s a matter of choices that we’re making.

They were talking about cutting $8.5 billion from low-income housing, but keeping the same amount of money, $8.4 billion, for deductions on second vacation homes—a different kind of housing. Those are choices. $2.5 billion for cutting home heating oil for poor people, and yet $2.5 billion for offshore drilling subsidies for oil companies—those are choices. Amy, they want to cut, in this budget, 10 million malaria bed nets that keep kids from dying, and yet not one line item of military spending. And so, this is really not scarcity; it’s choices.

They [Republicans and Tea Party] don’t talk about massive corporate subsidies, corporate welfare, if you will. They don’t talk about military spending, not at all. We spend more on the military—I won’t call it "defense"; it isn’t defense—more on the military than the rest of the world combined. And they can’t find anything to cut. So they’re not budget hawks, they’re budget hypocrites, is what they are.

And then, President Obama yesterday at least finally got off the sidelines and addressed the issue. And he laid out some foundations that could be good, if in fact—his most important line was: "They’re going to cut Head Start for kids, healthcare for seniors, and afford tax breaks for the wealthiest even more. That’s wrong, and it won’t happen when I’m president." That line, "That’s wrong, and it won’t happen while I’m the president," is the most important line of his speech. He’s going to have to get used to saying that, over and over and over again.

But Mr. Obama didn’t even mention the war in Afghanistan. The truth is, those of us—many of us have formed—we’re calling it a "circle of protection" around the most critical programs for the poorest people. And the Catholic bishops and World Vision, National Association of Evangelicals, everybody is involved in this. But the President, by withdrawing 5,000 troops from Afghanistan, could protect all the programs that we’re trying to protect. Not a word last night about the wars that have cost this nation so dearly in lives and now in the possibility of a moral budget here. So, neither side is dealing with the real issues here yet. The President began to last night, but I hope he begins to, in fact, act on what he began to say yesterday.

Letting Go of a Corrupt Society

JUAN GONZALEZ: Grace, you’re 96 years old. When you got your Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the president. He was someone who saw the need—the moral issues of political leadership, as well, and really sought to indict those who had created the crisis of the Depression. But now you’re saying that you believe that the real revolution is not a political one, but is a cultural one, or, as you’re saying, in terms of reshaping our relationships with each other. But how do you respond then to the millions of Americans who are out of jobs, who say that they may want to change their relationships to other people, but they also have to be able to make a living to support their families?

GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well, let’s—that business of making a living, I think, is what we need to challenge. I think that in Detroit, because of the devastation of deindustrialization, we recognize that we have to reimagine work, that we have to reimagine how we relate to one another. We have to see that the jobs that paid us income also turned us into consumers and robbed us of some of our creativity, and robbed us also of our obligations to one another and robbed us of our relationships to community, and that we have to restore those. And that’s part of what human beings have done through the ages, and that it’s a privilege to do that. It’s difficult, but it’s also a challenge….

…there are huge financial issues in Detroit, but you can’t look at a time like this mainly in terms of finances. You have to ask yourself, if 10,000 students are dropping out of school every year, creating a huge fiscal crisis, is it a financial question, or have the schools failed? And were they created at a time when people were thinking an industrial society and preparing children for a job in a society that no longer exists? And do we have to begin looking at our children and our educational system in terms of how children can become a part of the solving of our city’s problems, and not isolated in classrooms to be given information that they regurgitate so that they can get jobs which don’t exist?…

…And I think it’s very difficult for someone who doesn’t live in Detroit to say you can look at a vacant lot and, instead of seeing devastation, see hope, see the opportunity to grow your own food, see an opportunity to give young people a sense of process, that’s very difficult in the city, that the vacant lot represents the possibilities for a cultural revolution. It’s amazing how few Americans understand that, even though I think filmmakers and writers are coming to the city and trying to spread the word.

1. I do not know the source of this poem attributed to the Hopi Elders, but the sentiments expressed are most relevant to the times we are living.

2. For the entire Democracy Now program from which these quotes are taken see:
http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2011/4/14