Category Archives: U.S. Culture
Renewable Energy Advances Slowed by Current Data Center Planning
Fossil fuel corporations are now allied with high tech firms bent on building massive data centers worldwide. Following their model of constructing colossal centers to match talk of the multiple uses and tasks to which the data centers can be applied, the fledgling industry looks to fossil fuels to help double the energy supplied where they operate. One research institute estimates that 37% of new gas plant production over the last two years has been built to meet data center energy needs. The role of fossil fuels in the hyperscale of data center construction plans has led the U.S. to surpass China in gas plant expansion.
Data center construction and Artificial Intelligence has been marketed in the U.S. by an array of media sources and hucksters led by Open AI’s Sam Altman. In his testimony before a U.S. Congressional committee, Altman claimed A.I. techology will be able to address issues from climate change to curing cancer. Rapid development of the technology in the 2020’s has brought dizzying consequences in Silicon Valley and related hubs.
Visions of A.I. potential created by “prophets” like Altman grant it a quasi-religious status among A.I. technologues. A refugee from that community, the former Silicon Valley engineer Karen Hao now specializes in AI as a journalist based in Hong Kong. She explains, “There are people at OpenAI, and there are people in the broader AI industry, that believe that they are ultimately building something akin to an AI God, and that when they achieve this kind of AI God, it is going to be cataclysmically transformative for civilization”. Devoted to the pursuit of reaching AGI (AI on the level of human intelligence) these companies have found “ perfect cover for consolidating an extraordinary amount of unprecedented economic and political power, unprecedented land, energy, water and data resources and are undermining many pillars of democracy,” Hao observes. Hao now serves as a trustworthy authority reporting on the dangers of the AI development model pursued by Open AI, Microsoft, Google, Alphabet and Amazon.
In a nod to public concern for carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, Silicon Valley’s Alphabet and other firms argue that the artificial intelligence promised by the centers can make oil and gas extraction cheaper and more efficient. In another gesture to apppease, these firms emphasize the potential to increase energy supplies that will prevent black outs and lower electricity costs eventually. Even leftwing governments in Latin America have succumbed to the AI industry’s investment capital and compelling pitch of civilizational advance. Brazil, Chile and Uruguay elected the most progressive governments in South America which entered into AI data center agreements after taking power.
In spite of local opposition and an enviable record of producing 98% of its energy needs with renewable sources, a Uruguay partnership with Google will soon complete construction of the largest data center in the country. When fully operational the center will consume energy that could power 200,000 Uruguayan homes. The procedures to test and approve the project are considered incomplete and the studies of some areas sub-standard (from a May, 2026 Pulitzer Center for Journalism article).
The “bigger is better” bias behind the current data center planning is countered by Karen Hao’s wisdom based on her years of investigative reporting. She notes that today’s dominant AI systems are shaped by a particular model of innovation—one driven by scale, capital concentration, and resource intensity. An alternative approach is applying AI to focus on “specific, automated solutions to societal problems”. In short, Hao proposes investing more in task-specific AI systems.She cites the example of Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold which developed a system to predict protein folding that won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2024.
The Fossil Fuel Era is Over
In the year the U.S. elected a President well known to be a denier of the global climate crisis, the world had an important milestone to celebrate. Shortly before the gloom and doom brought on by the policies and pronouncements of the new administration, the cost of producing energy from capturing sunlight dropped below the cost of fossil fuel generated energy. This development surprised even the best informed energy experts. The Bloomberg journalist assigned to tracking solar power progress, Jenny Chase, told the New York Times in 2024, “I simply can’t believe where we are with solar.” She concluded, “There is genuinely a revolution happening.”
The revolution was happening worldwide. Apartment residents in Italy were hanging solar panels from their balconies The Times reported. In Pakistan people were laying panels on the ground to provide electricity. As the cost of solar generated power had dropped significantly below that of fossil fuels, Pakistani farmers were purchasing solar panels with no government subsidies. It was estimated that use of solar power in the Middle East would grow from 2% in 2023 to providing half of the oil-rich region’s energy needs by 2050. In the month before the U.S. election the International Renewable Energy Association declared the costs of solar power had dropped below half the cost of the cheapest fossil fuel alternative. Even the Kentucky Coal Mining Museum had installed solor panels with the expectation of cutting its costs by 10% a year.
The “revolution” Jenny Chase reports on has been celebrated by the leading U.S. anti-fossil fuel activist Bill McKibben in his book published last year Here Comes the Sun. A comprehensive survey of the worldwide growth of renewable energy use, McKibben revels in the progress of renewables in the U.S. “On election day 2024, California produced 100% of its energy from solar, wind and hydropower. By the end of ’24 the State had cut natural gas consumption 25% from the year before and by the spring of 2025 its use had dropped another 43%. “That’s the most hopeful statistic I’ve seen in 40 years of writing (around 20 books, ed.) about our predicament” he declares in his latest book.
More surprising than the CA progress is the fact that Texas now leads the U.S. in implementing renewables. In 2024 the State installed more solar panels than 39 states have ever installed. Last year TX expected to install more clean energy sources than CA and AZ combined. After TX survived a late spring heat wave with no blackouts of its power grid, The Houston Chronicle urged the State legislature to stop “strangling the wind and solar projects in the hope of reviving the natural gas market”. Equally shocking to observers of U.S. politics was the resignation prior to the ’24 election of ultra conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress. Would building in her District of the largest solar panel factory in the Western Hemisphere have had anything to with her stepping down?
Current wars in the Middle East and rising costs of fossil fuels propel the drive to make the transition to renewable energy sources of power. Eighty per cent of the world’s countries in the early 2020’s were net importers of fossil fuels. Their trade deficits and debt burdens largely resulted from dependence on fossil fuel imports. Non-profits, private enterprise and international agencies are now financing renewable projects on every continent. Cutting the costs of energy even in the poorest nations means everyone can benefit with installing renewables. Experts and officials with renewable experience emphasize the falling cost since the first solar cell was invented in 1954 in New Jersey and the first wind farm put up in the late 40’s. Ten years after The Economist British journal declared solar and wind to be by far the most expensive energy sources available the magazine published in 2024 a special issue “The Dawn of the Solar Age”. In a summary of the issue they stated, “An energy source that gets cheaper the more you use it markes a turning poin in industrial history.” Read the next Erasing-Borders blog post for examples of how poor nations are making the transition from fossil fuel and quickly benefiting.
Nearer to Gaza November 15, 2023
He couldn’t have been more than 17 seated across from a
middle aged man scrutinizing an Arabic newspaper
at the clothed table facing the
entrance “A snack” he responded quickly to my question about a
spinach/cheese roll wrapped in a delicate pastry dedicated to
protecting his mother from embarrassment with her timorous
perfectly constructed English “Two minutes” she assured me
holding up fingers as her husband made his appearance to
ask something before rushing back to the kitchen in an
effort to avoid messaging impatience I ambled over to
the tea sets displayed on a table under a Palestinian flag
spanning the length of the table and a t.v. tuned to Al-Jazeera
Arabic reporting on a protest at Democratic headquarters and
I said I hear Al-Jazeera English is very different from Al-Jazeera
Arabic the boy said he watches the Arabic only at the restaurant
for his mother the cook assistant to her husband and receptionist
because you know mumbling something “I don’t know if there’s
a difference” and I left wondering why the Arabic restaurant and
grocery also Palestinian owned and managed at the back of the
compound does not have a flag on the wall and whether it takes
courage.
What Congo Gets for Mining Its Cobalt
Before buying an electric vehicle you may want to consider the cost in human lives and environmental ruin at the first level of the EV battery’s supply chain. Congo (DRC) mines 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt and despite the claims of the hi tech corporations, the mining of its cobalt is destroying Congolese lives and their land. So goes the summary of Siddarth Kara’s findings reported in his 2023 book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. Kara pulls back the cover on cobalt mining laid by the beneficiaries of this rare, essential mineral’s supply chain.
Demand for cobalt accelerated with spiraling sales of smartphones, laptops, I Pads and Pods, etc. in the 90’s but the digging for cobalt rivals the U.S. gold rush with the demand created by EV manufacture in the new century. EV battery packs require over 1000 times more cobalt than smartphones. The forecast of how and where the demand will be met is tragically familiar.
Beginning with the trade in African slaves through satisfying the global demand for ivory followed by rubber, palm oil and in supplying strategic minerals for modern warfare, the systems of resource extraction initiated by Belgian King Leopold’s Congo Free State then restructured by the colony of Belgian Congo are now implemented by the neo-colony of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each system of governance has positioned Congo to contribute the preponderant share of critical resources to the global economy. Relevant to the mining of cobalt is the attempt of southern Congo’s Katanga Province to secede from the newly independent nation in 1960. Plotted and financed by Belgian copper mining interests, when the elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba defied foreign control of Congo’s resources in 1960 he was flown to Katanga to be tortured and assassinated by the Belgian military.
The Katangan copper mines with their byproduct of cobalt are now managed and partially owned by Chinese companies. As a side note, it is important to state that U.S. companies depend on China for the bulk of their cobalt supply. In 2016, a Chinese company purchased from a U.S. mining firm the largest copper/cobalt mine in Congo.
In his tours of cobalt mining in southern Congo, Kara focused his attention on the individual miners, haulers and washers of the “artisanal” mines. Supplying an estimated 30 percent of Congo’s annual cobalt production the ravages of artisanal miners’ lives and their environment are as appalling as they are hidden by the multi-leveled supply chain and white washing of the extraction practices. With little to no provision for their fair payment or miner safety, Congolese President Kabila urged citizens in the late 90’s to reap the bonanza brought about by the increasing global demand for cobalt.
But it was Kabila’s son Joseph whose mining deals with the Chinese to produce an essential element for EV’s brought about the unprecedented growth of artisanal mining by entire families. An elderly woman observed that the President and other Congolese who exploit villagers’ labor fabricated tales of riches to be made from cobalt and then sold what the diggers extracted at a price much higher than what the miner received. After recounting incidents of children being maimed or killed in mining accidents the grandmother concluded in despair, “this is what cobalt has done to Congolese children. They have no more future.”
In their quest for the highest grade cobalt, and a higher payment received, some artisanal miners dig tunnels in the mineral rich earth. With some tunnels up to thirty meters below the surface, the miners accept staggering risks in wagering their labor. Rarely are beams used in tunnels and while air blowers may be installed the dust stirred up and breathed is toxic and stifling. In his interviews with miners, Kara listened to gruesome accounts detailing the loss of life and limbs brought on by common artisanal practices.
Why would villagers dig for cobalt when fully aware of the danger and sure erosion of their health? There are simply no other opportunities to earn a cash income and contrary to the government’s pledge of free public education through middle school, fees must be paid to the school to employ a teacher and enroll a child. The goal of providing their children an education was shared with Kara by many of the artisanal miners.
For a nation endowed with abundant sought after resources, it is shocking that the national budget cannot meet the bill for free education in the primary grades. Kara cites that the entire 2021 national budget totaled $7.2 billion, comparable to that of the State of Idaho with a population one fiftieth the number of Congolese. The budget increased very little from 2019-21 in spite of the 100 percent increase in the global price for cobalt. Clearly the structure of Congolese resource extraction supplies only a few nationals with massive wealth. There has been no accounting for the billions paid by the Chinese for southern Congo’s mines and processing plants during the administrations of the Kabilas, father and son.
Kara describes how the structure of corruption benefiting the Congolese elite is matched by the foreign companies’ rigged accounting and white washing of the cobalt mining practices. In exposing the truth of what he witnessed in artisanal mining of cobalt, Kara’s book offers dramatic evidence to be used in lawsuits and reform movements deployed to save Congolese lives and enhance the country’s future.
are “trafficked” by entrepreneurs and soldiers
to work in the mines.
From a Congolese child’s digging of rocks laden with cobalt to the battery in our home computer, Kindle and electric vehicle is a circuitous route. As Kara writes, “The realities (of the mining, ed.) are hidden behind numerous layers of multinational supply chains that serve to erode accountability”. On parting with his translator in Congo after a visit, Kara asked what he would like him to write. The man replied, “Please tell the people in your country, a child in the Congo dies every day so that they can plug in their phones.”
********************** *************************
This book review is posted in recognition of Congo Week October 15-21, 2023. Congo Week has been organized anually for more than a decade to “break the silence” on the ongoing injustices of the extraction of Congo’s vast resources. For more information on Congo Week and on Congo in general go to friendsofthecongo.org. For more on cobalt mining in the country and court cases brought against its practices do a search for more posts on the topic at the blog lokoleyacongo.org .
Building Community For a New World
There were networks of trade that fed the Native American people in the United States long before the arrival of the first European settlers. Their corn, a staple for them, came from the South, Mexico and Guatemala, before they learned to grow the crops for themselves. Several varieties of bean imported from the South were also added to their diets. The hunter gatherer people of the U.S. imported from the same areas cacao, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, and the tomato. And tobacco was introduced along with the food crops.
According to the theories of the late Russian geneticist N.I. Vavilov, most of the world’s basic food plants originated in a relatively few places on the planet, most of them close to the equator. Experts in this field call these places Vavilov Centers to commemorate their importance to our world.
The diets of the first European settlers on the Atlantic coast benefited greatly from the well established trade networks with the South. Had they been restricted to consumption of what were native plants only, they would have had to make do with the sunflower, blueberries, cranberries and the Jerusalem artichoke. Development of trade between the settlers and the “Old World” sparked cultivation of almonds, carrots, flax, hemp, lentil, onion, peas and wheat from Central Asia. Asparagus, beets, hops, lettuce and olives originated in the Mediterranean. The settlers’ tastes governed which of the plants were favored and cultivated more widely. “American cuisine” largely relied on what were “non-native” crops.
In the last 50 years diets in the U.S. have been transformed not by imports of new crops so much as by the addition of new dishes introduced by immigrants to the country. Mexican restaurants and recipes have swept the country. When I returned from a year in Guadalajara in 1980 I had to search for a Mexican restaurant in U.S. cities I visited. Today our favorite “neighborhood” take out meals in Kansas City are from a Mexican restaurant and a Palestinian restaurant/grocery store less than two miles from home. Hummus and the fresh pita bread have become staples of my diet. A primary attraction of most U.S. urban centers today is the variety of ethnic restaurants opened by immigrant families across the country.
For many residents of and visitors to our urban centers the diversity of ethnic foods offered is part of the appeal. Any major city stages an international feast every night. In some venues the food is accompanied by music and/or dance enhancing the flavors of the culture. Beyond the food, music and art work decor, there is, however, little exposure to the culture. In most restaurants, we eat at separate tables. That might change though.
Someone asked Myles Horton at the beginning of the Civil Rights era how he was able to get whites and black residents of the South to meet and learn together at the Highlander Center. Horton quickly replied, “First, you set the table; then you call everyone to dinner and serve the hot meal.” We can imagine one long table for everyone gathered at Highlander. This story reminds me of my own experience in New York City in the mid-1960’s. One of the most popular restaurants in Manhattan’s Little Italy was Mama Leone’s. You usually had to wait for places to open up but you were seated at one of the two or three long tables with strangers already enjoying their pasta fagioli and lasagna. I never left the place without a happy stomach and a full spirit.
May we all find places in the future where new dishes are enjoyed and the tables are long. And may the delight in sharing a meal with people who are strangers lead to thanksgiving for and celebration of the diversity of food and cultures in our lands today.
In Praise of Small Town Kansas
Since moving to Kansas City six years ago, my identity as a city boy, an urbanite, has taken on new meaning. We now live three hours from the small town of Neodesha, KS, where my partner spent twenty plus years before our marriage. I have gotten to know some of her long time friends and like all of them a lot. They live in small towns of southeast Kansas like Chanute, Coffeyville, Yates Center, Fredonia and Climax and I have enjoyed thinking about what if anything makes them different from the big city residents like myself
The observation that there is a greater appreciation of the value of community in small towns I accept as true but inadequate. Spending a recent weekend on a Lake near the town of Emporia, KS yielded for me a better understanding of what community in a small town feels like. And it was a pleasure to experience. Almost all those present resided in a small town of the region. Some still lived in the town of their birth, some nearby in the state college town of Emporia.
During the early decades of the 20th century, William Allen White’s opinion pieces in Emporia’s newspaper were read nation wide. He became famous as the voice of small town residents in the “heartland of America”, People in the big cities, and the nation’s capital in particular, saw him as a kind of oracle, a modern day sage expounding on the enduring values of what made the U.S. a “great” nation. The origin of those values he attributed to the community life that grows in small towns across the Midwestern United States.
The weekend festivities at the Lake began with a rousing jam session Friday night where the musicians joined around the lead guitars of Kenny and Jeff, both leaders of popular regional bands thirty or forty years ago. Two or three newcomers to the “shrimp boil” weekend joined to sing or play some fiery rock-a-billy” and blues, including a few songs written by the musicians themselves.
The harmonica player in Jeff’s band and his wife, who now live on 40 acres of woods on the outskirts of Neodesha remain among Kate’s best friends. Though not herself a musician, Kate has been a fan of the bands represented at the “Shrimp Boil” since moving to southeast Kansas. Later in the weekend I was amused to learn that “Uncle Vance” who trucked the seafood up from the Alabama Gulf Coast had been an eager fan of hers forty years ago.
The fact no one needed a ticket to be present either for the jam night or Saturday, when one of Kansas City’s favorite rock-a-billy bands played, added to the joy, ambience and charm of the weekend. Most of the Lake’s families who attended did bring a dish and all were displayed on a crammed L shaped table arrangement. Uncle Vance supervised the preparation of a delicious gumbo soup made with the shrimp, mussels, crabs, scallops. For me the melt in your mouth scallop was the eating highlight.
There seemed to be an instant community created at the “shrimp boil” by the seafood smorgasbord, the music that summoned us all to “let the good times roll” and the lifelong relationships renewed and restored by the gathering. It had the feel of a family reunion which all present had looked forward to attending. People were at their best: not a despairing word, not an offensive gesture, not a cutting remark, no wrestling for the limelight. William Allen White would have been proud.
I returned to Kansas City assured that human beings are social creatures who thrive in community. We are made for life in communities. Whether it be a community of musicians, a church congregation, a union local, a small town. We are most productive, we are more creative and satisfied when we submerge our personal interests to participate in a group. For many people in this heavily urbanized country, the small town they live in or were raised in is that “something bigger than ourselves” which transmits the values they seek to defend and represent.
Life in a small town encourages a panoply of values, sometimes conflicting and all seen at risk by some of the residents and former residents. There is first the identity of belonging to a community created by geographic isolation. Relationships with persons who hail from the same town endure often in spite of age, class and vocational differences. One honors and elevates one’s own existence through reminiscencing about shared experience and the persons, alive and dead, whose lives continue to intersect with our own. Each conversation with persons of the community, after a prolonged absence or not, reinforces our recognition of the sacred quality of relationships and our desire to preserve them against threats both perceived and real.
That commitment to preserving the community and the relationships rooted there means once a community member always a community member. Unfortunate and at a disadvantage is the politican who cannot announce his or her candidacy in the community which nurtured them. How distressing it is, though, whenever politicans twist and distort small town values to stoke fear and division. Recent history of the U.S. proves there is nothing good, whether it be faith in a loving God, the values fostered by life in a small town, democratic ideals expressed in our founding documents, nothing good that cannot be used for the pursuit of self interest and power. Loyalty to a community’s way of life becomes easily transformed into opposition to the changes required by the climate crisis, opposition to acceptance of migrants fleeing from injustice and violence, or opposition to the truth of the nation’s oppression and cruelty. But rather than close this blog on a somber note, let’s consider some lines written for books or articles by the sage of Emporia, KS William Allen White.
“Peace without justice is tyranny”
“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others”
“Any appeasement of tyranny is treason.”
“My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.” (Prior to passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote)
Is Socialism No Longer a “Dirty Word” in the U.S.?
If a health care system which serves all residents and citizens
If free quality education for all children from pre school through university
If the public ownership of all natural resources essential for human life – water, power, and natural gas
If foremost priority in public expenditure is given to improved systems serving citizens and residents and not to securing the control of resources in other nations
If an economy driven by production for human consumption and use and not the production of weaponry
If international collaboration rather than competition in meeting global crises: climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation, and pandemics
If progress toward making one or more of these aims our reality requires adopting our own form of socialist rule in the U.S., then I am all for it.
The increasing U.S. rule by a corporate and financial elite supported by the knee-jerk charge that a policy is “socialism” serves to defend a flagrantly unjust and unsustainable status quo. Does making some dramatic changes in this country’s economic and political systems necessitate serious consideration of socialist solutions? Yes, it does and yes it will. Evidence mounts that in European nations with some mix of socialist and capitalist economic policies the people are healthier and happier and increasingly more financially secure than here.
Those nations also prove that adopting a form of socialism does not require authoritarian rule and loss of individual freedoms as most people in this nation seem to think. The youth in this country are more aware than most adults that making socialism a “bugaboo”, as one commentator recently called it, serves only the small minority who gorge on profiting from the status quo. It now appears more likely that the charge of “socialism” assigned universal health care and similar programs by conservatives and some liberals is now approaching its expiration date. As a hold over from the Cold War propaganda of the 50’s, increased allocations for an already bloated budget for defense (and the corporations subsidized by the defense budget) at the expense of increased budgeting for health care, education and public utilities has begun to lose force in shaping public opinion. At the same time, we in this country remain under the sway of an extreme form of capitalist economics that subverts the aims of the majority who work more and die earlier year by year.
As we consider the consequences of ignoring and now in some states banning discussions of race and the history of white supremacy in classrooms, it would be helpful to look at how discussion of contemporary examples of socialist and capitalist economic strategies have also been largely ignored in our schools. That someone is now and has been able for many years to graduate from a U.S. secondary education with the conviction that only socialism leads to authoritarian rule is not by chance. To ignore completely the history of capitalist Germany’s descent into barbarous, genocidal rule in the last century is to avoid by intention serious critique of our form of capitalism which now threatens the country’s survival as a democracy. That many of Germany’s leading corporations and members of the economic elite supported the Nazi regime is still kept secret from most of our students throughout their education.
But I would be renouncing my call as a Christian to neglect mention of some personal and social developments of our time that many U.S. Christians and others ignore. First, on the personal level there is an even more precipitous decline in church attendance and membership in leading Western democracies, such as Germany, than in this nation. At the same time, the China Christian Council of what we identify as “godless” Communist China has experienced growth that would be the envy of “mega-churches” in the U.S. When restrictions were lifted in the early 1980’s by the Communist Party and Chinese state, the China Christian Council as the unified Protestant Church and the heir of the work of pre-1949 missionaries has been hard pressed to build enough churches and seminaries to keep up with the rising number of Christians in China.
On the social plane, is it not time for Christians who oppose universal health care in the world’s richest nation to reconsider their position in the light of Jesus’ example? How can followers of the healer and advocate for the poor favor an economic system driven by one’s own interest over an economic and political system based on “from each according to his/her abilities to each according to their needs”. It is now time to ensure that the mischaracterization of socialism as inherently or practically against faith in a higher power be ruled out of our public policy discussions. To continue to equate socialism with either authoritarian or godless rule is to make an argument founded on lies and fear. How many of the NATO members which have implemented social welfare policies many persons here characterize as socialist have banned religion or severely restricted public religious activity?
How do so many U.S. Christians justify the ethical principles of many members of our corporate/financial ruling elite? Let me single out the example of our former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan whose ethics were shaped by the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. The system of thought condemns altruistic behavior and elevates self interest as the fundamental principle of a free society. Through his forties, Greenspan contributed articles to the Objectivist movement’s newsletter in the 60’s and remained close to Rand until her death. As an upper class refugee from the deprivations of the early years of the Soviet Union, Rand developed a philosophy of life that extolled the extreme individualistic ethics of capitalism. Greenspan’s background as a devoted Rank acolyte did not hinder his rise to prominence in service of the U.S. economy, deregulation of the financial industries and free market trade policies.
That the influence of a declared socialist Senator from Vermont has risen significantly and that so many of our country’s youth now condemn the unfettered capitalist economy in the U.S. can be attributed to the crises that overwhelm our country today. Not having experienced the fear mongering of the Cold War they perceive lame anti-socialist policy arguments rooted in corporate domination of our political discourse as impeding the nation’s progress in eliminating fossil fuel production, the priority of spending for defense, criminal justice practices which divide white workers from workers of color, and fierce opposition to union and other organizing to make change. Will we in the U.S. progress toward the implementation of a mixture of socialist and capitalist policies in our political economy? Yes, we will, provided our rule by and for the people survives and defeats the current onslaught making voting for many persons harder in defense of a grotesquely unequal and unjust status quo.
What Hawaii Had to Teach Us in Our Visit
During my second visit on the “Big Island” of Hawai’i, in the checkout line at the Malama Market in Honoka’a the cashier addressed me as “Uncle”. It was not the first time a young person had honored me with this traditional Hawaiian sign of respect. But as a reminder that wearing a face mask was still required in the grocery store, it made a deeper impression. I retrieved a mask from my back pocket and put it on before removing the items from my basket. After I thanked the young woman for this gentle nudge, my gratitude grew. Like the colorful bird species, the abundant growth of mango, papaya and other tropical fruits and trees, this custom of calling an elder “auntie” or “uncle” had captured and filled me.
My delight had nothing to do with removing my identity as a “foreigner”. I would always remain a “haole” in the land and culture of the native Hawaiian. It was like the customary welcoming to Hawaii another kind of lei showing that the native traditions include the embrace of persons wherever they come from. You cannot spend a day on the Island of Hawai’i without the recognition that you are not on the North American continent. And that you are and will forever be a “haole”.
Having returned to Kansas City, I am even more grateful for our friends who are natives of the “Big Island” and whose hospitality falls on us like the soft rain of the rainforest surrounding their birthplaces near Honoka’a. I understand better the pride displayed by the son of our closest Hawaiian friend who as a three or four year old, though born in California, protested to my wife Kate, “I am not an American, am I Mom? I’m Hawaiian.”
I also now appreciate more our role as “hanai” or “adopted” grandparents of this child now preparing for college on the “mainland”. When my wife introduced ourselves at a Sunday worship service in Honoka’a as Gabriel’s “hanai” grandparents, expressions of approval were quietly uttered by the congregation. From now on, all our efforts to encourage and support the young man’s growth will be not just out of love for him but will also stem from the desire to honor the Hawaiian tradition and our identity as his “hanai” grandparents.
How sad and unfortunate that so many of our would be “leaders” in the mainland U.S. portray the nation’s increasing population of foreign born persons as a loss for the heirs of white settlers. How could someone be persuaded to view immigrants as posing a threat when their contributions are so many and so obvious? Against all the white supremacist theories and arguments we can all learn from and enjoy the embrace of other cultures in the history, language and customs of native Hawaiians.
As an example, there is much more to the meaning of “aloha” than our “hello” and “good bye”. After my recent visit, I now associate the Hawaiian language’s “aloha” with the Indian custom of greeting and leave taking with “namaste”. My favored interpretation of that Hindu greeting and leave taking is “the divine in me recognizes the divine in you”.
The Rivers of Soul Music
“I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” – Langston Hughes “Rivers”
As we in the U.S. grope to imagine becoming a nation respecting, honoring and celebrating its multi-ethnic heritage, music can help us find some encouragement and direction. An argument can be made that the most powerful arm of U.S. culture exported worldwide has grown from its body of music.
This year’s release of the music documentary Summer of Soul bolsters our hope that the day of multi-ethnic reconciliation and embrace may still come. It’s hard to imagine a sane human being claiming the U.S. as a white nation after viewing this masterful survey of 1960’s black popular music. Stunning footage of performances at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival inspired the film and will continue to inspire a new vision of ethnic harmony for the country’s future.
Throughout the 60’s Harlem could be described as a community divided by the turmoil of radical change demanded by its leaders. Malcolm X and not Rev. Dr. King carried more credibility and weight among Harlem’s change makers when the Cultural Feastival was organized. Not far from the Harlem Park where the concerts took place, a demented black woman had stabbed Dr. King in the chest. “If I had sneezed”, Dr. King proclaimed in later speeches, “I would not be with you here today”. A doctor measured the wound as a few millimeters from the heart. In 1969, eleven years after the attempted assassination, Harlem’s cultural and political activists were even more divided.
Featuring a staggering assembly of musical styles and talent, Summer of Soul represented the largest gathering of “Negroes” many in the audience had ever experienced. Most viewers, myself included, will be introduced by the film to the gospel choir “The Edwin Hawkins Singers” led by a young woman who looks like she could have just left a southern field after a hard work day. Their rendition of “Oh Happy Day” had me feel like the heavens were opening up. That segment was followed by thirty year old Mavis Staples singing the first verse of “Precious Lord” at the request of Dr. King’s favorite singer Mahalia Jackson.
An instructive footnote added by the film’s debut director Questlove tells us Roebuck Staples, “Pops” to the Staple sisters, was picking cotton in Mississippi when he taught himself the guitar. With daughter Mavis Staples’ insightful commentary on what the concert event meant to her and to the Harlem community interspersed with the incomparable depth of her singing, Mavis Staples was the headliner of the documentary for this viewer.
Still singing powerfully at age 82, her influence on the current and future history of U.S. music is unfathomable. Bob Dylan in a recent magazine interview reminisced about listening to Mavis on his 45 rpm. turntable as a high schooler. It is noteworthy that in Hibbing, Minnesota where he grew up very few “Negroes” lived or were even seen. Dylan told the interviewer he had his first crush on Mavis Staples.
As for U.S. black music’s impact on whites in the south, B.B. King’s singing of “Why I Sing the Blues” takes us back to the Alabama-born Big Mama Thornton. Her recording of “Hound Dog” when covered by Elvis Presley at Memphis’ Sun Studio sent his career to the stars and became his signature number in the superstar’s pure rock ‘n roll years.
Within a year of the “Hound Dog” release I saw Elvis perform in Fort Wayne, IN. Gaining access to his dressing room with the friend whose father wrote up the event for the Indianapolis News, it was my first encounter with fame and talent. That is until I experienced the incandescent explosion of energy and joy in a performance of Jackie Wilson at the Apollo Theater in 1965.
A black high school senior in Paterson NJ invited me to accompany him that night, the first of a few concerts at the legendary Harlem auditorium where I attended a few concerts in the mid-1960’s. After visiting Stanley’s relatives in a spacious ground floor Harlem apartment, undoubtedly the first white person not a landlord or government agent to enter there, my friend bought our tickets for the middle of the first balcony. When Jackie Wilson brought out the cape, red on one side and black on the other, and performed “Your Love is Lifting Me Higher” for over a half hour women swarmed to the stage below us. No genre of musical performance in my lifetime has ever topped it. Van Morrison’s hit “What Jackie Wilson Said” testifies to Wilson’s enduring influence on U.S. pop music.
As does the film’s segment of Sly and the Family Stone on “I Want to Take You Higher”. One of the “talking heads” taped for the documentary speaks of Sly Stone breaking black music’s color barrier by including a white drummer and singers in his band. Sly wanted to help build the groundwork for a new society with his hit “Everyday People”, another performance highlight of Summer of Soul. The potential merger of blacks’ hunger for social change with the boomer generation’s search for alternatives to the degraded values of capitalist America reached a kind of apotheosis with the black group Fifth Dimension. Their leader recounts finally getting in to see “Hair” at a Broadway theater and being blown away by the cast’s singing of “Aquarius” and “Let the Sunshine In”. The Fifth Dimension’s melding of the two songs remained number one on the hit parade for weeks and became the top hit of 1969.
Although Dr. King’s disciple and the founder of the Operation Breadbasket movement Rev. Jesse Jackson took over the stage to introduce Mavis and Mahalia, it was the prophetic voice of Nina Simone who interpreted
most forcefully the political context of the Harlem Cultural Festival. Trained as a classical pianist of great promise, Simone took the stage with the ziggaraut-like hair styling and large gold hoop earrings of an African princess and began singing a fierce “Backlash Blues”. It reminded her audience that white America was preparing for its suppression of the Festival’s vision and hope with California’s 1967 election of Governor Ronald Reagan.
“Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash
Just who do you think I am?
You raise my taxes, freeze my wages
And send my son to Vietnam”
Nina Simone sang and the tenor of her song’s hope struck a new and different note:
“But the world is big
Big and bright and round
And it’s full of folks like me
Who are black, yellow, beige and brown”
The song concludes with the promise that it would be Mr. Backlash who some day would be the one singing the blues.
It is not surprising that the two lead movie reviewers of the New York Times placed Summer of Soul at the top of their consensus choices of the ten best movies of 2021. They wrote, “the film is more than a time capsule: It’s a history lesson and an argument for why art matters — and what it can do — in times of conflict and anxiety.” You can watch the film on the streaming service of Hulu which offers a thirty day free trial without ads.
Feeding the Wolf
In a blog dedicated to “erasing borders” I want to address what force or forces serve to defend and strengthen national borders and border enforcement in the world. Now is the time because increased migration of threatened people across borders, “free trade” agreements, new technologies, and more travel (among other factors) all call for easing traffic across borders.
It is a confounding paradox for citizens of the U.S., especially for those born in the country with a single cultural identity, to delight in being surrounded by persons of other cultures while the politics and political economy of the country fosters suspicion and enmity of other nations and cultures. How could it be that a nation whose ideal self image, the ideal we grew accustomed to celebrating in our lives and in the life of the nation, has been that of a country leading in welcoming immigrants, how could it be that the same nation remains deadlocked on immigration reform for 35 years and focuses on combatting one enemy overseas after another?
Any attempt at a satisfactory answer to this question must consider some indisputable facts too long ignored. For anyone following the news casually, regardless of the news source in this country, we are aware of the U.S. emphasis on national defense and security. From the Defense Department budget, to television ads selling insurance for veterans, to conversations with those whose loved one is serving in the military, to statistics on the U.S. military’s footprint in over 80 other countries, we know this country is exceptional in equating military might with power and security.
What we don’t know and seldom talk about in our public forums is the effects on our loftiest ideals of our emphasis on preparation for war and conflict. What we also don’t think or talk about much in our civil dialog is the interaction between production of weaponry and the health of our economy.
Histories of California’s economy all point to the manufacture of aircraft as leading the way in the State’s growth. Its long Pacific sea shore has seen the rise of some of the largest and most important military bases during and following WW II. When a few bases were closed in the 90’s, and major aircraft production sites shut down, there was deep concern about what would replace them in the economies of the local communities and the State as a whole. Today the strength of California’s economy should assure us that a transition from an economy relying on defense expenditures can benefit a state’s population
Following the “Great War”, as many in the U.S. now term WW II, the late Prof. Seymour Melman devoted his research and writing to bringing to light the potential boost of the national economy with a conversion from defense production to production of “things that make for peace”. Despite his sterling credentials as a Columbia PhD in economics and his teaching at the same university until 2003, there has been little support for Melman’s views except among left wing intellectuals and peace organizations. He continues to be a “voice crying in the wilderness” in the political and economic discussion in this country.
Yet Melman’s case for such a conversion of the U.S. economy is more relevant today than ever. In a 1990 interview with journalist Bill Moyers, Melman noted “there’s no mystery in the shabby railroads, the broken bridges, the unpaved streets, the wrecked buildings, the absence of adequate housing, the aging character of the industrial equipment.” There is today more decline in U.S. manufacture of goods used by or benefiting individual consumers. With 46 per cent of U.S. production equipment devoted to manufacture of weaponry in the mid-1980’s, Melman urged us to consider the impact on employment in manufacturing, on industrial research and development, on worker productivity and on wages among other measures of a healthy economy.
In highlighting the economic effects of this country’s production of goods individuals do not consume, Melman’s views also raise questions about the effect of arms production and sales on U.S. policies as a superpower. How do arms sales abroad, we accounted for 37 % of the world total sales in 2020, affect our foreign policy? What about the influence of the arms industries (the Lockheeds, Raytheons, General Dynamics, etc.) on the military establishment strategies and our perpetual wars? What are the costs to the nation’s ideals and self image of selling vastly more weaponry than any other nation in the world? Finally and most urgently in our time, how does our focus on defense and arms production handicap our capacity to lead in renewable energy production and innovation?
While controversy rages in our politics over what to do about the climate crisis worldwide, the response to a global pandemic, and how to move toward a healthy multi-racial society there is little conflict in our politics on defense and security issues. Consensus of the two parties on expanding our military and waging war for international conflict resolution seems guaranteed.
A few years ago a Cherokee Indian fable was widely shared. A wise grandfather advises his grandson that there are two wolves inside all of us. One of the wolves is characterized by anger and fear and the other wolf is accepting and loving. The two wolves fight within each of us. So the grandson asks which wolf finally wins and the grandfather replies, “The one you feed will win”. Despite its lofty ideals and grand achievement in the past, does anyone doubt which wolf the U.S. continues to feed today? What will be the consequences for the nation if the wrong wolf wins the battle within us? What will be the consequences for the world?
Erasing Borders 