An Open Letter to the Seattle Times

To the editors, the Times:

I will let Mr. Eaton speak for himself:

“We navigate our way uncomfortably among teenagers who occupy Westlake Park, hanging out with their pit bulls, backpacks and skateboards, lately with their babies, freely smoking their now-legal marijuana. With utter dismay we read the stories of random violence…

“Tragically, fear may lead to resentment of the poor and the helpless.”

Did none of you see the dissonance there?

I value the chance to read points of view different from my own in the Seattle Times, which is good, since you run so many of them. (Go on, print a pro-union piece, I dare you.)

But when you run a piece so obviously lacking in thought, it reflects poorly on the quality of the Times. Here’s a man whose heart is plainly in the right place, and yet is, with equal plainness, falling victim to one of the problems he’s deploring. I’ll give Mr. Eaton the benefit of the doubt and assume that no one pointed out the tinge of hypocrisy in his argument. But since you were presumably editing the piece and should have pointed out exactly that, this does mean that I can’t give you the benefit of the doubt.

Mr. Eaton again:

“I have no expertise in these complicated matters, only a love for this city, a care for the poor and a belief in the power of community… Maybe we start with the trashed flowerpot in front of Macy’s, the gum spots all over our streets or the camped-out teenagers; we begin with the little things.”

When a man can write that he “care[s] for the poor” and then, just a few paragraphs later, puts homeless teens on the level of trashed flowerpots and used chewing gum—when a man can profess love for his fellow humans and then calls them “things” in the next breath—I must be deeply skeptical of his words. And I must be even more skeptical of a newspaper which finds such words worth printing.

Sincerely,

Paul Christiansen

[Addendum: many readers of the editorial will observe other gaping flaws. I elected to stick to a single point in the letter itself, following Lincoln’s policy of giving ground on secondary issues while standing firm and prevailing on the crucial point. I do see Eaton’s lack of compassion, disguised as it is in compassionate language, as the key point. Any number of other issues could be raised with his flawed argument, however:

Conviction

The election is done; but it has not solved all our problems. Martin King said, in his classic speech “A Time to Break Silence,” “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Going by Dr. King’s formula, the United States is still dying. President Obama is treating symptoms of that illness (such as abuses of health and some legal rights) while not treating causes (abuses of wealth and power). It would dismay Dr. King to see the first Black president doing so, but it might not surprise him.

In fact the whole political left is largely focused on symptoms, and each group has picked one and made it their hill to die on. There is little agreement about what should take priority (other than beating Republicans). In fact the left—or liberals—or progressives—can’t even agree on what to call themselves. And in such tight financial times, the left plunges into what I call “liberal cannibalism”—fighting over who gets the last crumbs of the pie, rather than asking what happened the pie as a whole. The result, as W. B. Yeats put it, is that “The falcon cannot find the falconer./Things fall apart; the center cannot hold… The best lack all conviction, and the worst /Are full of passionate intensity.”

Quakers are far from immune. I have watched Friends leave meetings, and the Society, because of divisions over which worthy cause is worthiest. The result, in my part of Quakerism, at least, is that Friends have embraced a wide range of causes, but generally those causes are lifted up by individual Friends, or by individual meetings. This is to be expected: one of the most central Quaker tenets is “What canst thou say?” We are a faith that puts great faith in individuals. But the down side of “What canst thou say?” is that there has been less of “What can we say?” Meetings and Yearly Meetings are slower to take action. And may I point out that while minutes do indeed say something, they do not by themselves do anything? Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Quakers minuted opposition to slavery in 1688. A century later, Philadelphia finally banned slavery among its members.

So even we Friends can lack all conviction.

But while virtually all liberals wail and moan and wring their hands over priorities, we Quakers have an alternative. We know where to go to find the answers: George Fox called it “Living in the life and power.” We have over us the ultimate authority. When it comes to authority we accept no substitutes; only the Spirit will do. We do not even always listen to each other, after all. Sometimes we do need to stand aside and let the Meeting go a way we wouldn’t choose, but this is acceptable as long as we do find and follow the leadings of the Light.

When we do… ah, what we can do then!

So we do not need to stand in bafflement at all the different threats and causes, trying to triage an entire civilization. We can instead discern what the Spirit says we should do, and then move with true conviction towards the holy goal.

I don’t think this would mean abandoning any causes near to our hearts. There is so much overlap, after all: gay rights matter for immigrants because some immigrants are gay, and environmental damage so often follows poverty and war, and so on. After all, don’t our testimonies overlap? There’s no real line between Peace and Equality, is there? And to truly live up to Integrity we have to be both peaceful and equal. Moreover, everywhere I look, I see one core problem: abuse of power. Confront abuse of power in every form, and that’s the first step to social justice, no matter which form of abuse is dealt with first. But I also suspect that we may not be called to a particular agenda, but to a particular way. A deep way, a difficult way, even a dangerous way, but a way sure and true. The manner of Friends may come to mean not what we all do, but how we all do it. If we all lived so deep in the Spirit, that might well be enough.

This is just my guess, though. After all, we must come together and discern our way. But we can do this. To come back to Yeats’ poem again, we are the falcons who know how to find the falconer. To return to King’s speech, it is our time to break our silence. We may not see the path clearly, but we can follow the Light in faith, and trust that we are well on our way.

 

The Last Judgment of the USA

Then the people of the United States were brought before Christ, and were divided in two, the sheep and the goats, and the goats were placed at his left hand. And he said to them, “You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and you did not cure me, in prison and you did not visit me.” And they all answered, “When was this precisely, Lord?”

And he told them:

“Whenever you drove past East St. Louis or around Watts, and did not stop; whenever you passed over Gary or avoided the South Side; whenever you ignored Baltimore or the Bronx, stayed away from Philly’s heart, fled DC at nightfall.

Palliatives

Every morning I climb out of bed, pull on some clothes, and fire up my computer. I check my email first — I work online, and keep in touch with my Quaker business via email, so this is a must. After that, I usually skip over to the Seattle Times website, to see what a mainstream newspaper has to say about the headlines; then I visit my favorite liberal/radical sites: AlterNet, for that note of hysteria; Feministing, to keep my white middle-class male self in line; and finally Sociological Images, to teach myself how to see the world with clearer eyes. As I mentioned earlier, I check the National Hurricane Center’s website during storm season.

Then I read the comics.

Self-Defense

There’s been talk about self-defense in American political/social discourse all my life. It has been a limited talk, however, dominated by limited ideas.

Usually when we talk about self-defense, we are referring to defense of one’s person, family, or property against theft or assault. There is a second and broader strand of “self-defense” talk, concerning the defense of a country, usually either the United States or Israel. Finally people speak of defending rights.

What all these usually imply or assume is that there are evil people who would harm us in a variety of ways, and that the natural recourse of good and decent people is to defend themselves violently. Almost all references to “self-defense” that I can think of regard a violent response to a violent affront. Usually there is some connection to the Second Amendment or to the military. Handguns come up frequently. The speakers usually identify as conservative.

Yet there is a far broader definition of self-defense that is equally valid, and far broader means of self-defense that just the violent resort. (I will not say “last resort,” for when the violent resort is available, it is almost never used last.)

A Conservative Economy

In the last entry I examined the “shock doctrine,” in Naomi Klein’s phrase, as a method of perhaps explaining some recent actions and behaviors by people in power. My conclusion was that shock doctrine/disaster capitalism is an attempt at what I call “neoliberal sustainability”: their methods often unleash disaster on nations following their principles, and they then profit from the resulting chaos, be it social, economic, or ecological. I pointed out that their raw materials — the environment, their workers, or both — would eventually lash back against them. Their version of sustainability really isn’t, because while they can dance for a long time, the planet is an island, presently inescapable.

What is our alternative?

Neoliberal Sustainability

We all know the times we live in: global recession, everyone feeling the pinch, austerity measures necessary, etc. In terms of unemployment, the indicator most of us care most about, this is the longest and worst recession since World War II. So we all know the situation’s bad. Here in the US, state budgets are being keenly affected, as they rely on income or sales taxes, both of which have taken cuts — and many states have passed balanced-budget laws, meaning the old US Federal Government standby of borrowing their way out is unavailable. Life has grown grim.

Opinion is rather divided on how to respond, however.

The followers of John Maynard Keynes immediately demanded a stimulus package. Both President George W. Bush and President Obama tried this tactic, although Bush’s was just through tax rebates. Obama’s was somewhat more comprehensive, with tax cuts taken directly out of the paycheck withholdings to try and encourage immediate spending, reinforced by government funding for a variety of projects, particularly in construction (remember “shovel-ready”?). While some claim that the recession is now over, and while some signs on unemployment are encouraging, it’s clear we’re still deeply in the hole, and climbing out only slowly.

So the Keynsian tactics have run into trouble. Explanations abound as to why; but certain parties have their own theories on how to save the day. Speaker of the House John Boehner demanded that the pre-recession Bush tax cuts be made permanent for all Americans — i.e., that they be made permanent for the wealthiest Americans as well as everyone else, as it’s only in dispute for a fraction of the population. “[W]e must cut spending and stop all the looming tax hikes,” he writes. He didn’t get the cuts made permanent, but struck a deal with President Obama to extend them two years. Boehner’s principles seem to be both emblematic of the GOP’s platform and rather neoliberal: tax cuts for the wealthy, spending cuts and privitization, and laissez-faire economics policy from the government (the latter indicated by Boehner’s past resistance to bank reform legislation; more recently, Republicans serving on a panel on the financial crisis voted to expunge all instances of the words “Wall Street” and “deregulation” from their panel’s report. They don’t want their culpability uttered aloud.) Milton Friedman would be proud.

Something for Nothing

There was a candidate who ran for senate in my state this summer; he was eliminated by the primary, as expected, but he serves as a useful example of a common phenomenon in the United States these days. He is a farmer of sorts, and stood with the Tea Party in saying that he and his fellow agribusinessmen of Eastern Washington are taxed far too highly and receive nothing but grief from the government in return. Yet his farm is watered by the Grand Coulee Dam, a New Deal project, and he receives government subsidies from the Department of Agriculture. In short, without the Federal Government his farm, and all the others between the Cascades and the Palouse, would not exist. Not profitably, anyway. So his insistence that he pays more in taxes than he receives in benefits is puzzling. His distaste for taxes is understandable; I even share his dislike. Yet the Feds are undoubtedly pouring money into his farm, not taking it out, in the form of subsidies and water–and both are paid for by taxes. In short, until recently we had a candidate for senate who swears he owes DC nothing, when in fact he owes DC everything. He, the rest of the Tea Party, and often the rest of the GOP as a whole, seem to expect something for nothing–and how often does that work?

Hear the Word

I would see justice done.

I would see the long labor of the poor rewarded at last, rewarded as it has never been even acknowledged in full. I would see the return of investment and the fruits of harvest benefit all who sweated for them, not merely those with their names on sheets of paper.

I would see children fed. I would see the sick tended. I would see the prisoners and the impoverished remembered as human. I would have it so that no one has to stand on the sidewalk and beg for scraps. I would see us remember that all who live on this earth are our kin, our family, no matter the color of their skin, the language of their tongue, the riches in their pockets, or the faith of their heart. I would see justice done as it has never been done, not since some few thought to exalt themselves at the expense of the many.

I am done with this misery. I am done with this suffering. I am done with laws and codes and customs that claim it is fitting that the poor live in pain. I am done with “deserving.” I am done with “They are lazy.” I am done with “Don’t coddle them.” Do you hear me? I love all, and deserving’s got nothing to do with it. In this I follow my god, the One, and the words that the Holy One gives to me.

Observations on Colors

Three men shared the back of the bus with me. By their talk they seemed to be homeless, discussing where they’d encountered each other before: Workforce, the Millionair Club, various street corners. They were dressed for hard work, and looked like they had been doing it. They discussed the times: loss of jobs (one man was laid off from a position he’d held for 14 years, and was only hanging on thanks to the second job he’d had for much of that period) and a black president. Being black themselves, they expressed their continuing astonishment: “Never thought I’d live to see the day,” one said repeatedly, and the others agreed.

And then one of them said something which blew me away: “Maybe we’ll get another one.”

It really shouldn’t have astonished me so much. After all, the walls have theoretically fallen, yes? It’s now been clearly demonstrated that a mixed-race child of a single mother can grow up to be president. Obama is our first president of color: that means, surely, that there can now be more. But it’s a thought that had never before entered my mind. Had I already begun to think of Obama as our token president? Or is it just the case that we’re not thinking about the next one because we’re still grappling with the president we’ve got — and because those who hope to take power from him don’t seem likely to run a person of color as their contender?

I was tempted to enter the conversation myself, but I did not; instead, to sort of indicate my openness, I broke out my copy of Real Change. (For the non-Seattle readers, Real Change is the homeless newspaper in town, very focused on social justice, and sold by the poor and homeless on street corners around town. I buy two copies, one for me and one for my parents.) I thus flew my flag as a sympathetic ear. Two of the men got off before long, and silence fell.

As we were crossing Lake Washington, the remaining man tapped me on the knee and pointed to the western horizon. The sun was setting. It reached just under the rain clouds, setting the atmosphere on fire in startling shades of gold and purple. It was astonishingly lovely, and I said so. The two of us watched the sun until it slipped behind Captiol Hill and the Madison radio towers.

I glanced north, and now it was my turn to point something out to him: the sunlight still fell on the north lake, and so did the rain. A rainbow, colors as vibrant as the sunset, was arcing up out of the water. It had a faint double bow further north; and, as my eyes followed it, I saw it was a perfect bow, running the whole north-south length of the lake, from Juanita to Renton.

My friend and I sat in awe and spoke of our wonder to each other.

“This is why I never moved away,” he said, and I said it was the same with me.

He got off at Montlake, and clapped me on the arm as he did, saying, “Good talking to you, man.”

“You too,” I said, and I meant it.