November 1, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Opinion

Making Election Day matter

There’s a good chance that next Tuesday’s election is going to have a pretty low turnout.

I’m not saying this only because turnout is always lower than it should be. But Democratic mayoral candidate Michael Nutter is so far ahead of his Republican challenger, Al Taubenberger, that political forecasters in the city are pretty sure a lot of voters will assume the election is a done deal and not put any extra effort into getting to the polls.

In a Daily News / Keyestone poll reported on Oct. 25, 74 percent said they favored Nutter. Only 8 percent said they would vote for Taubenberger (the other 18 percent still, somehow, have not decided). In the story, Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin and Marshall College, said he had never seen such poor numbers for a major party candidate and was sure the lopsided contest would depress turnout numbers.

The problem is, of course, that there are more names on this year’s ballot than Nutter and Taubenberger.

In the Eighth Councilmanic Distirict, Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller faces a challenge from independent candidate Jesse Brown and Green Party candidate (and Chestnut Hiller) Brian Rudnick. There are 10 candidates running for City Council at Large. There are “row offices” and scores of judicial candidates for the Supreme Court, Superior Court and the Court of Common Pleas.

Because the main attraction appears fait accompli there’s a reasonable fear that all the other races that deserve our attention, some of them competitive, will be overlooked. If that happens the result might be that those voted in really don’t represent the “will of the people.”

Of course, the will of the people could use a little help these days.

Part of the problem with voter turnout is that many people work longer hours than ever before. Many professionals begin the day before the sun rises and finish after it sets. With demands on spending what little time we have with family and friends, the prospect of waiting in a line to cast a vote is not terribly appealing. It’s easy to see how the whole process might come off, not as the exercise of one’s right to choose, but a troublesome and unwelcome burden.

A potential solution to this problem is to follow a lot of other democracies and move our election days out of the workweek. Why can’t Election Day be a Saturday, or even a paid holiday. What in our country is more deserving of paid time off?

Under the present system, the practice of voting has taken a back seat to the practices and principles of capitalism. It’s inconceivable that a country so proud of its Democratic heritage and freedom has done so little to make sure that the people are free to vote.

The emphasis on Election Day in the oldest democracy on Earth should be the election.

Pete Mazzaccaro

Opinion: Civil Rights allusions off base in immigration debate
by Lou Incognito

Very few of the opponents of immigrant rights use Civil Rights leaders as a basis, but Patrick Buchanan, former Republican candidate for president and frequent talk show guest, is one of the exceptions.  Buchanan cites Frederick Douglass, among others in his reasoning, despite their holding diametrically opposite points of view.

The great Abolitionist Frederick Douglass in an 1869 speech in Boston addressed the question of Chinese immigration.  In the face of the racists of the day, Douglass called immigration a human right and an example of the highest principles of justice and equality.  Frederick Douglass’ complaint was not about immigration, but about deliberate replacement of Black workers.  U.S. corporations, in their constant search for cheap labor and their need to split workers and break unions, brought in workers from Europe to replace Black workers.  The immigrants only needed to be disease-free and without criminal records to be admitted.

Frederick Douglass raised objections to the replacement plans and proposed Affirmative Action as the remedy.  U.S. workers would be given preference before immigrants would be hired.  The Right-Wing Congress rejected Affirmative Action to protect against job loss; Corporate America retained its undemocratic freedom to make fortunes at workers’ expense.  While discrimination should deprive no workers of jobs, discrimination continues to deprive African Americans.  Democratic governments are responsible for workers’ rights; Right Wingers, not immigrants, deny that responsibility.

After World War II Affirmative Action became an issue again, as being last hired and first fired continued to be the lot African-American workers and their families.  Incredibly, Racists interpreted the New Deal as affirmative action for whites.  According to the 09-27-2005 Washington Post article by Columbia history professor Ira Kastnelson, when Southern Democrats controlled legislation, “Policy decisions dealing with welfare, work and war either excluded the vast majority of African Americans or treated them differently from others.

“Between 1945 and 1955, the federal government transferred more than $100 billion to support retirement programs and fashion opportunities for job skills, education, homeownership and small-business formation … at no other time in American history had so much money and so many resources been targeted at the generation completing its education, entering the workforce and forming families - but most blacks were left out of all this.”

While public policies provided good jobs and old-age and disability protections, “Black Americans were mainly left to fend for themselves.”  Professor Kastnelson appropriately concludes, “A full generation of federal policy, lasting until the civil rights legislation and affirmative action of the 1960s, boosted whites into homes, suburbs, universities and skilled employment while denying the same or comparable benefits to Black citizens.

Despite the prosperity of postwar capitalism’s golden age, an already immense gap between white and Black Americans widened.  Even today, after the great achievements of civil rights and affirmative action, wealth for the typical white family, mainly in homeownership, is 10 times the average net worth for Blacks, and a majority of African American children in our cities subsist below the federal poverty line.”

Under pressure from the Civil Rights movement, President Lyndon Johnson called for affirmative action for poor and unemployed workers modeled after the GI Bill (but without exclusions of non-white veterans.  In states represented by Jim Crow politicians, the GI Bill applied, nearly without exception, to white veterans only).  His proposal has yet to be made law, even though it would cover the miniscule number of workers displaced by today’s immigrants.  Affirmative Action plans are stifled by racism and by an aversion to government action on behalf of workers.  Among the obstacles are and assortment of Right Wingers, including current Republican leaders, who continue to call for opposition to Affirmative Action and support for the death penalty, school vouchers and other divisive policies.

Affirmative Action requires employers with sufficient resources to hire qualified applicants.  Opponents use the false notion of “reverse discrimination” despite the restriction of hiring only qualified workers.  Adopting Frederick Douglass’ proposal to give preference to native-born workers would be a solution for the miniscule numbers who are displaced by undocumented immigrants who are poor and tired because of NAFTA and other “free trade” policies.  Affirmative Action to reverse discrimination would be a solution to poverty in cities throughout the country.  Although the opposition cries about real or imaginary loss of jobs, adopting laws that would protect jobs and trade union rights is made very difficult by the very opponents making the complaints.

The Republicans, pretending to act as champions of labor, claim to fear job loss, despite the type of drudgery and low-wage jobs that undocumented immigrants are forced to take, and despite the Affirmative Action solution.  President Bush favors low-wage non-union “guest worker” programs, without realizing that the guest workers might “take our jobs.”  Others, for example, former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, claims to fear that “white Christians” will no longer be in the majority unless immigration is stopped.  Buchanan, in spite of his racism and anti-Semitism, continues to spread his racist messages in the corporate press.  Blaming Liberals and the Left is one of his and his followers’ favorite themes.

Building real or imaginary fences will not alter the cheap labor search and other destructive tendencies of Big Business.  Fences will not create trade union jobs; fully funded public works and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act are important parts of the solution.

Lou Incognito lives in, works and writes in Mt. Airy.

From Darby to the African Savannah, meeting Loren Eiseley, part 4
by HUGH GILMORE

Backstory: I first discovered Esquire magazine as a boy in my small town’s barbershop, mixed among the risqué girlie mags. I accidentally gained my first acquaintance with modern literature and current cultural thought by reading that magazine.

By the time I left home, got married and settled down, my first subscription was to Esquire — the coolest magazine around because of its wiseguy tone. Thus the surprise I felt when I first encountered the mysterious Loren Eiseley, via a March 1967 article that said he was the “best prose writer in America today.” The accompanying picture of Eiseley, half in somber shadow/half in light intrigued me.

I read his first book, The Immense Journey, and was enormously moved by it. I started using it with my students at Abington High School. They enjoyed the book enough to become “rereaders of Eiseley” on their own. They asked me to invite him to meet our class. I revered him too much to bother him like that.

In 1970 a student of mine showed me a signed letter and photograph he received from Eiseley because Eiseley had learned of our reading project and wanted to encourage us. I was so jealous and chagrined that I began writing a letter to Eiseley that would soon change the direction of my life.

I knew when I sat down to write this letter that I would conclude by asking Eiseley if he would come and meet our class. I guessed that a short, formal invitation would be declined because of Eiseley’s busy writing and speaking schedule. So, I decided that even if the letter were to have no consequences, I would make the writing of it be an opportunity to take stock of my own life.

I had just turned 30 and keenly felt the need to choose a career to throw myself into. I felt I had backed into teaching. I had wanted to be a writer but needed to make a living at a steady job. Like thousands of other young men and women before me, I soon discovered that teaching by day and writing at night is very difficult. Teaching is both exhausting and seducing. Those who like the job, like their students and enjoy the process easily wind up spending all their spare time thinking of how to incorporate what is happening in their daily lives into their teaching. And I was one of those lucky few. I loved teaching, but had never accomplished anything outside of a school setting.

I was 30. I was married, had a home in the suburbs (Wyndmoor), two cars, a son and a Hibachi. Life seemed like a straight road through Kansas. I was in the mood for change. This letter to Eiseley would be my attempt to take stock of my life. My bosses and teachers had always told me I had talent, had a spark — if only I would “discipline” myself, “channel” my energies, get my “act together.” I’d nod my head and smile and vow to follow their suggestions, but, really, I had no idea what they were talking about.

I sat down and began writing my letter to Eiseley with a determination to write something good. I began by describing how I first heard of him and how his words had found a sympathetic ear because of my lifelong fascination with nature. I’d been one of those kids who wander alone for hours in swamps, watching turtles and snakes and birds and fish and insects, hoping to merge with their world. I used birdwatching as an excuse to travel and wander deep into forests and across mountain meadows, hoping, as I said, to lose myself. But back deep in my heart I always hoped to find some missing piece of myself. These long walks were searches, actually, for something emotionally important I needed to find.

As the letter progressed it became longer than anything I’d ever voluntarily written. I’d done long term papers, of course, but every time I’d ever sat with a sheet of paper hoping to express a personal idea or create a story or record a thought, I’d peter out after a page or two. This letter to Eiseley kept growing as I wrote it.

I told him how his books affected my own thinking, how I felt in some ways that I was a shadow he had cast, how I could not help but apply his insights to the things I encountered in my own life. I cited passages from his books.

And then I told him about my students, how they called themselves “rereaders of Eiseley.” I told him about their consternation, their fascination and their openness to experience. On I went, as the pages mounted up to six, seven, eight, ten, twelve, sixteen, ultimately twenty-two hand-written pages.

And then I did something I’d never done before. I began rewriting, editing, condensing, deleting, citing. For several days. And then I typed the letter in my two-fingered fashion. And then rewrote it. And typed it again. Twelve pages written the best I could manage, concluding with, “And finally, I wish to extend to you an invitation to visit us ‘rereaders of Eiseley.’” I even offered to chauffeur him from home and back.

I reread the letter after I signed it. My words felt so inadequate, but I had tried. I put the letter in the mailbox and went home to fret and wait — and daydream when I dared.

To my surprise, I received a response five days later. I’d come home from school just as the mailman was walking up to hand me the day’s mail. It included an envelope with a University of Pennsylvania/Anthropology Department return address. I stood in my driveway beside my car and opened it.

“Dear Mr. Gilmore:

After receiving such a gracious, heartwarming letter of invitation, how could I refuse to visit you and the other re-readers of Eiseley?

Of course I will come talk to your students – perhaps some time in May …”

He asked that I not publicize his visit since he must decline most local invitations because of his busy schedule. He asked that I drive him since he no longer kept a car. He said he preferred to speak informally in a question-and-answer session. And then he wrote:

“Now as to my photographs that frightened you. Never judge a man by the way he is portrayed in any magazine or newspaper. The subject is entirely at the mercy of the photographer, you know, and has absolutely no voice in the selection of the material which professes to show the world what he looks like. The photograph selected by Esquire magazine is certainly not a favorite of mine. I did not, in fact, even get to see it before it appeared. And newspapers, I should warn you, keep old photographs in their files that usually portray a man as he looked, or as the photographer thought he looked, many years ago.”

Eiseley then finished by saying, “I was truly touched by your letter and want you to know how much it meant to me that my books have influenced you as they have.”

Eiseley’s letter was dated March 12. May seemed ages away, but I went in and sat down in my reading chair and held the letter across my chest and occasionally smiled and looked out the window for a while and then read parts of the letter again. Something wonderful had happened beyond the immediate meanings of this letter. I wasn’t sure what that was, but I knew the understanding of it would come to me when I calmed down enough to let it sink in.

In the meantime, I couldn’t wait to get to school in the morning and tell my students the good news.

(Parts 1-3 of this story can be found in the Sept. 20, Oct. 4 and Oct. 18 issues of this newspaper and also at ChestnutHillLocal.com — click “Archives.”)