Harry Targ : The Decline of American Public Purpose

Art from poster for the 7th Annual Conference in Citizenship Studies at Wayne State University.
The decline of American public purpose

We must unite to save our citizenship, our public space, and our human community.

By Harry Targ /The Rag Blog / September 11, 2012

But we also believe in something called citizenship -- citizenship -- a word at the very heart of our founding, a word at the very essence of our democracy, the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations...

We, the people, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense...

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That's what we believe. -- Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention, September 6, 2012

Most political and cultural historians argue that the United States has not had a strong socialist tradition, at least compared to European countries.

While this view has some merit, these commentators ignore the deep communal traditions of Native peoples, the founders of utopian communities in the nineteenth century all across the Northeast and Midwest, radical socialists in the labor movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the large Socialist Party led by Eugene V. Debs, and the communist movement of the twentieth century.

These pundits also ignore violent state repression in virtually every period of American history that has been targeted against socialist dissenters.

However, despite state police, the FBI, strike breakers, and repressive cultural institutions such as churches, educational systems, and the media, the vision of community, sharing, and public purpose have survived.

Survival has taken many forms -- political parties, mass movements, religious and secular campaigns for social and economic justice. President Obama was not talking about socialism in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention September 6. Indeed, he would reject any suggestion that his political vision has a commonality with that of socialists.

But he did offer an insightful rendition of values embedded in the American experience. He called it “citizenship.”

What is citizenship about? For starters, it implies the idea of a public purpose. A society consists of persons of all races, genders, classes, sexual orientations, and ethnicities who are, of necessity, bound together to sustain life. The President is arguing that at a fundamental level human survival requires some sharing of pain and work as well as the enjoyment of life.

It is inevitable that a nation’s people, indeed global citizens, share space, water, the air we breathe, the roads we travel on, and virtually every physical, social, and economic institution and process beyond our most intimate and private lives. Ultimately citizenship is about human community.

In American political history, groups of people have had to struggle to get recognition of citizenship and community. In the nineteenth century, educational reformers had to campaign to establish public educational institutions. Reading, writing, research on agriculture and medical science was vital to human community.

The success of the public school movement and the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act for higher education are examples of the realization of the needs of human community.

Citizens also came to realize that access to printed material, books, magazines, newspapers, was critical to an informed public and to human community. Public libraries were created to provide reading materials, public space for discussion, and meeting centers. In urban areas, people came to realize that human community, the practice of citizenship, required space for people to meet, to argue, to play dominoes, to lecture in front of interested audiences on the topics of the day.

Human community meant “hanging out,” in parks, on street corners, in empty lots.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, in response to the rapacious, unplanned spread of capitalism, it was recognized that rural space needed to be preserved. National parks were created to encourage the use of what remained of the natural environment, much of which had been destroyed when the colonists conquered the people and occupied the land on which they already had been living in harmony. The original dwellers would be forbidden from regaining what was stolen from them but efforts were made to return some of the land to its pristine beauty.

In addition to schools, libraries, urban spaces, and national parks, human community, it was realized, required social, economic, and political rights. Citizenship for people living in various geographic areas and working in various manufacturing and service venues required the right of people to associate with whomever they chose, in unions, churches, civic organizations, and interest groups. Citizenship meant coming together with like-minded others, particularly those who had economic interests in common. No human is “an island.” In a modern society where human community cannot be based solely on direct, interpersonal interaction, voting was necessary to allow the full expression of the sentiments of the human community.

So when President Obama spoke of citizenship, whether he realized the full implications of his remarks or not, he was speaking of human community, education, public space, the freedom of association, and the right to vote. All of these core values embedded in American history and culture are under fundamental threat today.

“Market fundamentalist” ideologues argue that there is no such thing as citizenship, human community, and a public sphere.

Advocates for the privatization of public schools -- from vouchers in Indiana and charter schools in Chicago to the privatization of higher education by business model university presidents -- forget that education has been a public good, not a commodity for sale in the market.

Those who call for the selling off of public spaces in cities and the countryside are advocating robbery of land for profit.

And those who challenge the right of workers to form trade unions and associations and those who seek to repress the right of people to vote are advocating the destruction of the most fundamental conceptions of citizenship and human community.

These are very dangerous times. Whether activists want to call themselves socialists, anarchists, occupiers, liberals, progressives, or whatever, the task is clear. We must unite to save our citizenship, our public space, and our human community.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his book from Changemaker Press which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : David Harvey's 'Rebel Cities'

Living for the city:
David Harvey's 'Rebel Cities'

This is a radical book. Its discussion ranges from the workings of the monopoly rent system and the nature of neoliberal capitalism to a call to take back the city.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / May 21, 2012

[Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution by David Harvey (2112: Verso); Hardcover; 206 pp.; $19.95.]

I live in the small city of Burlington, Vermont, in the United States. Most every day I walk through the city's main public square known by its street name, Church Street.

A public street that has been semi-privatized, the street is often the center of a struggle between citizens and private interests over the nature of the public square. Battles over the rights of street performers, political activists, panhandlers, and regular citizens who want to hang out without shopping are frequent.

Thanks to quick public reaction from these groups and others, most efforts by merchants and politicians to further privatize the street have been beaten back. Yet, the space is more tightly controlled than downtowns in other similar sized cities that I have visited. In what might seem a contradiction, it is also more vibrant than many cities both larger and smaller.

One might attribute this latter fact to the so-called nature of Vermont itself; a nature that considers democratic engagement a valued part of human existence. Alternatively, one could attribute the lesser vibrancy of other downtowns to the lack of such a democratic consciousness.

Many writers have exposed the role architecture plays in controlling public space. Mike Davis discusses how cities have installed public benches designed to discourage sleeping and fenced in public parks. Israeli architect Eyal Weizman has studied the nature of control implicit in Israel’s design of its cities, settlements, and highways. Fictionally, China Mieville’s The City and the City is a riveting tale of a future place strikingly reminiscent of today’s occupied Palestine.

Most recently, economist and critic David Harvey has contributed a refreshingly new look at the nature of the modern city and, more importantly, why it needs to be wrested back from the neoliberal corporate megalith currently trying to buy the world.

Harvey, who has lived in Baltimore, Maryland, for the past several decades, places the modern city’s economic role directly in the center of capital’s creation and consumption of surplus. He discusses the claim that cites are the product of the proletarianization of the rural peasantry, pointing to industrial revolutions of the past and the current movement of populations in nations such as China and India from the countryside to existing urban areas and new economic zones created by international capitalism.

Furthermore, his text, titled Rebel Cities, provides a look at the growth of so-called shantytowns on the outskirts of some of the world’s largest population centers. These shantytowns are often the focus of raids by military and police forces intent on making it easier for bulldozers behind them to destroy the structures found there. In certain instances, however, the authorities have conceded to the citizens of these shantytowns and given them rights to their homes.

It is from these shantytowns that we can gain inspiration. The people who live in such areas are considered surplus in the world of monopoly capitalism. They have no rights as far as the stock exchanges and bourses of the world are concerned.

Yet, because they refuse to accede to this characterization, they will struggle to maintain their shelter, their communities and their human dignity. Like their historical predecessors in the Paris Commune of 1871, these people are determined to make the city a popular and democratic human organism.

They are joined by those around the world who in the past couple of years have occupied city squares and parks and demanded a reconceptualization of the city, more democratic control of the urban space, and a reconsideration of who constitutes the working class and, subsequently, who will make the anti-capitalist revolution.

Harvey insists that the only genuine anti-capitalist struggle is one with the goal of destroying the existing class relationship. Such a struggle cannot be waged by separating workplace issues from those of the community.

Pointing to the classic film The Salt Of the Earth as an example of how the latter scenario might occur, Harvey suggests that the union must view the world of working people as an organic whole. Utility access and costs are workplace issues; childcare and education are too. Affordable housing and food costs are more than secondary concerns. Their role as a means for the capitalist system to take back wages describes their existence as a means for that system to maintain its control on working people.

Debt peonage, whether incurred via education and vehicle loans in the advanced capitalist world or incurred via a micro-loan program in the developing nations, is still debt peonage. The increasing cost of post-secondary education throughout the world and the mortgage crisis are both tools of the neoliberal regime to continue the upward motion of capital.

This is a radical book. Its discussion ranges from the workings of the monopoly rent system and the nature of neoliberal capitalism to a call to take back the city. History is combined with economics and a call for serious struggle.

With the Paris Commune as his inspiration, David Harvey discusses the positive and negative aspects of the Occupy movement, the squatters’ movements, and allied struggles. He presents their historical precedents and he warns against essentially conservative attempts to manipulate such movements into supporting the existing economic reality.

He further opines that cooptation by parliamentary elements is proof of these movements' success, not their failure. Fundamental to all of this is Harvey’s radical definition of the city as the wellspring of capitalist oppression and also the foundation of resistance to that oppression.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Lamar W. Hankins : Religion and Secularism in the Public Square

Sen. John F. Kennedy speaks attempts to allay fears about his Caltholicism before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960. Photo from Houston Chronicle / AP.
Religion and secularism in the public square

Opposing the promotion of religion and religious practices by government is not the same as opposing religious expression...

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / March 13, 2012

Whenever he speaks, it has become common for Republican presidential aspirant Rick Santorum to state that because of the beliefs or actions of various public figures or the society at large, people of faith no longer have a role in the public square.

Santorum has claimed at various times that this was the position of John F. Kennedy, and is the position of President Obama. And he seems to believe that there are others, many others, who want to prevent religious people from having their say about public policy.

A fair and complete reading of what John F. Kennedy said in 1960 cannot possibly lead to such a conclusion. If anything, Barack Obama sometimes has seemed to agree with Santorum on this issue.

With this repeated assertion, Santorum makes what is often called a “straw man” argument. He has set up a false premise so that he can easily knock it down. But this straw man argument has a purpose beyond mere deception: to galvanize the evangelical vote in his favor. And many evangelicals claim that if the government doesn’t promote their brand of Christianity, then they are being denied access to the public square.

To understand the deceit inherent in this argument, we need to understand what is meant by the “public square.” Generally, and quite literally, the public square is an open public space found near the center of a community and used for public gatherings. It may refer also to all areas of public property which may be used for a variety of events, either with or without permission of the government that controls the property -- reference the Occupy Movement in the last half year.

In another sense, public square refers to the use of public places for exercising our rights to free speech. Some communities have areas where people hold forth on whatever topic may interest them and the passers-by who linger to listen to what they say.

This activity was likely more prevalent in the days before the media took information to the masses through newspapers, magazines, radio, and television; and now individuals do so by email, Facebook, and tweets. Of course, we have had mail service since the founding of the country, but that was not a way to reach the masses about public policy concerns until the advent of direct-mail political campaigns, which started about 30 years ago.

In some cases, public buildings have been open for public expression, much like the open areas owned in common by the people. But normally, public expression has taken place in these venues only when the governmental authority responsible for their maintenance has allowed them to be used in this way. Otherwise, the buildings are designated for particular uses, rather than any use a member of the public desires.

For instance, a high school gymnasium or a meeting room at a city activity center is not a public forum unless a group or individual pays a fee to use the facility for such a purpose, or the government opens the facility at a specific time for the purpose of having a public forum.

When an area becomes a public place for free speech, the government may not limit what views are expressed there. All views, including religious views, may be expressed, which gets us to the claim that religion is being driven from the public square. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently declared that the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion by all Americans “means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square.”

On this I agree completely.

But Santorum went on to claim that presidential candidate and later President John F. Kennedy said that “faith is not allowed in the public square.” I have quoted Kennedy’s 1960 Houston speech in which he discussed this matter in previous columns and have read it many times. Nowhere in that speech did Kennedy say that faith is not allowed in the public square, but in Santorum’s mind, Kennedy’s views would “create a purely secular public square cleansed of all religious wisdom and the voice of religious people of all faiths.”

Santorum’s thoughts on this issue are so ridiculous that I address them only to suggest that Santorum has it wrong. Kennedy was not trying to drive religion or religious values from the public square with his 1960 speech to a group of Protestant ministers. He was trying to allay fears among Protestants that, as a Catholic, he would perform presidential duties under orders from the Pope.

Of course, considering Santorum’s membership in Opus Dei, which strictly follows traditional Catholic doctrine, he might seek the Pope’s advice on U.S. policy were he to become President.

But this is not the first time a political figure has distorted the views of Americans to deal with a fictitious issue. In 2006, Barack Obama spoke about religion in public life in a speech at a religious conference in which he accused secularists of asking “believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square.” He also equated secularism with a lack of moral values, as though moral values come only from religion.

While I know more religious people than secularists, I have never read or heard a secularist (a non-religious person) who claims that religion and religious ideas are forbidden in the public square. What I have often thought, however, is that if your only argument on a matter of public importance is that God has a position on the issue, you might not have a winning argument.

God’s views are hard to document -- something I learned as a pre-ministerial student at a Methodist-related university. Even the “holy texts” leave much room for interpretation and differences of opinion about meaning.

In 2002, a San Marcos city council member explained his vote in favor of a resolution supporting the War in Iraq by quoting Ecclesiastes -- “there’s a time for war.” I thought then that the remark was less than shallow and a poor excuse for actual thinking about the matter. Of course, people use “holy texts” frequently to bolster some position or other -- against homosexuals, against prostitutes, against money-lending, against slavery; or in favor of slavery, child-beating, war, adulterer-stoning, capital punishment, mass murder, etc.

As to the origin of moral values, perhaps the most universal moral precept is what we usually term The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It has ancient origins that have been traced back nearly four millennia to the birth of writing in Egypt (though writing may have begun about the same time in Mesopotamia). But even the Golden Rule has its drawbacks. I certainly would not want a delusional or masochistic person treating me the way she might want to be treated.

What is important to me is that moral values do not depend on religion. Moral values have risen wherever there are people capable of thinking about themselves as distinct entities related to others. In fact, self-reflection may be what distinguishes humans from other species.

In America’s public square, broadly conceived, all people can be participants in the discussion. Perhaps the most inclusive definition of the public square is found in David E. Guinn’s paper written for The Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties:

[The public square is] that forum in which the people discuss, debate, and evaluate public activities with the idea of persuading their compatriots and influencing the state in the development, enactment and enforcement of public policy. It is a forum, by definition, available to all...

The public square is not necessarily a place or a building. Today, forums are developed anywhere ideas can be discussed. In the on-line world, anyone wanting to make a comment can participate in that discussion.

As anyone who has read the Constitution knows, religion is mentioned three times -- to guarantee religious freedom, to prohibit government establishment of religion, and to assure that there be no religious test for holding public office. God does not appear in the document except in relation to the date given at the end.

This should not prevent God and religion from entering public discussions, but it does suggest that the government should neither dominate religion, nor religion government. Opposing the promotion of religion and religious practices by government is not the same as opposing religious expression in the public square. Those who equate the two are not being intellectually honest.

According to a 2011 study by the nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization Public Religion Research Institute, “Nearly two-thirds (66 percent) of Americans agree that we must maintain a strict separation of church and state.” And 88% of Americans “strongly affirm the principles of religious freedom, religious tolerance, and separation of church and state.” Religious freedom is for everyone.

Contrary to the assertions of people like Rick Santorum and those who use fear to promote their theocratic views, the public square in America is doing fine, open to all ideas, religious as well as secular. And the public square can be used to promote moral values by everyone who has moral values, be they religious or secular.

It is possible to be good without God, even if some people claim otherwise. If you don’t agree, just listen to the values being expressed in the public square and observe the public behaviors represented there. Morality is not exclusive to our religious brethren, nor does being religious assure moral behavior.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

St. Pete : Free Speech or a Senior Moment?

Above, man protests the privatizing of a sidewalk which has served as a free speech area in St. Petersburg. Below, BayWalk managers now have the power to ban protests on this sidewalk. Photos from Tampa Bay Online.
A senior moment?
Privatization and free speech in St. Petersburg

By Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog / October 23, 2009

See video, below.

ORLANDO -- Recent local news clips in Florida showed a physical encounter between two older men at a St. Petersburg City Council meeting. Aired as a 30-second frivolous item about "wrestling seniors in Florida," only in very passing reference did the clips mention the underlying issue, which had to do with the City privatizing a public sidewalk long used for free speech, petition, and assembly.

It comes as no surprise to observers of the corporate media that important underlying issues are often trivialized. Unfortunately the story doesn't end there. One might expect liberal social commentator Keith Olbermann to defend embattled civil liberties, but on his MSNBC Countdown program of Oct. 20th, the incident was shown with the same mocking and belittling spin as the rest of the corporate media, and the same disregard for the important values at stake.

What occurred at the St. Petersburg City Council meeting was, according to activist Bettejo Indelicato, "a long struggle for free speech and the right of peaceful assembly." For years St. Petersburg residents have peacefully gathered on a public sidewalk in front of what Indelicato describes as a "high end shopping/entertainment complex" to demonstrate against the "unending war on terror" and similar causes. Complex owners informed the City they would not pump reinvestment dollars into the complex until the City chased off the protestors by privatizing the sidewalk.

On October 1st, the City Council on a 4 to 4 tie voted against the privatization. After the St. Petersburg Times predictably weighed in on the side of the complex owners, one of the Council members changed his vote at the October 15th meeting in favor of privatization. After the vote had been taken and the defeated activists were leaving, the clips show an audience member leaping up to accost one of those departing. This audience member is the brother of one of the Council members.

Underlying "the wrestling seniors" was the unreported real issue: a corporate-motivated property grab and subversion of First Amendment rights by a government sworn to uphold and protect the public interest and those rights. Aiding and abetting this through the dumbing-down of public discourse, and representative of those same interests, was the corporate media. Keith Olbermann didn't miss a beat and played right along.

This same story, with or without Olbermann, will be re-played in communities across the country until such time as residents can reclaim government from corporate control.

My thanks to Bettejo Indelicato, St. Pete for Peace, and all others who stood up for their rights and participated in the fight to preserve civic engagement space in St. Petersburg.

To learn more, go to St. Pete for Peace.

Wrestling match at St. Pete City Hall



The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...