Dancing to Corporate Tunes Sabotages our Health, Community, and Well-Being

We’re in a battle with ourselves to minimize for our kids the damage we’ve done to our environment.

So I was startled to read a recent op-ed chortling with delight over the wonders of petroleum and plastics.

The writer looked like a nice young person, but willfully ignorant. What would she say if her great grandson could speak back through time to her, from his climate-change ravaged world of 2094, and ask how she could have written such things? Sure, our state does currently depend financially on oil and gas; but that’s like taking some dangerous medicine, with serious known side effects, to recover from something worse. (Chemotherapy saves lives, but we don’t rush back for more once the cancer is gone!) Petroleum is a known poison to us and our world, but essential to our civilization. Working to kick that addiction is just as urgent as with fentanyl. In 2094, our descendants will be struggling as desperately to get to Canada, just as some folks now risk everything to get here. Let’s hope they’re treated decently.

I’m told that an indigenous elder, long ago, seeing the influx of white people, said that there would come a day when you could no longer dip your cup in the river and drink. That sounded crazy. Now we take for granted a highly unnatural world in which dipping our cup into almost any river would be unwise. A world where sometimes the air is too thick to breathe. A world in which most people mostly eat “food” full of chemicals bearing little relationship to nutrients.

Gretchen Morgenson’s book, These Are the Plunderers, brilliantly describes how private equity is savaging health care. Barons may do the same for the plunderers of our farmland. Walmart has a share of the grocery market equal to the combined shares of corporations standing 2^nd through 8^th on that list. The “system” is cheating and poisoning us in a variety of ways.

We try to participate as little as possible. We buy much of our food at the Farmers’ Market. We patronize Toucan as much as we can. We struggled to support the Mountain View Co-Op and mourn its passing. Eat what huge trucks needn’t bring here.

With so many wonderful local restaurants, it’s no sacrifice to avoid not only fast food joints but all the chain restaurants. Coffee at Milagro, Nessa’s, Grounded, and the Bean. Except when traveling, I haven’t set foot in Starbucks for years,.

I prefer the quirky diversity of local places to bland rooms that are identical to thousands around the country; economically, we keep our money here, where local restaurant owners will spend much of their profit, rather than sending it to some coastal corporate headquarters; monopolies, if we let them, monopolies will jack up prices out of sight; and I can ask a local grower how s/he grew what I’m buying, and if something’s wrong my complaint will be heard.

While we carefully watched for Communists, corporations robbed us daily and changed our world. We let it happen. But even now we can resist, and look out for ourselves, by generally favoring what’s local, what’s smaller, and what’s simpler, with a smaller carbon footprint. If feasible, by walking and bicycling, by composting, by limiting water use, by spending a moment reading food ingredients.

By recognizing that all those Super Bowl advertisers aren’t our friends, necessitating a certain alertness, and independent thought.

                                  – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 31 March, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[Sorry if this column is a little muddled, or scattered, maybe trying to cover several different points. I do feel that corporations have more control of us than they need.]

[Perhaps the first point to make is that our Constitution was admirably constructed to prevent our government from abusing us as the British Empire had abused the colonies, and from having our elected president crown himself king. (Yes, nothing’s foolproof, and a nation of fools certainly could vote in a would-be tyrant, their elected congressfolk and his appointed justices could ignore or weaken all safeguards, and perhaps even cancel the “two terms only” amendment or else let his spouse or flunky “run for President” and technically hold the office while leaving decisions to the tyrant.)

However, our freedoms, health, and well-being now are most infringed by the huge corporations that provide our food, medicines, entertainment, clothing, transportation, means of communication, household goods, air and water pollution, and assorted trinkets and poisons. Mindless state governments are a distant second, although they tend to be more openly vicious and their legal arrows sure hurt plenty of women, poor folk, and folks with unconventional genders.

Because our constitution sees corporations and “private property,” and even “persons,” it was written to protect them rather than control them and hold them to account. Similarly, it was written by the representatives of thirteen states to protect those states as much as the people, and didn’t even bother with the Bill of Rights until public sentiment seemed to require it as a condition for adoption of the document.

But that’s another potential column.

Fact is, we have partnered with profit-seeking corporations and politicians often paid by those corporations to form ourselves an unhealthy and inequitable society. I guess I connect up several problems with that because I feel strongly about all of them. Not all are even anyone’s conscious intent, but they happen. As mentioned, we can dip our drinking cup in few rivers, and often can’t drink our own municipal drinking water. Communities are dissolving under the sad combination of having more and more decisions about us made by corporate chiefs and political flunkies, local news deserts getting further dried out by corporate recognition that local newspapers and radio discussion isn’t terribly profitable, we are subject to monopoly pricing, and various forms of pollution. Consequences include not only dying species, rampant illness, and incresing inequalities, but a loss of community, a loss of autonomy, a loss of our connection with nature, including our own natures. ]

Fraying Freedoms

Freedoms are fraying.

Current examples include book-banning, Otero County Commission’s citizen censorship, and a New Mexico order limiting free speech.

Nationally, book-banning is on the rise. As in a recent local example, it’s mostly a small conservative group. It’s not someone reading a book and getting disgusted or offended. Partially sparked by “Copycat” bans, book bans are up 33% this year, mostly censoring discussions of race, sex, and gender identity. It’s even struck fine literature like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye?

The Otero County Commission, during Couy Griffin’s tenure, was Trump Country. In public input, some crazy guy said the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. The sheriff hustled him roughly out of the chambers. Matthew Crecelius wasn’t just any citizen. He was a veteran, an ex-MP. He had also objected to the banning of library books. The ACLU of New Mexico helped him win a $45,000 apology in court recently.

Meanwhile, Governor Lujan-Grisham, likely with good intentions, issued Executive Order 2022-118, adopting as state law an overly broad definition of antisemitism that will chill free speech.

For years, Israeli lobbyists have been pushing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) definition of antisemitism, in what a panel of scholars called, “a movement seeking to redefine and curtail global conversations through the misappropriation and mobilization of legitimate concerns.” Bigotry is a legitimate concern, but the misleading definition can be used as a weapon against legitimate political dialogue.

Therefore been dozens of attempts to sell governments, universities, and major organizations on the definition. Assessing it, a team concluded, “The IHRA definition is fundamentally unsuitable for adoption” and recommended rejecting it because it didn’t “reflect the historical phenomena of antisemitism fully, didn’t “reflect the current realities of antisemitism,” and “has been, and could continue to be, used to suppress freedom of speech.”

For example, the definition forbids “Calling Israel a ‘racist endeavor.’” Whatever Zionists originally wanted, even many Jews call Israel an apartheid state now. Palestinians mostly can only be second-class citizens. Israel may say that’s necessary for security; but South Africa retained apartheid partially for security, lest Blacks, given more rights and freedom, might butcher Whites.

I find “Comparing Israel to the Nazis” both tasteless and inaccurate, but if I had family in Gaza, why couldn’t I compare Israel’s slaughters to Nazi slaughters? A major Israeli general has done so, publicly. Is he antisemitic?

I would distinguish what Israel’s is doing in Gaza from “genocide.” But others disagree. How many tens of thousands of civilian deaths would make that a legitimate question? No amount, says our guv.

Hating who I am differs fundamentally from hating what I do. Anti-Antisemitism traditionally, means punishing or mistreating people simply because they’re Jewish. Further, we mustn’t hold any Jew or Palestinian here responsible for misconduct there.

A New York Congressman has urged Congress to enact this restrictive standard. He has the chutzpah to shout that it’s completely unrelated to free speech! It’s not a free-speech issue because it could lead to people getting harmed. But Gazans are people, too.

We’d let a Tutsi or Armenian accuse Hutus or Turks of attempting genocide. No nationality should have some special privilege against having its bad conduct called out by others, particularly victims. Let public opinion or courts figure out the truth. New Mexico law should not outlaw the debate!

Governor, please don’t let free speech get chopped up by a definition, accepted by you with good intentions, that was designed as a weapon.

                                  – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 24 March, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website on the newspaper’s website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[The definition under discussion, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (“IHRA”) definition, can be found in full here. Although the IHRA website says clearly that criticism of Israel for doing things any country would be criticized for are NOT antisemitic, the definition is susceptible to being used to prevent or punish such speech, and has been so used.]

[Nothing in the column should be construed as “taking a side” in the overall controversy in Palestine / Israel. I understand each side’s arguments, and the pain everyone on both sides has endured, but I can’t defend what Hamas did on October 7 and I can’t defend what Israel is doing now. (I do understand that Hamas has won, in the sense that Israel is doing just what Hamas hoped it would, chilling the rapprochement between Israel and its neighbors, and the deterioration in the world’s opinion of Israel is everything Hamas could have hoped for. I also do understand that Hamas and Netanyahu have been two major impediments to any kind of “solution.” ]

How to Start Reducing Hyper-Partisanship

People are tired and frightened.

Yeah, we always are. People are more than usually tired and frightened.

We are tired of the often vicious hyperpartisanship. In polls, folks of all political persuasions loathe congress and desperately wish to cool off the red-hot partisanship.

Part of that is the viciousness. Folks who blame Donald Trump for that are not facing the whole picture. Sure, he’s exacerbated things; but it started while he was still just gouging tenants and workers around New York.

The base for most hatred, in our personal lives and our politics, is fear. A radio station once gave me a manual for talk radio. It said success required making your audience fear someone, then convincing them that you are the only one who can save them from what they fear. That creates devoted listeners.

Fear is part of us. We come into this busy, complex world yowling, clueless about our surroundings, and helpless. For a long time we’re children, dimly aware (until about 16, when we know everything) of how little we really understand. Our parents protect us, but necessarily teach us we need protection. (The many parents who abuse their kids, psychologically and otherwise, wreak more acute havoc.) Schools, particularly high school, exacerbate our fears: not too sure who we are yet, we get reminded how inadequate we are by other kids whose inner fears have led them to band together and reassure themselves by harassing or bullying those they can.

As adults, we may (or may not!) have comfort zones: family, workplace, bowling or bridge club, church, mosque or synagogue, reading group. Beyond those, the world feels dangerous. Free exploration of ideas may also feel dangerous, or just be something we lack time and patience for. So, more and more, we rely too much on political party or blogger or journalist. As we chose an allegiance in school, or as prisoners do, we become Republican or Democrat, or some subgroup treat not just overtly political issues but all issues, one of two ways: learn what X thinks and shout it; or learn what Y thinks and shout the opposite. In one move, we express loyalty to the group and proclaim to the world (and our inner voices) “No, I’m not lost and confused!!”

Ethnic hatreds are part of that. Considerably less so, I hope and believe, than in my youth. But the problem is wider: those who see things differently, do things differently, believe differently are dangerous. Fear is foolish, but powerful.

How can we push for the reasonably non-partisan and civil world we want? Push ourselves in that direction. Listen to folks we disagree with. Talk to everyone. Start with a smile, because you’re contacting a fellow human being. Recognize how much you each love your children, New Mexico desert, the Organ Mountains, and the sports, arts, hobbies, or causes to which you devote yourselves. Those children have different names, carpentry isn’t oil-painting, people ride horses, dirt-bikes, or bicycles, you pet a dog or a cat, but you both feel the same. You both want a better and more peaceful world, particularly for those children.

Find those common points. Laugh. Appreciate each other. Truly see each other. Then talk about Biden and Trump in that context. Not as antagonists, but fellow humans seeking the best course.

I hardly find anyone who can’t share a laugh, a sunset, or a ballgame, or teach me something.

                                      – 30 --

[The above column appeared Sunday, 17 March, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and will soon be on the newspaper’s website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[ Guess I have little to add here, except a stanza from a poem:

    An ancient Chinese zen master

    visited hell at suppertime.

    Tables laden with fine food, but

    chopsticks three feet long. All the food

    fell to the floor. No one could eat.

    In heaven, same problem – but souls

    simply fed each other and laughed.

(I later learned that Jewish lore includes a rabbi having a very similar experience.  Anyway, I guess I’ve never seen a reason to let our differences blind us to our common humanity. Maybe something about how I grew up. Doesn’t mean I don’t speak up, very directly, particularly if I hear anything that sounds racist. ]

Can Local Tragedy Inspire Improvements?

Death is real, in LCPD Officer Jonah Hernandez’s body-cam footage.

Surveillance video showed Armando Silva strolling around the property and sitting down. Hernandez approaches, uncertain whether Silva is the owner or the trespasser, then gets attacked too suddenly to draw a gun, and getting stabbed as he rapidly retreats.

Watching the bodice footage hurt. How much more must it hurt to watch when Jonah was your pal and co-worker? His face tight, tone steady, LCPD Chief Jeremy Story explained that if open records laws didn’t require him to release it, he wouldn’t.

The bodicam, moving backward to escape the knife, shows the assailant, the knife striking, blood spattering. Hernandez moans in pain. The assailant doesn’t care. Then Hernandez’s view of the bystander, who’s shot the assailant, struggling to keep Hernandez alive. Through a blood-stained lens, he’s just above us, his hand pressing on the neck wound, shouting alternately “Stay with me, man! I got you!” and “Shit!” maybe even after Hernandez is gone.

Afterward Chief Story mentioned that watching the video had deeply affected people who usually don’t show that sort of thing. Count me among them.

The details help say two things are important: what happened why; and where we go from here. Story passionately, blending controlled grief and anger with logic and understanding. As he said, we can either tear each other apart over the situation, changing nothing, or come together to effect real change. Amen.

What what killed Hernandez was not a mistake by him, or anyone’s personal anger at him: it was a situation in which we have a great many homeless people, most of them harmless, but some who commit crimes. Our greed-based economic system, rampant homelessness, the suddenly easy availability of fentanyl, homelessness, and perhaps our society’s disintegration into warring armed camps . . . killed Hernandez.

He wasn’t killed by City Council denying any police budgetary requests. He was not killed by judges being “soft on crime.” Chief Story mentioned that (as my previous column discusses) local judges must dismiss cases against mentally incompetent defendants. He an individual with 124 municipal court cases dismissed, as well as district court felonies and magistrate court charges. In the past year.

Locally and legislatively, folks are trying to improve laws and practices, striking a balance between equality/fairness (our constitutional amendment on bail) and safety (better outreach, more patrols, and better handling of with repeat, or “prolific,” offenders).

This is not “a homeless problem.” Trucks making night withdrawals from construction yards aren’t driven by homeless folks. Armando Silva killed Hernandez. Another young man broke into a nearby restaurant. At night. Ate and drank. Then penned a note, apologizing, saying he’d been hungry and thirsty and cold. Then used their phone. To call police to come arrest him for his crime. Homeless folks are as varied as everyone else. Most are suffering. Mostly, it’s not their fault, either.

We’re a complex society. We have created the problem. We all need to fix it. “All” doesn’t mean only those who get paid to fix things. And aiming at root causes will work best.

Meanwhile, in Story’s words, “let’s focus emotions on productive goals.” Fix that “incompetent to stand trial” loophole. Make clearer that our reformed bail law doesn’t require repeated re-releases of folks whose past convictions and plethora of new arrests say eloquently that pubic safety requires holding them before trial.

Let’s honor Jonas Hernandez by working together.

                                                  – 30 --

 

[The above column was written for the Sunday, 10 March, 2024, edition of the Las Cruces Sun-News and is on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[The knifing of Officer Hernandez and the unpleasant experiences of some small-business owners and others recently are evidence of a serious problem that has at times generated more heat than light. We all need to hear the testimony of those merchants. In my view, while we need to recognize how easily many citizens could slip into homelessness, and deal with that problem in a humane, sensible, healing way, whatever costs there are to our humanity and decency (and constitutional restrictions) shouldn’t be borne disproportionately by folks who happen to live or do business in certain areas of our community. We need to listen to them; we also need, as Chief Story does, to look into and understand the context; and we need not to attack each other.

Toward that end, I’ll be co-hosting a radio show on which guests will include both Chief Story and several of the citizens who have told their stories to the City Council during public-input sessions. That’ll be the 8:30 to 9:30 hour on 13 July of our weekly show. [“Speak Up, Las Cruces!” airs 8-10 a.m. each Wednesday on KTAL-LP Community radio, 101.5 FM, and streams on our website (linked above), re-airing 2-4 pm the same day and thereafter available on our archives. I want listeners to hear directly from those citizens, but also consider Chief Story’s perspective. It’s the kind of discussion we should be having, on community radio and elsewhere.]

Folks without Homes Shouldn't Pay the Price for our Economic System; but Small-Business Owners Shouldn't Pay the Price for our Community's Decency, Humaneness, and Lawfulness

Homelessness is epidemic in our country. And here.

It presents tough problems. A small number of those homeless are addicts or legally nutty. Some commit crimes. We know locking everyone up doesn’t work; but some citizens are suffering so badly --- starting days picking up others’ feces and garbage, getting threatened, and having stores broken into – that it’s Red Alert Time.

Our city manager form of government minimizes politics and cronyism. The council hires a manager to run operations. If you don’t like his work, you can complain to city council; but you can talk with the manager. (Well, Manager Ifo Pili invited folks to contact him, without mentioning he’s retreating to Utah.)

Public input at council meetings offers many harrowing accounts of unpleasant experience, though few practical ideas. We need change; but suggestions I hear are unlawful, unconstitutional, or impractical. Can’t legally ship people away. Legally, crazy folk can’t be tried for crimes. Their constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial is meaningless if they’re too far gone to cooperate with their lawyer. Local judges send ‘em up to Las Vegas, the State says “Yep, too crazy to try!” They’re back on the streets. Not the local judge’s fault, nor the City’s.

The City is trying new tactics. Fentanyl complicates the problem. We must curb the inflow, although that’ll increase prices and therefore crimes. We must invest in prevent addiction and treating addicts. We all, including city government, must do what we can.

Most comments expressed regular folks’ deep and honest frustration. Some folks try to use the situation to make political capital. But no councilor should dismiss the pain and anger we heard as just politically-motivated eloquence.

One angry citizen sarcastically “congratulated” Councilor Johana Bencomo “for creating such a beautiful magnet to bring crime and lawlessness into our district. Thank you for a job well done.” He’s entitled to think Community of Hope is a problem, not part of the solution. He’s entitled to dislike Councilor Bencomo. She sure didn’t cause the homelessness epidemic. Camp Hope long preceded her election, and helps the situation. (His main [and quite legitimate!] complaint is Burn Lake housing squatters who aren’t in Camp Hope. I sympathize with the problems inherent in living so close to a huge homeless encampment; but I thought this comment had more vitriol than sense.)

Another speaker inaccurately claimed the City Council had decreased the police budget, impliedly helping to cause Officer Jonah Hernandez’s tragic death. Pili later said that the council has repeated improved budgets that increased police spending 25% recently. The angry citizens had left. Understandably: they have businesses to run and kids to watch; but I hope they listen later to what councilors and Pili said.

We all need to work together, producing creative, helpful ideas, debating factually, and collaborating to improve the situation. Not folks personally attacking councilors, nor councilors dismissing aggrieved citizens. Instead of political adversaries using this tragic situation, let’s combine all our efforts to deal with an unprecedented and highly challenging situation.

I’m inviting citizens to discuss this on radio – with us and LCPD Chief Jeremy Story. (Unlike Pili, he’ll be here. For a long time, I believe. And hope.) I also hope the city schedules a work session.

Civil discussion can eliminate some myths, clearly communicate citizens’ real issues, enlighten folks on what laws and practicalities are in our way, and give everyone’s ideas a fair hearing.

Listening is important.

– 30 –

[The above column appeared Sunday, 3 March, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[What I hope I articulated in the column is respect for all concerned. I watched the entire video of the Public Comment and Councilor Comment items, plus the City Manager’s Comments. I was moved by the public input. Many speakers clearly balanced their understandable distress and anger with understanding of the humanity (and, mostly, decency) of folks without homes and with the limits on what city councilors could do. I share their outrage and feel some duty as a citizen to try to help better things. However, some, either because of their understandable anger or for other reasons, viciously attacked councilors, mostly for things beyond those councilors’ control. I wanted to get folks with very different perspectives together in a room, to discuss things on radio, and will do so the morning of 13 July. I hope it’ll be a candid but civil discussion that moves participants and listeners toward mutual understanding, and perhaps working together toward improvement.]

[I also hope it’s clear that while obviously the homelessness epidemic is a serious contributor to our problems, as is the fentanyl epidemic, (a) homelessness is mostly NOT the fault of the homelessness, (b) most homeless folks are not criminals, and (c) that “solutions,” or, at least, improvements, are not always easy to identify or implement, we need to be humane and just both toward folks without homes (a situation many are a missed-paycheck away from) and folks who live near them or have small businesses. As I’ve said before, those small-business owners and residents should not have to pay the price for our efforts to remain a decent, humane, and lawful community.]

[I send in my columns Thursdays, mid-day. Stuff happens between then and Sunday morning, when the paper gets read, and I post a column here and record the radio-commentary version. For example, this week, between deadline and Sunday morning, came a very interesting press conference by LCPD Chief Jeremy Story, who [very reluctantly, as I would feel in his place!] showed TV cameras and news reporters footage of the killing of Officer Hernandez, and discussed where we are, how we got here, and some sensible steps to get somewhere better. Immediately afterward I wrote next week’s column. I want to discuss his suggestions, and praise his level-headedness and judgment in saying what he needed to say despite what must be strong grief, anger, and other emotions. I was marveling at how his discussion exemplified balance. (While recommending steps to deal with the practical problems caused by the 2016 bail-reform amendment to the New Mexico Constitution and by the rights of mentally incompetent defendants discussed above, he could reiterate his respect for those rights and tell us that he too voted for the bail amendment, and believes in its purposes.) Toward the end, he spoke of balance, analogizing how we must proceed to parenting. Spoke of balancing grace with justice, love with accountability, discipline with freedom.]