Auditing the Tea Party: One style of American repression

Posted on May 12, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Another example of the old joke: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you:

The revelation that the Internal Revenue Service targeted groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names for strict scrutiny tells us absolutely nothing good about either the Tea Party movement or the government its adherents distrust so much.  Expect more to come out, but right now we know that at least 75 groups with suspicious names (as above) were flagged by IRS employees for investigation.  Their applications for tax-exempt status [501(c)4] were delayed, and the applicants were subject to unusually intrusive questions about donors and intent that violated IRS policy–and maybe the law.

This is not to say that current policies about tax-exemption are wise or serve democracy well (see Matthew Yglesias), particularly in the brief post-Citizens United era.  But the whole notion of liberal [yes, liberal] democracy is equivalent treatment for groups and citizens regardless of their views; government isn’t supposed to pick sides.  Establishing a special category for Tea Party groups, allegedly instigated by low level employees, was apparently known about up the chain of command for at least two years.  This should be disturbing–but not necessarily surprising.  There is, as we know, a long historical record of our Federal government going after groups and individuals that someone in power thought were dangerous and unAmerican.  The list is sure to include at least some that you despise, for example (a very partial list): the Communist Party, Daniel Ellsberg, the Black Panthers, the Ku Klux Klan, pacifists during wartime, journalists of all sorts, Martin Luther King, and Clark Kerr.  But the democratic ideal is always for more debate and more sunlight.

Well, we live in a fallen world.

The IRS has apologized, promising a full investigation–and even if they don’t deliver, be sure that the Congress will.  Whatever additional information surfaces, it will be amplified and promoted by activists and elected officials interested in discrediting the Obama administration–and government in general.  Politically, it’s worlds better than repealing health insurance reform (again) or producing an honest budget.

The IRS harassment of Tea Party groups that we know about so far, however inexcusable, is mild compared to what many many other activists have suffered. This doesn’t mean, however, that it doesn’t matter or wasn’t damaging.

It’s important to remember how such harassment works.  Minimally, it raises the costs of political engagement for people someone in government doesn’t like.  In this case, Tea Partiers are forced to spend more time and money doing something that the IRS effectively made easier for people with different political views.  Time that could have been spent developing coherent analyses, political strategies, or reaching out to potential supporters is spent, instead, talking with a lawyer or accountant (generally on the clock) about filling out forms and requests for information.  At a moment when the Tea Party was still effectively mobilizing, partisans were distracted by something else.

It can be worse.  Fooling around with the IRS is no fun for anyone, and such experiences can dissuade many people from future politics altogether.  The intent of such harassment is to separate the committed hard core from the marginally engaged who might sometimes join them.  It’s the latter group that matters most, most of the time.

Activists on the left, unsympathetic to Tea Party causes, should be particularly sensitive to such harassment.  They should remember that a bureaucracy that gets away with going after foolish or unpopular causes can easily turn on them next.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Gitmo and the hunger strikes

Posted on May 8, 2013 by David S. Meyer

What happens when you run strap a prisoner down and run a tube through his nose to feed him?  What if it’s twice a day?  What if it’s one hundred people every day?

This is what’s happening at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

It’s hard to make the argument that the internment of suspected “enemy combatants” in a prison at Guantanamo Bay is a good thing.  It’s expensive, difficult, bad press, and violates basic conventions of the rules of war–and, of course, US law.  Candidate Barack Obama said all this in 2008, promising to close the prison camp within his first year in the Oval Office.

It was only one of the issues that encountered difficult resistance from  Capitol Hill, and it’s one that he didn’t fight–at least not much.  Four years later, Gitmo still open, with all the deficits he identified before becoming president, the issue of an off-shore prison camp barely registered in the campaign.  After all, one of the attractions of interning prisoners in Cuba is their relative lack of visibility back in the US.

In America some activists keep trying to put Guantanamo back on the political agenda, organizing protests, staging hunger strikes, and generally doing anything they can to get attention.  Successes have been fleeting, and the issue has often fallen to the back of the agendas of even most peace groups.

The prisoners themselves have created the latest blip in a history of neglect that stretches more than a decade.  When a new rotation of guards allegedly mistreated Korans (I’m sure there’s more to this), the prisoners staged a new round of hunger strikes.

The hunger strike is inherently coercive, and it depends upon eliciting a reaction from others who recognize the humanity of the striker.  These strikes began in February, and by most reports, now include most of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo.  The United States has been force-feeding the strikers–with tubes through their noses.  It’s awful, and it’s hardly good press for the prison or, more generally, the US and its humanitarian goals.  Still, it’s preferable to a series of deaths.

President Obama said as much when he announced that he would re-engage the issue of closing the prison camp.  But this was days ago, and he’s been having a hard time with Congress on other issues that most of the public cares far more about, like immigration, guns, and jobs.

Activists would be wise in not expecting follow through from President Obama without significantly more pressure.  Some groups are trying, again.  Witness against Torture is promoting sympathy hunger strikes.  Code Pink is doing the same.  Twenty-four human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union have signed an open letter calling for the prison to be shut down.  (This too has happened before).  Organized groups are also trying to stage demonstrations to put the issue higher on the national (and Obama’s) agenda.  (Here’s International Answer, which is organizing for May 18th.)

The point: the mass hunger strike gives activists and politicians the opportunity to raise the issue again.  Making change, however, requires a sustained commitment from those outside the prison’s walls.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Remembering the shootings at Kent State

Posted on May 4, 2013 by David S. Meyer

It’s the anniversary of the killing of four college students at Kent State University.  Young National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the war on May 4, discharging more than 60 rounds in roughly 13 seconds.  They killed four students: Allison Krause, 19, and Jeffrey Miller, 20, were part of a nonviolent protest that university authorities promised to ban; Sandy Scheuer, 20, and William Schroeder, 19, were walking to class.  The National Guardsmen also wounded nine other students, some severely.

The protests at Kent State were part of a wave of protests that swept across American college campuses on May 1, a Friday, the day after President Richard Nixon announced that he had already ordered American air forces to expand their bombing to Cambodia.  (Roughly a week earlier, after operations had already commenced, Secretary of State William P. Rogers testified before Congress, explicitly denying any intention of expanding the war to Cambodia.)

In Kent, protest and disruption spread into the town that night, with bonfires set in the streets and altercations with police.  The mayor declared a state of emergency, ordered the bars closed, and asked the governor for help in getting everything back under control; the National Guard arrived at the University on Saturday. Students planned a demonstration for Monday to protest the presence of the Guard on campus.  University officials tried to cancel the demonstration, but students assembled anyway. The Guardsmen ordered the students to disperse, then used tear gas before opening fire.

It was terrible, and there is still a great deal we don’t know about: why the National Guard was on campus in the first place?  why the order to fire on unarmed students hundreds of feet away?  Who gave the order?  or was an order even given?  There’s a lot of writing, and a lot of controversy, still.  A good start is a summary, including an annotated bibliography, by two emeritus professors at Kent State, Jerry M. Lewis and Thomas R. Hensley, of Sociology and Political Science, respectively.

The shooting of unarmed students on a public college campus fostered a sense that the country was coming apart.  It was followed by a police shooting of student protesters at Jackson State in Mississippi, where Philip Gibbs, 21, and James Green, 17, were killed, and 12 other students were wounded.

President Nixon established a commission, chaired by William Scranton (formerly governor of Pennsylvania), to report on campus unrest.  commissioned a report on campus unrest.  Published in September, the Scranton Commission answered few of the pressing questions about Kent State or Jackson State, but observed that campus unrest seemed to decline when the war in Vietnam seemed like it was winding down, and escalated after the bombing in Cambodia started.

The war and the demonstrations continued for a while, tapering off when the draft ended the next year.  Authorities developed ways to control dissent, on campus and elsewhere, without using live ammunition against protesters involved in large demonstrations.  Demonstrations generally became less threatening, less disruptive, and less dangerous.

The Kent State and Jackson State killings remain tragic exceptions to more routine protest politics.  It’s a good sign that they stand out in our memories.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

May Day 2013

Posted on May 3, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Mayfly

Wednesday’s May Day events remind us about how the people who participate in an event define it for their own purposes.  Initially a celebration of Spring, organized around May poles (and May flies?),  for more than 100 years, May 1 has been a day for celebrating  working people around the world (but not in the United States).

The May Day event was originally intended to commemorate the massacre of labor marchers at Haymarket Square in Chicago on May 4, 1886.  Organized labor poured its efforts into May Day, and still does, but no one owns the calendar, or even the day.

By looking at May Day events, we can see how a range of activists are trying to define their own efforts–and the interests of working people.

As it did last year, Occupy Wall Street tried to use the occasion to showcase the broad range of activities Occupiers have undertaken since the encampments were cleared more than a year ago.  They put together a full schedule and spoke out on many issues, but turnout and attention were down from last year.

In Greece the largest unions used the occasion to continue their protests against harsh austerity policies, supporting a 24 hour general strike.  But turnout (an estimated 15,000), disruption, and attention were all diminished from similar events over the past few months.

In Los Angeles, organized labor and May Day are all about rights for immigrants. Supported by local unions, the turnout estimated in the thousands was reported to be largely Latino, and the demands were focused on immigration reform.  An impressive display and a clear message, to be sure, but less dramatic and much smaller than immigration rallies in the same place over the past few months.

May Day has become an available holder for activists to try to fill with their own concerns.  This year local concerns and local organizers overshadowed any national or international message–beyond a general concern for working people.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Immigration politics inside and outside the Capitol

Posted on April 11, 2013 by David S. Meyer

The immigration rights activists returned to demonstrate outside the Capitol yesterday, as reports of a Senate compromise on an immigration reform continue to seep into media reports.

Most reports put the turnout in the tens of thousands–and noted sympathy rallies in at least 18 states.  Some substantial chunk was turned out by labor unions.  But there were lots of others.  Latino groups were well-represented, and Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP got the most prominent speaking slot.  The Washington Blade trumpeted the participation of gay and lesbian groups at the rally.  Not demonstrating outside, but very much on the minds of members of Congress, was the strong support for reform coming from business interests (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has founded and funded his own pro-immigration group.)

Do the demonstrations outside the Capitol affect the negotiations going on inside?  Sure, but it’s not a simple cause and effect (>200,000 and the waiting period for citizenship drops from 10 years to 8?  Unlikely.).  Rather, Wednesday’s demonstrations are part of a much larger set of campaigns that have pushed immigration reform to the fore, while the results of the last election gave Republicans in particular strong motivation to stand up to the organized and active anti-immigration movement.  Each discrete action is far less important than the much larger effort.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a visible player in the Senate negotiations, was well-aware of the political deficits of his party’s posture on immigration and the potential benefits of doing something on the issue.  These demonstrations are a reminder for all concerned.

The activists promise that they’ll be coming back to Washington until substantial reform is passed.  They’ll have to.

Although virtually everyone agrees about the sorry state of the current set of policies, negotiating the details of reform is no easy matter.  Inside the Capitol, legislators are arguing about guest workers, paths to citizenship, and border security.  The demonstrations and the citizen lobbying are efforts to stiffen the spine of would-be allies in negotiations, and big visible demonstrations are likely to yield almost invisible, but still significant, changes around the margins.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Recovery for Occupy Wall Street’s library

Posted on April 10, 2013 by David S. Meyer

In the weeks that Occupy Wall Street created a protest village in lower Manhattan, activists put together a lending library of more than 5,000 volumes.  When the police cleared the demonstrators out of Zuccotti Park, contractors hauled all of the stuff that remained away, including the library.

The books weren’t burned, but the the haulers treated the volumes like trash.  Of course, there were also computers and cameras, tents and blankets, and bicycle generators, but the pictures of the library in pieces in a dumpster provided some of the more disturbing images from the eviction.

Occupy’s librarians sued the City of New York for damages, and yesterday the City settled, making a payment of $375,000.  (Read the settlement agreement here.)

Not quite an apology, the City issued a statement:

Defendants acknowledge and believe it is unfortunate that, during the course of clearing Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011, books were damaged so as to render them unusable, and additional books are unaccounted for. Defendants further acknowledge and believe it unfortunate that certain library furnishings and equipment likewise were damaged so as to render them unusable, and other library furnishings and equipment may be unaccounted for. Plaintiffs and Defendants recognize that when a person’s property is removed from the city it is important that the City exercise due care and adhere to established procedures in order to protect legal rights of the property owners.

The City will make payments to several groups of Occupiers for damage to their property, but just about half of the total will go to the lawyers who filed the case.

There’s got to be some point there.

For New York City, $375,00 is a relatively small price to pay for ending the litigation.

For the rest of us, this is a good chance to consider the paradox of political openness in America.  Demonstrators camped out in a tiny private park in the middle of the City, and then were summarily evicted, their property destroyed within minutes.  Yet the evicted were able to hold the City responsible for the property destruction, once they were able to enlist lawyers on their behalf.  More than a year after the eviction, Occupy Wall Street is once again in the news.

I haven’t been able to find a source on how the non-lawyers will use their settlement money.  Presumably, they’ll put it back into the cause in some way.  Although even half of $375,000 seems like a lot of money to most of us, we need to remember that this is in the context of a politics where a billionaire casino magnate can contribute $100,000,000 to candidates for office.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Marriage equality and the digital political button

Posted on April 2, 2013 by David S. Meyer

If you visited a Facebook site last week you probably saw some version of the badge at right, representing support for marriage equality side of the cases the Supreme Court considered.  Activists encouraged people to change their profile picture to come out with their support for same sex marriage, displaying a Human Rights campaign symbol.

Rebecca Rosen, at The Atlantic,  reports that 2.7 million people changed their profile pictures.  There were all kinds of clever and stylish variations (samples posted at left), but the point was pretty obvious.

As we consider what changes in activism the new social media have wrought, it’s worth thinking about this digital button a little bit.

At first look, it seems like the online version of the political button, where the wearer puts his commitments on his lapel, showing everyone he passes what he cares about.  At best, the button encourages those who agree with you, and maybe leads to a productive conversation with people who don’t.  It also serves as a reminder about events outside the office or school or bus or church or gym.

The digital version of the button on Facebook seems to offer a bigger and less consequential audience.   You only see the profile picture of people who’ve acknowledged you as a “friend,” most of whom probably already agree with you.  Those friends and relatives who don’t share your values have already found ways to reconcile your unappealing political views with some of your countervailing virtues–and that probably means looking the other way when you post politics.  Sigh.

More generally, I wonder just how much the self-selecting online social networks that so entrance us do to promote political dialogue or opinion change.

They do, however, provide cool data for new figures.  Here’s a Facebook map of the United States, highlighting the parts of the country where participation in the digital badge was more extensive:

Rosen’s report tells us just about what we’d expect:

Facebook’s Data Science team also mapped out the likelihood of a profile-pic update across the nation, showing a pretty widespread geographic distribution everywhere outside of the south and parts of the plains region. The county with the greatest participation rate? Washtenaw County, Michigan, where the University of Michigan has its main campus in Ann Arbor. Facebook estimates that 6.2 percent of users who logged in in Washtenaw Country changed their profile picture. In general, college towns saw high rates of participation (such as Orange and Durham counties in North Carolina, home of UNC and Duke, and Johnson County, Iowa, where the University of Iowa is based), as did major cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and DC.

It’s not to say that the old style buttons weren’t just as easy to put on or take off, and the digital version certainly won’t damage your shirt or jacket.  But are you reaching anyone new?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Klan is back (it never went away), in Memphis

Posted on April 1, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Riding the bus to the rallyMembers of the Ku Klux Klan staged a protest rally in Memphis on Saturday.

They were protesting the City’s decision to rename three bridges.  The New York Times reports:

The old names were Confederate Park; Jefferson Davis Park, named for the Confederacy’s president; and Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, named for a Confederate lieutenant general and the Klan’s first grand wizard. The new names are Memphis Park, Mississippi River Park and Health Sciences Park, but the council may change those, too.


At first glance, it’s kind of amazing that the old names lasted as long as they did; the majority of Memphis’s population is black.

But it makes sense that the Klan would try to use this occasion to turn out its faithful.  The lost Confederate names are concrete symbols of exactly what drives Klan membership: white fears of the loss of status and privilege.  And perhaps citizen groups would turn out to counter protest, generating conflict and perhaps far more visibility to the Klan.  Clashes, arrests, and violence would generate national news and stoke that sense of threat that aids in mobilization.

But it was an overcast day.  The Times reports a turnout of about 75 demonstrators.  Police were determined to keep the event contained and non-violent.  Police cordoned off a section of the Downtown, and stationed officers in riot gear all around the contained area.  They bussed the Klansmen in from a local basketball arena, where they were asked to gather, searching the marchers before they could board the buses.  Although local authorities arranged for three buses, the Klan could only fill two.  The sound equipment they brought didn’t work very well, and even reporters had a hard time hearing the demonstrators as they marched in a fenced off protest pen.

Police asked residents to avoid the Downtown area, and promoted an Easter egg event on the other side of the city as an alternative.  A few counterdemonstrators came out to chant, but were separated by fences and a considerable distance from the Klansmen.  Klan chants, apparently, couldn’t be heard outside the immediate protest area.

The Commercial Appeal reports:

One Klan member who only identified himself as “Edward” wasn’t pleased with the event. “I wish it hadn’t rained on us, and that we hadn’t picked Easter weekend. We’d have had a lot bigger turnout,” he said.

Maybe.

The right to free speech, apparently, doesn’t include access to an audience.

Before you take too too much satisfaction in the KKK’s sad soggy mini-rally, think about what such police practices do to the causes you care about.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cesar Chavez birthday, Cesar Chavez holiday

Posted on March 31, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Today, March 31, is Cesar Chavez’s birthday; the holiday was celebrated Friday.  In commemoration, I’m reposting some thoughts on the holiday, originally posted 2011.

On my campus, we commemorated Cesar Chavez Day early, yesterday, rather than March 31 (his birthday), by closing.  The state established the holiday in 2000, and six other states have followed suit.  In California, the legislature calls upon public schools to develop appropriate curricula to teach about the farm labor movement in the United States, and particularly Chavez’s role in it.

A campaign to establish a national holiday has stalled so far (The Cesar Chavez National holiday website seems to have last been updated in 2008), but last year President Obama issued a proclamation announcing a day of commemoration, and calling upon all Americans “to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez’s enduring legacy.”

Political figures have many reasons for creating holidays, including remembering the past; identifying heroic models for the future; recognizing and cultivating a political constituency; and providing an occasion to appreciate a set of values.  Regardless of the original meaning, the holidays take on new meanings over time.  Columbus Day, for example, is celebrated as an occasion for pride in Italian Americans (e.g.), and commemorated and mourned as a symbol of genocide  and empire (e.g.).

Cesar Chavez’s life and work is well worth remembering and considering, particularly now.  His career as a crusader was far longer than that of Martin Luther King discussed (here and here) and he was far more of an organizer than Fred Korematsu (discussed here).  Chavez’s Medal of Freedom was awarded shortly after his death in 1993, by President Clinton, but many of his accomplishments were apparent well before then.

As a young man, Chavez was an agricultural worker; by his mid-twenties, he became a civil rights organizer, working for the Community Service Organization in California.  With Dolores Huerta (at left), in 1962 Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers.  Focusing on poor, mostly Mexican-American workers, Chavez’s vision for activism was right at the cornerstone of racial and economic justice.  Establishing an organization, however, is a long way from winning recognition and bargaining rights as a union.

Chavez was a tactician, a public figure, a charismatic, and something of a mystic.  Modeling his efforts after Gandhi’s successful campaigns, Chavez was an emphatic practitioner of active nonviolence.  He employed boycotts, strikes, long fasts, demonstrations, long marches, and religious rhetoric in the service of his cause.  He also registered voters, lobbied, and worked in political campaigns.  He was a tireless and very effective organizer for most of his life.

But holidays are best celebrated with an eye to the future, rather than the past.

On Cesar Chavez Day this year, we can think about the large and growing Latino community in the United States.  The 2010 Census reports that Latinos now comprise roughly 1/6 of the American population, and more than 1/3 of the population in California. This is the youngest and fastest-growing population in America today, and they are severely underrepresented in the top levels of politics, education, and the economy.   The civil rights map is at least as complicated as at any time in American history, but not less important or urgent.  (The struggle about the DREAM Act is reminiscent of the debate about Voting Rights 45 years ago.)  The future of American Latinos is very much the future of America.

And Chavez saw the civil rights struggle as a labor campaign.  When Chavez and Huerta started their campaign, nearly one third of Americans were represented by unions.  The percentage now is now just about 10 percent, and less in the private sector.

And public sector workers, even if represented by unions aren’t doing so well.  The ongoing conflict in Wisconsin is all about weakening unions that are already making very large concessions on wages and pensions.  The campaign in Wisconsin is part of a larger national effort, which is playing out in Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere.  Even in states where anti-union forces are weaker, state employees face lay-offs, wage cuts, and increased health and pension costs.  Importantly, we need to remember that you can’t attack teachers, nurses, police officers, and firefighters without hurting the people they serve: us.

Or should I say, US?

Cesar Chavez’s birthday is an opportune time for thinking about Latinos, civil rights, and American labor, and not just the start of Spring.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Coming out and digging in

Posted on March 29, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Public opinion data provides strong support for the coming out strategy that has been at the core of gay and lesbian activism for decades.

The graph on the left (right), where the lines cross, is a familiar one for anyone following the gay and lesbian movement.  More recent polls show support for same sex marriage as high as 58 percent–although, as marriage equality opponents note, turnout matters a great deal.

The generational break-down, at the right of the figure, should also be fairly familiar.  Younger people are far more likely to support same sex marriage.  This bodes well for the gay and lesbian movement over time.  Both same sex marriage supporters and opponents will be getting older over time; more of the opponents will, uh, no longer be engaged in the political debate.

But it’s not just generational replacement.

Pew also asked people who have changed their minds why they did so.  Although you should always take such results with more than a grain of salt, the most common explanation for shifting to support marriage equality was knowing a gay person.

When more people come out as gay or lesbian, or as the friend or relative of someone gay or lesbian, fewer people will be able to avoid knowing a gay person.

A little coda: popular culture matters here.  American television viewers know Ellen DeGeneres or those sweet snarky fellows on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  The friendly folks on television may spend more time in your living room, sort of, than any of your neighbors.

When GAY seems less odd, it’s increasingly difficult to justify discrimination.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments