Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A Thanksgiving Gift: An Artist and a Song

This Thanksgiving week, I want to thank a friend who lives in Texas and is passionately committed to peace and justice.  He sent out an email which included the web site for an artist and a song for our times.  The artist's name is Makana, and his song is "We Are the Many".  He is the 1960's Bob Dylan of today, with the song reminiscent of "Blowin' in the Wind", "Times They Are A Changin'", and "Masters of War".

Listen to the songs of an era and we can learn the stresses and spirit of that era.  "We Are the Many" is a cry for justice, much like the Psalmist: "Listen to the sound of my cry....", "Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord...."; or the prophet Isaiah: "...but you shall cry out for pain of heart...."; or Lamentations:
"... they hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry...."  During this Thanksgiving week, I am thankful for Makana and his song.

A backstory sets the context.  Makana is a singer from Hawaii. His full name is Matthew Swalinkavich, but changed to his stage name to Makana, which is "the gift" in Hawaiian.  He has performed at the White House.  He was asked to perform during a sit-down meal for the APEC G-20 meeting a couple of weeks ago.  Dinner music for the powerful.  The story goes that he started his musical set singing traditional Hawaiian-style music. Eventually, he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a t-shirt that said, in handwritten letters, "Occupy with Aloha".

Describing the roll-out of the song, he says: "I started out very cautiously because my intention was not to disrupt their dinner.  My intention was to subliminally convey a message that I felt was paramount to the negotiations.  Eventually, I got enough courage to go for it for an extended period of time.  I ended my show with the line 'the bidding of the many not the few'.  I sang it about 50 times in different ways for them to hear." The lyrics and the melody provide a stirring anthem for the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Check it out and be thankful: makanamusic.com. The accompanying video will touch your heart.

We come here, gather round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who've trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage

From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won't withdraw.

CHORUS: We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight

They own it free of liability
They own it, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free. CHORUS

You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none

So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest. CHORUS

You can't divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you cannot buy

Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail. CHORUS

We are the many
You are the few

Echoing the Psalmist and the prophets, Makana and his song are gifts for which we can be thankful.

Blessed Thanksgiving!

Peace!
Ron

Sunday, November 6, 2011

The Injustice of Luck

"How Lucky They Are" is the headline of an article written by Greg Breining of the Startribune.  He writes that a University of Minnesota professor has concluded that "Mostly, extreme wealth comes from luck."  He continues: "In a capitalistic society, extreme concentration of wealth does not arise from extreme differences in work ethic, skills, investment smarts or other virtues.  Nor does it come from connections, cronyism or crookedness."

Carried to its logical end, Joseph Fargione, lead author of the study, states "...the inevitable outcome of unfettered capitalism is oligarchy."  In short, "luck" has significantly created an unequal caste system of division between the rich, middle, and poor, with power resting with a small, wealthy elite.

Fargione quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1837 warned that the American industrial class is "one of the harshest that ever existed, [which could create] permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy."  Fargione supports de Tocqueville's analysis by referring to Kevin Phillips' book, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, which reads: "[By 2000] the United States was not only the world's wealthiest nation and leading economic power, but also the Western industrial nation with the greatest percentage of the world's rich and greatest gap between rich and poor."

Breining quotes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who observed, "We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."

The top 1% of Americans control about 40% of the nation's wealth.  In a recent article in the New York Times, the author reviewed the Social Justice Index study of the 31 participating countries of the OECD. The social justice categories include: poverty prevention, overall poverty rate, child poverty rate, senior citizen poverty rate, income inequality, pre-primary education, health rating, and intergenerational justice rating.  In the "Overall Social Justice Rating", the United States came in 27th, just ahead of Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey.

Unfettered, unregulated capitalism, coupled with a growing separation between the rich and poor, protected by a justice system that protects the powerful, governed by a political system that is irresponsive to the growing economic divide, and controlled by a corporate elite that cares more for profit than people, is crushing the United States and much of the world.  The result is the decline of the West.

If this disparity is primarily because of "luck" as Fargione concludes, the world is truly out of control and the end is dire.  Correction then is to do the opposite of the above analysis: to balance serendipitous LUCK with responsible LAWS, with the goal to provide opportunity and enough for all people, to create a system that allows for wealth and opportunity to be spread around.  Luck is not enough to provide these outcomes.  Actions should include: 1) institute a more just and equitable tax code, expecting all to pay an appropriate amount, yet expecting the more well-to-do to pay more, enacting a transaction tax or "Robin Hood" tax on all Wall Street investments, and eliminating appropriate tax loop-holes; 2) make Medicaid and Medicare available to all people, cutting payments to physicians and making payments dependent on healthy outcomes rather than number of treatments, working with drug companies to control expenses; 3) make appropriate adjustments to Social Security, such as eliminating the contributory ceiling on contributions, and instituting a means test;  4) cut defense spending by eliminating "cost plus" weapons programs, bringing troops home from Europe, Afghanistan, and most of over 700 global bases; 5) create ways to get the odious effects of money out of elections and Washington politics, starting with the repeal of the Citizens United decision; 6) make public education affordable and available to all by eliminating the voucher system and privatization.

Justice ought not be dependent upon luck.  God did not create a world that feeds upon luck for righteousness.  Justice and righteousness have their roots in love, compassion, equality, and opportunity.
Let luck be a by-product of these virtues.  Luck ought to be the cherry on the top rather than the uncertain, occasional, win the lottery, main course.

Peace!
Ron