Did They Die In Vain?

by Congressman Alan Grayson

On May 4, 1886, in Haymarket Square in Chicago, the public rallied peacefully in support of 40,000 workers in Chicago who had gone on strike, to win the right to organize. The police attacked, and eight died.

Part 1

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Part 3

("The great industrialists all, I think, woke up, at least at times, in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and worried about revolution. It was impossible not to entertain the potential for serious social unrest and indeed political and economic revolution in this country, when the rewards of this extraordinary moment of change in capitalism were being so unequally distributed. And they knew it. Field knew it. Pullman knew it. Swift knew it. Armour knew it. They couldn't not know it and that was a very scary possibility for people like Field." ~ Nancy Koehn, historian)

On July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, 3800 workers went on strike, to win the right to organize. Three hundred hired and armed goons attacked them. Five people died.



On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, 1200 coal miners went on strike, to win the right to organize. The Colorado National Guard attacked their shantytown, and burned it to the ground. Nineteen people died. Two women and 11 children were asphyxiated, and they burned to death.



Here and around the world, many people have fought and died, so that you and I would have the right to organize.

And so that 250,000 public workers in Wisconsin would have that right, too.

This is not exactly a new idea. Six months after the Ludlow Massacre, President Wilson signed the Clayton Act, prohibiting the prosecution of union members under Antitrust Law. That was almost a century ago.

Two decades later, during the Franklin Roosevelt's first term as president, he signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. It protects the right to organize. That was over 75 years ago.

The right to organize also is a fundamental principle of international law. Over 150 countries have ratified the "Right to Organize" Convention, an international treaty. It was adopted in 1949, over 60 years ago.

So why are we even talking about this, 11 years into the 21st century?

Because the teabaggers want to "take back America." They want to take it back, all right -- take it all the way back to the 19th century. When there was no right to organize. When people worked for a dollar a day. When grown men competed against children for jobs. When women were barred from most jobs entirely. When you worked until you died.

Not to mention slavery.

I want to see an America that is healthy and wealthy.

They want an America that provides cheap labor to our corporate overlords. An America where the middle class is chained by debt.

We didn't ask for this fight. But we have no choice except to fight back. For the survival of the middle class in America. For us, for our children, and for our grandchildren. And so that the victims in Haymarket, in Homestead and in Ludlow did not die in vain.

As Cardinal Spellman said 45 years ago, "it is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny."
I'm ready to fight for what's right. What about you?

Scott Walker - Manure Spreader

The Corporation (2003)

Watch the full length movie

 The Corporation website

Transcript Part 1 (pdf)

Transcript Part 2 (pdf)

Naomi Klein on The Rachel Maddow Show 3/8/2011

 Transcript

MADDOW:  The Michigan house has already passed and the Michigan Senate is about to pass a bill that sounds like it is out of a dystopian, leftist novel from the future.  If you think that Republican governors across the country are using fiscal crisis as a pretext to do stuff they otherwise want to do, this is something I don‘t think I ever would have believed Republicans even wanted to do.

But this is what they are proposing.  It hasn't really gotten much national attention.  But please, just check this out.  Governor Rick Snyder‘s budget in Michigan is expected to cut aid to cities and towns so much that a lot of cities and towns in Michigan are expected to be in dire financial straights.  Right now, Governor Snyder is pushing a bill that would give himself, Governor Snyder, and his administration, the power to declare any town or school district to be in a financial emergency.

If a town was declared by the governor and his administration to be in a financial emergency, they would get to put somebody in charge of that town, and they want to give that emergency manager they just put in charge of the town the power to, quote, “reject, modify, or terminate” any contract the town may have entered into, including any collective bargaining agreements.

So, this emergency person who gets put in charge of a town deemed to be in financial crisis by the governor‘s administration, this emergency person gets to strip the town of union rights, unilaterally, by their own personal authority.  But this emergency person also gets the power under this bill to suspend or dismiss elected officials.  Think about that for a second.  It doesn't matter who you voted for in Michigan, it doesn't matter who you elected, your elected local government can be dismissed at will.

The emergency person sent in by the Rick Snyder administration could recommend that a school district be absorbed into another school district.  That emergency person is also granted power specifically to disincorporate or dissolve entire city governments.

What year was your town founded?  Does it say so like on the town border as you drive into town?  Does it say what year your town was founded?  What did your town‘s founding fathers and mothers have to go through in order to incorporate your town?

Republicans in Michigan want to be able to unilaterally abolish your town and disincorporate it, regardless of what you as a resident think about it.  You don‘t have the right to express an opinion about it through your locally elected officials who represent you, because the Republicans in Michigan say they reserve the right to dismiss your measly elected officials and to do what they want instead because they know best.

The version of this bill that passed Republican-controlled Michigan house said it was fine for this emergency power to declare a fiscal emergency invoking all of these extreme powers.  It was fine for that power to be held by a corporation.

So swaths of Michigan could, at the governor‘s disposal, be handed over to the discretion of a company.  You still want your town to exist?  Take it up with the board of directors of this corporation that will be overseeing your future now.  Or rather don‘t take it up with them.  Frankly, they are not interested.

Instead of thinking of Michigan as the Upper and Lower Peninsula, let‘s think about Amway-stan, right?  The area between Pontiac and Flint could be a nice Dow Chemical-ville, maybe.

The power to overrule and suspend elected government justified by a financial emergency.  Oh, and how do you know when you‘re in a financial emergency?  Because the governor tells you you‘re in a financial emergency.  Or a company he hires to do so does that instead.

The Senate version of the bill in Michigan says it has to be humans declaring the fiscal emergency.  The house bill says a firm can do that just as well.

This is about a lot of things.  This is not about a budget.  This is using or fabricating crisis to push for an agenda you‘d never be able to sell under normal circumstances.

And so, you have to convince everyone that these are not normal circumstances.  These are desperate circumstances.  And your desperate measures are therefore somehow required.

What this is has a name.  It is called shock doctrine.

Joining us now is Naomi Klein, columnist at “The Nation,” fellow at The Nation Institute, and author of the book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster, Capitalism,” which is in effect book-length warning of all this.

Naomi, thank you for being here.

NAOMI KLEIN, “THE SHOCK DOCTRINE”:  Glad to be with you, Rachel.

MADDOW:  Do you see disaster capitalism at work in these state budget fights?  Because I do.

KLEIN:  Yes, I definitely do.  And—but it‘s important to remember that these guys have been at this for 30 years.  I mean, they‘re part of an ideological movement and they believe in a whole bunch of stuff that‘s not very popular.

You know, there are some policies in the ideological Republican playbook that a lot of people like: everyone likes a tax break.  But if you talk about you‘re privatizing the local water system, busting unions, privatizing entire towns, things like this, if you run an election and say this is what I plan to do, you—chances are you will lose that election.  And this is where crises come in.  They are very, very handy, because you can say we have no choice.

You don‘t have to win the argument any more.  You just have to say the sky is falling in.  We have to do this.  You can consolidate power.

We remember this from the Bush administration.  They did this at the federal level.  After 9/11, they said, we have a crisis, and we have to essentially rule by fiat.

So, the first stage is to consolidate power.  But that‘s not the end goal.  It‘s just to hoard the power.  It‘s then to auction off the states because these guys really don‘t believe in the governments that they are running.  I mean, this is a really old story.

But, you know, if you look at what‘s going on in Wisconsin, why are

why are they so desperate to tie the hands of unions?  Why are 16 states facing similar battles?

Unions are the final line of defense against privatization of the public sector.  Unions are the ones who fight privatization of the school system, of the water system, of the power system.  That‘s where the real money is.

I mean, you got to keep our eye on the prize, because there‘s a lot of money to be made in the kinds of crony deals that could be rammed through when you have all of that power consolidated in the governor‘s office.

MADDOW:  So, you think that this is about trying to achieve ideological aims that people wouldn‘t necessarily vote for, but also about changing the process, sort of putting our thumb on the scales so that the process is easier for them to keep making more decisions like this in the future?

KLEIN:  Well, absolutely because unions are a political force.  I mean, they represent their members, but they also give them a political voice.  And you know, in that fake conversation with David Koch when Scott Walker thought he was talking to David Koch, there was something really revealing that he said.  He said, “This is our moment to change the course of history.”  That‘s what he said when he thought he was talking to David Koch.

MADDOW:  And the reason he purports to have identified that moment is because Wisconsin has a budget deficit.

KLEIN:  Right.

MADDOW:  And so, therefore, that gives you a reason to change the course of history.

KLEIN:  Change the course of history to lock in the whole wish list of policies, and he specifically compared himself to Ronald Reagan and the air traffic controller strike.  This was his moment and he said that was the moment that ended communism.

And you know, what‘s the crusade that they‘re fighting here?  And they really want a corporate monopoly state.  They don‘t want any counter veiling force balancing out the power of corporations.

And so, unions are also a political force at the national level, at the state level.  And we‘re in this bizarre situation where Citizens United has allowed corporations essentially to go nuclear on the political stage.

If you think of this as a kind of war, one side just got nukes.  They are absolutely unconstrained.  And now, they‘re going after the slingshots that the other side has.

MADDOW:  Right.  The one level—the one pseudo bit of competition they have got in terms of big money in politics.  I mean, unions are able to pull the resources of their members in order to try to compete with these big guys.  But they are the only ones who even crack the top 10 in terms of corporate giving.

KLEIN:  Exactly, exactly.  So, there are a few different things—different agendas going on.

MADDOW:  Are you heartened by the way this worked out in Wisconsin?  Protests in Wisconsin effectively stopping what was happening there, even as the national Republican Party decided to adopt Wisconsin as their signal fight for the country.

KLEIN:  I mean, I‘m so heartened by it, Rachel.

MADDOW:  Yes.

KLEIN:  I mean, it‘s extraordinary.  And I mean, just listening to your opening commentary—you know, this very well may be the turning point.  And what we‘re seeing is that when people do fight, they sometimes win, which is a really well-kept secret, that, you know, in all the sort of mocking of protests and glib post modern times, sometimes they win.  Especially if you‘re willing to do more than, you know, just go to a march once.  And just the tenacity of people in Madison, it‘s so inspiring.

MADDOW:  But when you have traveled around the world documenting disaster capitalism and shock doctrine, when you have—and I know you traveled around speaking on this topic as well—what have you been able to find out about what makes more effective resistance?

KLEIN:  Yes.

MADDOW:  I mean, people stand up against this stuff whenever it happens.  Sometimes they do so in a way that works, and sometimes they do so in a way that doesn't work.  What makes the difference whether or not people can win against this?

KLEIN:  Well, the key is to name it while it‘s happening.  And, you know, that‘s why—that‘s why I wrote this history, a history of how the right has won around the world by exploiting these moments of crisis, because this has been their signature tactic.  But we have not been onto them.

If—the whole point of using a crisis, of using a shock is that in those moments of crisis, we‘re disoriented.

MADDOW:  Yes.

KLEIN:  And—but if we made it while it is happening as people have been doing in Wisconsin, then the tactic doesn't work.  But, in addition, to that, you also have to say—you also have to have your own story about what is really causing the crisis.  And also, if you do have a budget deficit, and there are many states that genuinely are facing budget crisis because of a crisis that was created on Wall Street—

MADDOW:  Right.

KLEIN:  -- that was moved to Main Street, this crisis, as we know, was deepened by the policy decisions that were made, the decision to bail out banks that instead of bailing out homeowners, instead of bailing out workers.  And what that means is that your tax base collapses.

So, your tax base collapsed.  And now, we have to pay for the crisis again.  First, we paid with a bailout.  And now, people are paying with it, these budget cuts.

So, I think the really key part of their resistance is that people are saying, you know what, if you—if you really need some money, why don‘t you go where the money is?  Why don‘t you go to the people who have all the money and putting their own proposals on the table?  Whether that means Bank of America for not paying taxes, or whether that means defense contractors, whether that means oil and gas companies

And that is also deflating the strategy of we have no choice because, of course, there are all kinds of choices.

And what this fight is really about is not unions versus taxpayers, as we‘ve been told.  It‘s a fight about who‘s going to pay for the crisis that was created by the wealthiest elite in this country.

MADDOW:  Right.

KLEIN:  Is it going to be regular working people or is it going to be the people who created the crisis?  And that‘s the debate we need to have.

MADDOW:  Understanding it and explaining it is—I mean, it‘s stupid to say that‘s half the battle, but, in this case, I think it really is and you are helping.

Naomi Klein, it‘s really nice to see you again.  Thanks for coming in.

KLEIN:  Thank you.  Thanks, Rachel.

It's Time For a General Strike!

Michael Moore on Democracy Now! 3/10/2011 "This is a Class War": Michael Moore Calls for Renewed Pro-Democracy Movement as Anti-Union Bills Approved in Wisconsin and Michigan

Stand Up! Stand and Unite!
Footage of the rallies across America against various union busting bills and other measures to limit the rights of the working class, set to the music of D.O.A - General Strike

Michael Moore on Rachel Maddow 3/9/2011

Part 1

Part 2

Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein on Democracy Now 3/9/2011

From Democracy Now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report

Part 1: Naomi Klein on Anti-Union Bills and Shock Doctrine American-Style: "This is a Frontal Assault on Democracy, It’s a Kind of a Corporate Coup D’Etat" Transcript

Part 2: Naomi Klein: Tim DeChristopher Guilty Verdict Exposes "Double Standard" of How "Oil and Gas Companies Privatize Profits...Externalize the Cost" Transcript

Part 3: “My Fear is that Climate Change is the Biggest Crisis of All”: Naomi Klein Warns Global Warming Could Be Exploited by Capitalism and Militarism Transcript

No More Wars - Howard Zinn

"The abolition of war is not easy; utopian perhaps, but something that has to be put on the agenda of the human race at this point in history. However long it takes to accomplish, it has to be on the agenda, and people have to start talking about it."

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"The United States has often been considered, and certainly it is presented to the world by our political leaders, as a peace loving nation; but this peace loving nation has been almost continuously at war since the end of World War II"

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"Once you've made the decision that they are the bad guys and you are the good guys, then you don't question anything you do; you don't have to think anymore. You just have to make that one simple decision, and then...no more questioning.

Then you can bomb Hiroshima. and you can bomb Nagasaki. You can bomb Tokyo and kill 100,000 people in one night. You can bomb Dresden and kill, we don't know how many people, 50,000? 100,000?, we don't know. You can kill 600,000 German civilians in the course of World War II and roughly the same number, about 600,000 Japanese civilians in World War II, and it's all okay...because they are the bad guys and you are the good guys; and you don't ever stop to ask the question, "These 600,000 civilians who died", whether in Germany or Japan, "were they bad guys?""

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"When you drop bombs from 30,000 feet...you don't see anybody down below. You don't hear screams; you don't see any blood; you don't see kids with their arms torn off. You're just hitting a target. You're doing your job."

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"The interests of the people in power may not be your interests. They have their interest separate from yours. Until you become skeptical of the claims of the leaders of the country; so long as you think we are bound together by something called, "national interest"...you will be deceived again and again."

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"War is always a war against civilians. When you go to war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant."

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"War, because of what it does to human beings, cannot be justified."

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"We are going to have to solve the problems that exist in the world without war. That's the great challenge before the human race today."

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"If war is to be abolished, just as if any war is going to be stopped, it'll be up to the citizens of the country to stop it."

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"We will have to think of ourselves as key players in whatever change needs to take place in the United States and in the world. Therefore, all of us bear some responsibility to do something; nothing big, nothing heroic, even something small, because great social movements are made up of very small actions undertaken by very large numbers of people, which at certain points in history come together and bring about change."

Why Evolution Is True - Jerry Coyne AAI 2009

Jerry Coyne goes through these five parts of evolutionary theory showing that they are true by providing evidence from:

1. The fossil record
2. Vestigial organs
3. Quirks of development
4. Bad design
5. Biogeography
6. Examples of natural selection in "real time" 

He points out how the theory of evolution makes predictions that have been consistently verified by the data gathered, and we also learn about things that are puzzling except in the light of evolution.

Adaptive Evolution: Natural Selection - Stephen C. Stearns, Yale University

From January, 2009. This video is lecture 3 of 36 from Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior with Professor Stephen C. Stearns

Transcript

The following is Darwin's theory of Natural Selection in a nutshell - Adapted from Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982):


OBSERVATION #1: For any species, population sizes would increase exponentially if all individuals that are born reproduced successfully.
OBSERVATION #2: Nonetheless, populations tend to remain stable in size, except for seasonal fluctuations.
OBSERVATION #3: Resources are limited.
INFERENCE #1: Production of more individuals than the environment can support leads to a struggle for existence among individuals of a population, with only a fraction of their offspring surviving each generation.
OBSERVATION #4: Members of a population vary extensively in their characteristics; no two individuals are exactly alike
OBSERVATION #5: Much of this variation is heritable.
INFERENCE #2: Survival depends in part on inherited traits. Individuals whose inherited traits give them a high probability of surviving and reproducing in a given environment have higher fitness and are likely to leave more offspring than less fit individuals.
INFERENCE #3: This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to a gradual change in a population, with favorable characteristics accumulating over generations.

Just remember these 5 letters - OVCSR

Overpopulation

Variation

Competition

Survival of the best adapted

Reproduction

Richard Dawkins - The Genius of Charles Darwin - Uncut Interview with Peter Singer

Big Think Interview With Gloria Steinem 10/28/2010

Question: Has feminism succeeded?

Gloria Steinem: It’s hard to measure success when we’re dealing with between 500 and 5,000 years of patriarchy depending on which continent we sit, so I would say feminism has been successful and we have a huge distance to go, huge. For instance, we’ve demonstrated in this and other modern countries or industrialized countries that women can do what men can do, but we have not demonstrated that men can do what women can do therefore children are still mostly raised, hugely mostly raised by women and women in industrialized modern countries end up having two jobs one outside the home and one inside the home. And more seriously than that children grow up believing that only women can be loving and nurturing, which is a libel on men, and that only men can be powerful in the world outside the home, which is a libel on women. So that's huge step we haven’t taken yet.

Question: Will same-sex parenting couples help to challenge these notions?

Gloria Steinem: Both single males who are parents and same-sex couples of men who are raising children that is certainly a great help because those children will grow up knowing that men can be as loving and nurturing as women. They will be much less likely to falsely divide the world into masculine qualities and feminine qualities, but there is a bigger and deeper connection between the women’s movement and gay and lesbian movements, which has always been true. I mean they always come together, and our adversaries are always the same because the male supremacist, patriarchal, ultra-right-wing, whatever you want to... religious fundamentalists, whatever you want to call it is devoted to saying that sex is only moral and okay when it is directed towards having children and occurs in patriarchal marriage, so the children are owned.

So what the means is that both for women, all women, whatever our sexuality, it’s crucial to our health that we are able to separate sexuality from reproduction. I mean whether or not we can control when we give birth is the biggest element in our health, our education, our economic welfare, our life expectancy, everything. So it’s crucial that we are able to separate sexuality and reproduction. And of course same sex couples stand for, in a way, the separation of sexuality from reproduction, so our adversaries are really all the same people.

On campus, sometimes kids ask me, “Well why is the... why are religious fundamentalists against both lesbians and birth control?” You know this seems inconsistent to them. But it’s not. It’s consistent because they are against any form of sexuality, of sexual expression that can’t end in conception, which happens to be a huge lie about human sexuality. Humans can experience the same sexual pleasure whether we can conceive or not. Sexuality has always been for humans a form of communication, a way we express love and caring and bonding, not only a way we have children if we choose to.

Question: Are men and women equal or do they have their own strengths and weaknesses?

Gloria Steinem: But there aren’t two sides. I mean I think what we… We don’t actually know because we’ve been so deeply propagandized with the idea of masculine and feminine we probably don’t know what differences may be in a group sense, but what we do know is that the individual differences are much greater, so the differences between two women are quite likely to be bigger than the differences, generalized differences between males and females as groups for every purpose except reproduction, just as the individual differences between two members of the same race or ethnicity are probably greater than the differences between two races which might just have to do with resistance to certain diseases or you know.

So the purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment. I mean that is a binary too—I never understand why it’s heredity or environment; it’s both—that have for millennia upon millennia combined and resulted in this human being who could never happen before in quite the same way, could never happen again in quite the same way, so the purpose really is to free that in everyone and not look at labels. Obviously there is no such thing as race and in many ways sex is a continuum, not a binary. So it doesn’t make sense to label people in that way. Even when we do that we discover there is a huge overlap. There are perhaps poles of what seem to be masculine and feminine. Then there are 30% of each that are overlapped. That is a lot of people.

So I think if we could just lift up the labels and look at two things one, our uniqueness as individuals and what talents we bring to the world and what... You know there is a person inside every baby, right? And anybody who has ever met a baby knows there is already a person in there. That is one thing and the other thing is community. That human beings are communal beings and that we can’t exist or prosper by ourselves. We need each other’s support.

Question: What would have to happen for feminism to be no longer necessary?

Gloria Steinem: You know I don’t think we know. I never quite trust futurists, either, because I think they’re kind of telling us what they think our future should be. So what I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

And if we do that one day at a time we don’t exactly know what is going to happen because we don’t know all the circumstances, but since Marx was right about a lot things, but not about one big thing, which is the ends don’t justify the means. The means are the ends, so I would not try to predict. I mean people ask me and I say kind of semi-serious things like: "Well I want to go out of my house and walk in the park and see white men wheeling babies of color and I want those guys to be well paid because…" And to love children, but right now I see women of color wheeling white babies all the time, so I know there is something wrong or I want to pass a newsstand and see erotica, real erotica, which has to do with love and free choice, not pornography, porno means female slavery. It’s all about passive dominance and pain half the time, so you know I can think of signs of success, but I think only those who live in the future will really, really see success, will really be freed and realize more human capabilities.


Question: Is the younger generation of women apathetic about feminism?

Gloria Steinem: No, I mean just even if you look at the public opinion polls as a kind of gross measure feminism is much bigger and stronger than it was in the 70s. The reason you know me is because there were like you know 500 crazy women who were... I mean so we got to be well known. But the fact is that now it’s the issues of… raised by feminism have majority support in all the public opinion polls. The word feminism even though the opposition has tried very hard to demonize it and to call us Femi-Nazis and terrible stuff still it’s there are about a third of American women who self-identify as feminists with no definition and with the definition it’s more than 60%. Actually more women self-identify, even without a definition, than identify as Republicans or Democrats.

So the idea that feminism has not succeeded or that this generation has rejected it is just a new form of the backlash. I mean when I started they would say... or when all of us started that feminism isn’t necessary. Women don’t want these things, you know? And now the form the backlash takes is to say well it used to be necessary, but it’s not anymore. It is the narrative with pretty much all social justice movements. People start to talk about post-racist, post-feminist. What does that mean? We’re clearly not post either. Would you say post-democracy? Clearly we haven’t reached true democracy yet.

Question: Why do some women vote for Republicans even though the party wants to take away their reproductive freedoms?

Gloria Steinem: It’s very difficult. I mean, of course any group of people that has been subordinate absorbs the idea of our own subordination, and that it is natural, and comes to think that the only way to survive is to identify with the powerful. And I think that is not surprising, and it is what happens to a lot of right-wing women. I mean they think they better do what the powerful tell them do otherwise they’ll be in even more trouble. So, I understand that, but anyone with any faith in the future, self respect, hope for themselves... you can’t vote for people who don’t vote for you and that is... There is a whole wonderful book called "The Republican War Against Women" that documents this from the '60s forward. It wasn’t always true. The Republican Party was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment for instance, but it is true now.

Question: What happened to the Republican Party?

Gloria Steinem: The problem is that the old party of Goldwater, of Rockefeller—who were for instance, pro-choice, who supported the Equal Rights Amendment, who you know...—has been taken over by very ultra rightwing groups, some of whom are real totalitarians and so it looks like and the media treats it as if the country is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Actually I believe there are more independents than either Republicans or Democrats, and yet those are the... that is the choice we have on the party ballot. So frequently people just vote for the party out of power because they’re disappointed or angry at what is happening at the moment. It makes it very volatile, very, very difficult to know. But I still hope that voters will look at the extreme positions of the Republican Party and know how bad they are for all of us.

For instance, the party platform includes a constitutional amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would make a direct relationship between the law and a fertilized egg, which is when they say life begins; every fertilized egg. What that would do in real life is nationalize women’s bodies. You could legally search a women’s womb to see if she was pregnant. You could forcibly restrain her for all nine months of her pregnancy. Really we would be nationalized. This is insane. This is a party that used to be conservative, but now they... you know conservatives might want to get government off the backs of corporations, but not into the wombs of women, not deciding who can marry whom.

So it’s important that we recognize how extreme the Republicans are in almost every case and how against our self-interest it is to vote for them whether or not we are disappointed with the current crew. At least they believe in the Constitution. At least they have an idea of economic justice. The Republicans are devoted to creating more rich folks. In this country the salary of the average CEO in 1970 was I think 70 times the average worker. Now it is 1,000 times the average worker. And this is bad for all of us because when you give more money to the very rich they don’t spend that much of it as consumers, but when you give it to the middle class they spend most of it, all of it, as consumers and it’s what drives… it’s why this economy is 70% driven by consumer purchases. So it’s good for everybody to diminish this huge social division and restore ideas of individual rights, which are in our constitution and which many of the republican candidates just don’t represent. It’s... I hope that real Republicans take back the Republican Party soon because the problem now is that a real centrist conservative Republican can’t get through the primaries to get to the general election.

Question: Why are mama grizzlies an inappropriate mascot for Sarah Palin?

Gloria Steinem: Well first of all, if Hilary Clinton hadn’t come within very close to the White House we would not see the Republicans recruiting obedient women. So it’s not really Sarah Palin's fault that she got named to be Vice President when obviously she was not prepared for this kind of position. In her current incarnation she has frequently talked about "mama grizzlies" as being kind of representing right-wing women and that is such a libel on mama grizzlies, who are so different. I actually researched them, inspired by her, and discovered that they are famous for their exertion of reproductive control in their lives. That even compared to other bears, brown bears say, they mate later; they have only one or two cubs instead of four; they wait four years instead of two between having cubs; and even once they’re pregnant if they see that it’s going to be a really hard winter, they themselves are not in good health or the food supply is low they reabsorb, their bodies reabsorb the fetus.

So, I mean, they are kind of the prophets. If you wanted to have a totem for reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right the mama grizzlies would be up there.


Question: What’s wrong with the political discourse about abortion?

Gloria Steinem: Well the democrats, many democrats in tight races have suddenly started talking about abortion when before even sympathetic ones who voted for that as a right to privacy and a woman and her doctor make the decision, even they didn’t want to talk about it. They sort of hoped it would go away. So as a result they really don’t know how to talk about it and they confine it to being a "social issue" and this is an "economic year."

Now it happens that first of all it’s not a social issue. It’s a fundamental human right to decide to have children or not to have children. But also it’s the biggest economic influence in a woman’s life whether she can decide when and whether to have children or not. They just are not phrasing it in the proper way, so it makes even voters think "Oh well, one in three women needs an abortion at some time in her lifetime and that is only once and even if it’s criminal and even if it’s dangerous, the fact is the economy affects us every day." But whether you have children or not is the biggest factor of a lifetime in your economic status... or whether you can decide when to have children.

So they’re just not… they just don’t understand how to talk about it even though we’ve been trying to say this for 40 years, so I wrote that op-ed in order to try to say to voters we have do it. We have to know how these folks stand. For instance, there is a candidate for governor of Illinois named Brady who not only loves assault weapons, not only thinks that guns should not be registered and all past registrations should be destroyed, but is also against equal pay—against any enforcement of equal pay—and is for the Human Life Amendment, which would nationalize women’s bodies, so I mean this is the perfect recipe for barefoot and pregnant. Women become what these authoritarian groups have in mind, which is cheap labor ourselves, as workers, and sources of ever-more-cheap labor.

Question: Can stripping or prostitution ever be empowering for women?

Gloria Steinem: The word "empower" is troubling. I mean I have spent 40 years talking to women. I sat before the election, interviewed prostituted women in Las Vegas and so it isn’t... You know little girls do not wake up in the morning and say "I dream of being a prostitute." It is a terrible, terrible life. Body invasion is more traumatic than even getting beaten up. In certain circumstances, obviously, it may be a way to survive. And we rationalize ways to survive. But I think what we need to look at is we need to pull back and say to ourselves why is it that men need... some men; it’s actually not the majority of men... but that some men go to prostitutes and need that kind of dominance. It’s the disease of... It’s getting addicted to masculinity. What is that about?

In the egalitarian cultures... People think prostitution has always existed, but it hasn’t and even rape was very rare. For instance, when Europeans arrived on this continent they wrote about how shocked they were that the 500 or so native groups here didn’t rape even their female captives. They were shocked. So we need to stop asking so many questions of the people who are in various circumstances and feel they have to do this and start asking on the demand side why is there a demand for this. What has been eroticized by male dominant systems of all kinds is dominance and passivity. We need to eroticize equality. I always say to audiences of men: "Cooperation beats submission. Trust me." At least it makes them laugh. That is what is troubling and of course in the meantime we have to stop arresting prostitutes and not arresting traffickers and pimps. It’s absurd. We’re arresting the victim or the survivor and not the oppressor.

Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI 3/5/2011- "We Have Had It!"

from michaelmoore.com America Is Not Broke

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here's what I learned: Money doesn't grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don't pay their fair share of taxes, the state can't function. The schools can't produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs.  That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.

The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It's part of the Big Lie. It's one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can't win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.

The truth is, there's lots of money to go around. LOTS. It's just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn't work, they've got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart -- because you -- yes, you, too! -- might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don't rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it's Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin' awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. "Here! Take our money! We don't care. We'll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!"
The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).

Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It's just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!
So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.

Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois -- whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn't have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn't be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job -- their $19,000 a year job. That's how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he's stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn't have to sleep in his car between shifts at O'Hare airport. That's how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn't be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he's just another slob.

And that, my friends, is Corporate America's fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement -- a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don't understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. "Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!

"There's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you ...?"

America ain't broke! The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!

Madison, do not retreat.  We are with you. We will win together.

Don't Let the Oil & Gas Industry Get Away With Murder

from Democracy Now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report 3/4/2011
Part 1 Environmentalist Tim DeChristopher Found Guilty of Sabotaging Oil and Gas Auction; Faces up to 10 Years in Jail Transcript

Part 2 Leaked EPA Documents Expose Decades-Old Effort to Hide Dangers of Natural Gas Extraction Transcript

Part 3 Natural Gas Industry Attacks Oscar-Nominated Film “Gasland” for Chronicling Devastating Impact of Hydraulic Fracking Transcript

The Future of Food

Synopsis from IMDB

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade. From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed about the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply. Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, The Future of Food examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today. The Future of Food reveals that there is a revolution going on in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America, a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat

Tim DeChristopher Found Guilty

What an outrage! Here is an ethical, thoughtful, caring young man who is trying to prevent oil and gas companies from destroying the land and polluting the air, by posing as a bidder at an auction that was going to sell off the unique areas of southern Utah to these greedy companies. Those two evil monsters Bush and Cheney were responsible for the sale.

DeChristopher had the best interest of anyone who loves to breathe clean air and enjoys wild nature in mind. If a person loves his country, if they love America and want to see it's beauty preserved, they ought to be commended and rewarded for taking steps to ensure that everyone may enjoy this scenic splendor, pollution free, for generations to come.



If convicted he could face up to ten years in prison and a $750,000 fine...FOR SAVING LIVES! Saving not only the lives of the animals who would have been killed and displaced by the drilling, but human lives. He is protecting people from breathing in the toxic pollution spewed by these poisonous rigs and machines.

Murderers and rapists don't get punishments as harsh. What a travesty! Here is a man who demonstrated peaceful civil disobedience in the spirit of Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr,. being treated like a criminal. He may not like the term, but in my view Tim DeChristopher is a hero. A hero for protecting an area that I fell in love with from the very first moment I set my eyes on it; and thanks to Tim, I and many others can continue to marvel at and appreciate it's magnificent grandeur well into the future.

Thank you Tim!

School Bus Driver in Salt Lake City Fired for Driving Children to Tim DeChristopher Rally

A teacher/bus driver was fired in Salt Lake City recently because he showed some 5th graders a rally in support of Tim DeChristopher, the young man who posed as a bidder in an auction to sell off some beautiful, natural wilderness areas of southern Utah to oil and gas.

Some parents are up in arms, "I'd be furious if one of my children were on that bus", said one disgruntled over-reactor. If parents knew how to raise their kids by example and with instructive understanding to thoughtfully respect others and the environment, there would be no need for these protests to occur in the first place. But because they do occur, the teacher was showing these children democracy in action. He was elucidating to them what the first amendment is all about. It's called real life lessons, and I bet the kids had fun to boot.

5th graders aren't delicate little idiots (in fact, as Jeff Foxworthy has demonstrated, they are smarter than many adults). I'm sure they were quite pleased to do something out of the ordinary and learn about the significance of nonviolent peaceful protest and how it has shaped America's history for the better. I'm quite confident that at no time any of these children were in any real danger...except of course when they got off the bus back at school and breathed in the toxic exhaust fumes of the bus...are any parents concerned about that?

Not only did the students that day get shown a lesson on how people can peacefully effect change, they also learned how unjust the powers that be are when the school district sacked the teacher. That teacher, Ryan Pleune, should be applauded and given a raise, not castigated and fired.

Utah's Natural Beauty Is Not For Sale to Oil & Gas

from Democracy Now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report.
The trial for Tim DeChristopher began February 28, 2011. He is charged with misrepresenting himself as a bidder at an land auction in December of 2008, and violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act. He could face up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine if convicted. The following is from his appearance on Democracy Now! 12/22/2008

AMY GOODMAN: The Bureau of Land Management held a controversial auction Friday to sell oil and gas drilling rights to nearly 150,000 acres of wilderness in southern Utah. The sale had been strongly opposed by many environmental groups. Stephen Bloch of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said, "This is the fire sale, the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.”

A coalition of environmental groups opposed to energy development on public lands filed a lawsuit last week to block the auction. They struck a deal with the Bureau of Land Management that allowed the auction to proceed on the condition that the leases on the most contested portions of the land will not be issued for another thirty days, until a federal judge hears the case.

Actor Robert Redford has been among those speaking out against the sale of these lands.

ROBERT REDFORD: Anyone who’s been there can testify to the fact that there is no place like these lands. These lands are not Cheney’s and Bush’s. The lands are ours. They’re ours, because they’re a part of our legacy, they’re part of the human American legacy. No place on earth, for anyone—as Congressman Baird has said, no place on earth can speak to the balance of beauty and nature like these areas. And the fact that they would—there’s so much deception, so much sleight of hand here. I mean, how would you feel if you had an heirloom that was centuries-old in your family, and someone came in while you were not looking or they distracted you by creating something over here, and they took it away from you? How would you feel? This is not their land. It’s our land. These are public lands. And the BLM is supposed to be protecting those lands on our behalf.

Now, once these lands are taken away, they’re gone. And gone doesn’t come back. So I feel pretty strongly that we have to do everything. It isn’t a question of trying to talk to them. Forget that. That doesn’t work. They’ve been trashing the environment ever since they came in, almost like they had a duty to do so. But when they trash our lands, and not theirs, and claim it’s their prerogative, then something’s pretty criminal. So I say stop it. Enough is enough. Not only will it not serve the purpose they keep stating—it’s not going to provide any new energy—it’s going to pollute what we’ve already got, and it’s going to take away something that is ours to give to our children, their children and their children and their children. So I feel pretty strongly about this. I appreciate being given the chance to speak to it. As I said before, it’s an emotional situation for me. And we should not allow this to happen. It’s criminal.

AMY GOODMAN: Actor Robert Redford, opposing the sale of Utah wilderness to oil and gas companies. While many environmental groups launched campaigns to oppose the sale of the land, one student in Salt Lake City attempted to block the sale by disrupting the auction itself. Twenty-seven-year-old Tim DeChristopher posed as a potential bidder and bid hundreds of thousands of dollars on parcels of the land, driving up prices and winning some 22,000 acres for himself, without any intention of paying for them.

The Bureau of Land Management must now wait over a month before it can auction off these properties, but by then the bureau will no longer be run by the Bush administration.

Tim DeChristopher was arrested Friday and is scheduled to appear in court later today. He joins us in Salt Lake City.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tim DeChristopher.

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Good morning, Amy. It’s great to be here. I read your book last summer and really enjoyed it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, thanks. Why don’t you start off by telling us what happened on Friday? What did you start off planning to do that day? Where were you?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: I started off, actually, at a final exam at the university and went straight from there down to the BLM office. And I saw some protesters walking back and forth outside, and I knew that I wanted to do more than that and that this kind of injustice demanded a higher level of disruption. And so, I just decided that I wanted to go inside and cause a bigger disruption.

And from there, I found it really easy to get inside and become a bidder, and went inside and was in the auction room. And once I was in there, I realized that any kind of speech or disruption or something like that wasn’t going to be very effective, but I saw pretty quickly that I could have a pretty major impact on the way this worked. And it just took me a little bit of time to build up the courage to do that, knowing what the consequences would be. And so, I started bidding and started driving up the prices for some of the oil companies. And throughout that time, I knew that I could be doing more and could really set aside some acres to really be protected. And so, then I started winning bids and disrupting it as clearly as I could.

AMY GOODMAN: How does it work? You get a paddle?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Yeah. I just had a bidder paddle and just kept raising it as much as I could.

AMY GOODMAN: And you ended up buying what? Over 22,000 acres of land?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And where was this land?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Honestly, I didn’t know at the time. But now it turns out that a lot of that land was the land right around Arches National Park and in Labyrinth Canyon and Mineral Point and beautiful places like that. So it turned out pretty well.

AMY GOODMAN: And now what are your intentions? Or first, I should ask, what was the response of the people in the room? When did they understand who you were? Or did they, at the time?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Once I started buying up every parcel, they understood pretty clearly what was going on. And so, at that point, they stopped the auction, and some federal agents came in and took me out. And from other people who were in the room afterwards, I guess there was a lot of chaos, and they didn’t really know how to proceed at that point. But then, I was away talking to the federal agents at that point.

AMY GOODMAN: When did they arrest you?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Well, they took me into custody there on Friday, and they had me for a few hours. But it was a pretty cordial conversation that I was having with them. I was very clear about what I was doing and why I was doing it. I told them all my motivations and why the environmental movement, as it’s been, and myself included, hasn’t been effective and why I felt it was necessary to take more drastic actions. And so, they took my statement there and decided that I wasn’t a threat, and so they released me. But charges haven’t been pressed yet. That’s going to happen later today.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at the Salt Lake Tribune article on you. It says, “He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.”

Can you talk about how it is that this land was being auctioned off? And what were the other companies, organizations in the room that were buying it up?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Well, basically, the Bush administration was trying to rush through this auction as quickly as possible to get it done before Obama took office, because they knew that it wouldn’t be acceptable under any other administration other than Bush and Cheney. And so, they just circled vast swaths of southern Utah. Their initial announcement, they included pieces of property that had houses on them in Moab and included property that they didn’t even have rights to drill in or they didn’t have rights to sell off and included a lot of areas around national parks. And so, they rushed through the process and didn’t have time to do adequate environmental impact statements, didn’t have time to take an adequate amount of public comment or even input from other federal agencies. And there was a big battle with the National Park Service, because they were upset over a lot of areas that were included in there. But luckily, they also didn’t have time to make sure that all the bidders were bonded, which is how I got in so easily.

AMY GOODMAN: Is this land you have walked, traveled, enjoyed?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: I’ve been around that area a lot, and a lot of southern Utah and the wilderness throughout this state, I’ve enjoyed for a long time. And that’s why I originally came here. I spent my first two years in Utah working for a wilderness therapy program and spending most of my time out there in some of the beautiful lands of Utah.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go on in the Salt Lake Tribune piece, where it says, “During the confusion that followed DeChristopher’s removal, Sgamma”—I don’t know if I’m pronouncing this person’s name right, Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States—“said she had seen Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney David Garbett ‘communicating’ with DeChristopher during the auction. She questioned whether SUWA”—that’s the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance—“had been acting in concert with [DeChristopher] the BLM dubbed a ‘nuisance bidder.’” That was you. Were you working with other groups in the room?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: No, no. There was no kind of a plan or anything. The extent of the communication that the SUWA attorney had with me was he dropped his business card in my lap on his way out the door, as he did with a lot of the other bidders who won land, because they were intending to try to protect some of those afterwards, hoping that the oil companies would be willing to give them up later.

But it was just me in there acting alone. It wasn’t especially premeditated. I got in there and saw the opportunity to make the difference and then realized that, seeing that opportunity, I couldn’t ethically justify not taking it. I knew that as bad as this could possibly turn out, if I ended up going to prison, then I could live with that. But if I saw an opportunity to protect the land of southern Utah and I saw an opportunity to keep some oil in the ground and give us a better chance for a livable future and I passed up that opportunity, then I wouldn’t be able to live with that. And so, I just had to make that choice on my own.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim DeChristopher, you’re not alone. Members of the National Park Service; members of Congress; John Podesta, head of the President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, have all said the lease sale should be halted or altered to accommodate environmental concerns. What was the response of, well, the protesters outside, now the environmental groups, as your action has become known?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: The response has really been overwhelming, and that’s been the most powerful part of the whole thing for me. Over the past two-and-a-half days, I’ve just got an overwhelming amount of support from all across the country and from different parts of the world. People have been standing up, inspired and encouraged to take action on their own, which is really powerful. And people have been coming out of the woodwork to support me. The former director of the BLM, Patrick Shea, has now volunteered to lead my legal team pro bono. And so, he’s on our side in a big way, and he’s a great asset to have.

This has really been emotional and hopeful for me to see that kind of support over the last couple of days, because I did feel like I was putting myself out on a limb there alone, and now, after thousands of supportive statements from people, I see that, you know, for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and, you know, the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone. And that’s been really powerful for me to witness.

AMY GOODMAN: Has anyone offered simply to pay for the land that you bid for and succeeded in winning? What was it, at $1.8 million?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Right. There’s been a lot of discussion of that, and I’m not sure if that would completely take the problem away or not, if the people of America just stood up and re-bought the land that was already theirs. That might be an option that we have to pursue, but at this point, we’re not sure.

AMY GOODMAN: So, now there’s two kinds of land. One is what you bid for, didn’t win, but you upped to the price for everyone else, something like to the tune of half-a-million dollars, so other bidders, like oil companies, whatever, had to pay more, because you were in there bidding against them.

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And then there’s the land you actually bought. Now, that land—

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —can’t go up again until something like February, is that right? Which means a new administration, an administration who—we know at least the head of the transition team, John Podesta, has expressed concern about the sale of this land. The land whose price you upped just by bidding, though you didn’t win, that could be sold within this ten-day period?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: My impression of that is that those oil companies can give that back if they feel like they purchased it in any kind of way that’s not acceptable to them, because I happened to drive the cost of their oil up a little closer to what the actual cost of producing oil is and the actual external costs that all the rest of us are going to have to pay.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the charges you’re facing right now? And are you willing to go to jail?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: The charges haven’t been released yet, so I don’t know what charges I’m facing. There’s a good chance that they are going to be significant charges. And, you know, obviously, I’m going to fight those. And, of course, I don’t want to go to jail. And I’m willing to, if it comes to that, but, you know, I’m not looking to be a martyr or anything like that.

I’ve seen the need for more serious action by the environmental movement and to protect a livable future for all of us. I’ve seen that need for a long time. And frankly, I’ve been hoping that someone would step up and someone would come out and be the leader and someone would put themselves on the line and make the sacrifices necessary to get us on a path to a more livable future. And I guess I just couldn’t wait any longer for that someone to come out there and had to accept the fact that that someone might be me.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you a student?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Yes, I’m an economics student at the University of Utah.

AMY GOODMAN: Is this your school break?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Yeah. I just took my last final exam on Friday morning and went straight from there down to the auction.

AMY GOODMAN: Has the University of Utah said anything to you, officials there express support or otherwise?

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: No, and, you know, I wouldn’t expect them to come out and make any official statement. Some of my professors, a lot of students have contacted me and expressed their support. The professors, especially, have been really supportive and have joined my team so far. And, you know, they kind of did their job beforehand. They kind of did their job in getting me ready for this and committing me to hold true to my values and in teaching me what was going on. In fact, the final exam that I took on Friday morning, one of the questions was about this oil sale and about, if only the oil companies were bidding on this land, are they actually going to be paying the real price for the production of oil? And, of course, the answer that the professor was expecting is no, they’re not, because there’s a lot of external costs that all of us have to pay for the production of oil that aren’t included in those. So they did their part ahead of time in putting me where I needed to be.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim DeChristopher, thank you for joining us. You’ll have an interesting essay to write when you go back to school: "What I Did on My Winter Vacation."

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: I guess so.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim DeChristopher is a University of Utah economics student. We will follow his case. He goes to court later today. He disrupted Friday’s auction of Utah’s pristine wilderness to oil and gas companies by buying up some of the land himself.

A Tyranny of the Ignorant Majority

According to a recent survey, 37% of Canadians believe the poor "still have it pretty good". Nearly half think that a family of four can get by on $10,000 to $30,000 or less, and that if the poor really wanted work they could find jobs. About a quarter of those surveyed believe people are poor because they are lazy.

How dare anyone who does not have to worry where their next meal is coming from presume that those who are less fortunate than themselves "still have it pretty good" .Unless you have experienced first hand what it is like to struggle merely to remain alive trying to find adequate nourishment or a warm place to sleep; unless you have experienced for yourself the circumstances which have caused another human being to become mired among the have-nots of society; unless you have walked a mile in the shoes of someone who cannot even afford to buy shoes, you need to close your mouth and open your ears and stop assuming you have everything to teach and nothing to learn. You need to take a step back and learn the true meaning of words like empathy, understanding and compassion.

The myths of why people are poor, like those of so many other false beliefs, are based mainly on prejudice and ignorance. Nobody is poor because they want to be poor, and simply having a low paying job, which may allow a person to buy a meager supply of food and pay the rent in their substandard housing, does not automatically bestow dignity and meaning to a person's life.

There are plenty of CEOs for major corporations; plenty of millionaire sports figures who simply play games for a living; plenty of rich politicians in fancy suits and big, shiny SUVs who do far less for the amount of money they receive than the millions of working poor across this country, who sometimes are forced to work two or three jobs, just so they can have enough money to barely scrape by in order to give themselves and their families the necessities for life.

Substance abuse, mental illness, a grossly unjust allocation and distribution of wealth in our materialistic and "thing-oriented" society are major factors contributing to the evil of poverty. It is not laziness that causes poverty, it is greed and the uncanny ability of so many people to be able to turn a blind eye to suffering that causes so many to live in abject misery.

If so many Canadians are unmindful to the real causes of poverty, how many other issues that involve suffering are they wrong about? The seal hunt? The meat and dairy industry? The tar sands of northern Alberta? In a democratic society we allow the majority to rule, but if the majority is wrong and merely concerned with accruing money, then that democracy looks more like a tyranny...a tyranny of the ignorant majority.