Marc

June 6, 2008
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06/06 Marc on 1968

"Where were you when...?"

Resurrection City, June 1968. Photo by Ollie Atkins.  See more.

 

I remember clearly where I was for all the horrible assassinations of the 1960's.

 

I remember my quiet walk with Adrienne Cooper (who later died from a back alley abortion) around Stockbridge Bowl the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination. We walked and reflected on the world we lived in light of that horrible event.

 

I remember two years later standing in line to view Malcolm X’s body as it lay in state in Harlem. I had taken a bus to New York as soon as I heard about the assassination.

 

I was living in the heart of the D.C. Ghetto, and pulling up to my apartment in my old VW bug when I heard the news on the radio that Martin Luther King had been assassinated. I was in the heart of the city, our nation’s capital, and within hours the city was burning all around me. I walked through that rebellion in the wake of his death.

 

When Bobby Kennedy was killed I was living in a plywood shack between the U.S .Capital and the Washington Monument with thousands of others in a place called Resurrection City.

 

Resurrection City was an encampment of thousands of poor people-Black, White, Puerto Rican, Mexican American and American Indian. They came from mountain hollers, the rural south, Indian reservations, small mill towns and inner cities. The Poor People’s Campaign, one of King’s last acts before he was assassinated, was an amazing movement because of its racial unity and its class-consciousness. It was led and driven by the poor themselves. They marched on D.C. from a dozen routes from across the nation. They took over the mall, built the city out of plywood. We slept there, cooked our meals there, had meetings, studied, played and created theater. This movement went beyond notions of white power or the new slogan of Black power. This was the people’s power, the power of the poor united across color lines. There were many in both Black Nationalist and white conservative movements who despised the interracial power of this movement and many wealthy supporters of civil rights were put off by the class demands of this group. I think this march may have heralded the end of the civil rights movement. Right now the mainstream media is doing story after story about the magical, mad, terrifying and glorious year of 1968-but in all that reporting, almost nothing has been said about the Poor People's Campaign. A notable exception is the public radio program Weekend America which did a great piece on Resurrection City as a part of their series This Weekend in 1968.  Click here to for their interviews and multimedia slideshow.

 

Bobby Kennedy was one of those who supported the idea of the poor marching on the capital. His death brought a pall over our encampment. His body passed us on the way to the Rotunda. The mourning was palpable, soulful and deep among the thousands who camped on the mall that summer.

 

It has been forty years since a politician like that captured the imagination of America. Bobby Kennedy was loved by all the communities camped out on the mall that summer and by working and middle class people across our country. You can’t help but ponder what America might have become had he become the President of the United States.

 

Do we have another running now like that? Do we?

 

What do you think?

-Marc

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June 5, 2008
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6/05 Marc on the end of the 2008 Democratic Primary Season

 

The Marc Steiner Show Returns!

 

OK, folks we are about to launch our new show on WEAA. In the beginning we will only be on WEAA once a week, but we will be moving to a daily show in September.

 

For now, join me every Wednesday morning at 9 AM on 88.9, WEAA, for a live show. We will have some town meetings over the summer so you can join us live in the evening, as well.

 

At last, a candidate!

 

Tell me what your take is on the Presidential election. What do you make of Hillary Clinton's speech? If the delegate count is what it is and the voting is over then should she not concede? Should she not now unite in a way that allows the increasingly divided Democratic electorate to heal and unite?

 

In her defense, Senator Clinton has stated that she has won the popular vote. The issue of the popular vote is real given how cheated, dismayed and angry Democrats felt in 2000 after Al Gore won the popular vote but did not attain the presidency. However, is it right that Hillary Clinton's camp counts Florida and Michigan in vote counts when those primaries were invalid? When Senator Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan?

 

That brings up another issue. I thought it was insane for the Democrats to disallow Florida and Michigan from participating in the primary elections. The whole primary system is ridiculous to begin with. It is an anarchic system with each state vying for supremacy of importance. Iowa and New Hampshire, whose caucus and primary did not come into importance until 1972 and 1953, respectively, are anachronisms. The entire system of primary and general elections needs to be shortened and simplified.

 

All that not withstanding, should Senator Hillary Clinton concede and bring her troops in for the battle for November? Or should she fight on in hopes of his stumbling bloody before the finish line?

 

I really want to know where you are on all of this.

 

More soon....

-Marc

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May 14, 2008
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5/14 from Marc

 

Lou Cantori 

Lou Cantori was a force to be reckoned with.  We lost him this week to a heart attack at his home on Monday.

Lou appeared on our show dozens of times over the last fifteen years. He was just a lovely and wonderful  human being with a powerful mind.

 

He was every bit of the Marine sergeant that he was as a young man in the fifties. He was a patriot who continued to teach not just at his academic home, UMBC but also at our US military and intelligence academies.  He taught them reality of our world, not just what they wanted to hear. He was no one's parrot. He spoke fluent Arabic and defied America's academe by trying to enlighten us to the true nature and soul of the Arabic and Muslim worlds.

 

He was that unlikely combination of a military and intelligence analyst who was a champion of social justice in America and the world.

 

Despite all his work, his first priority was the love he had for his family. As his son Greg Cantori said to me this morning, Lou was the best father in the world.  He was always there for them.

 

Greg also told me the story about when they lived in LA  during the mid-sixties. Lou was the head of the West Side Housing Association, fighting racial discrimination in housing at a time when you were allowed to have "Whites Only" and "No Colored" signs in your advertising.  The great Carroll O'Conner, Rob Reiner and others were fixtures in their home, as board members of Lou's movement.  It was there that Greg first learned about fighting for social justice.

 

He is a beacon for all of us. He was a tough guy and gentle caring soul, he was a patriot, a progressive, a jarhead (Marine) through and through, a fighter for social justice and deeply devoted father and husband. Lou Cantori ..  I love you and will miss you forever. I will carry your spirit in my heart.

From the Cantori Family

 There will be an open house to celebrate his life on Sunday, June 8 at Nadia's home near Laurel, Md. We would be honored to have you attend. Please RSVP by responding to cantorifamily@gmail.com.

 

Exact details on time and directions will be available soon on our memorial blog/website:

 

http://rememberlou.blogspot.com

 

Please check back soon. We will be updating and checking this site frequently.

 

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to either of the following:

 

UMBC Foundation, Lou Cantori Scholarship Fund, C/O Kim Robinson

8th Floor, Administration Building

1000 Hilltop Circle

Baltimore, MD 21250

 

or

 

Kidsave c/o Lou Cantori Memorial Fund

PO Box 277587

Atlanta, GA 30384-7487

http://www.kidsave.org/

 

Lou touched many lives: personally, professionally and in his community and it's been quite a job contacting so many people.  Please feel free to forward this message to others that knew Lou.

 

Our family would like to thank everyone who kept Lou in their thoughts during his illness.

 

The Cantori Family
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May 12, 2008
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5/12 from Marc

Juvenile Justice

The Sun story on Saturday May 10, 2008 of the Juvenile Justice Center being out of control is not new news (read it here). The teachers are fearful and have had enough so they stepped up to the Governor.

Last year, we reported on the Marc Steiner Show about the potential for an explosion and the loss of control at the center. Ray Cook, who works with gangs and inner-city kids in trouble with their lives and the law, through his program On Our Shoulders, was hired by juvenile services after meeting Secretary Donald DeVore on my program earlier in 2007. Ray is one of those unique figures who can walk into a situation and can instantly demand respect and trust on the toughest corners, with young people deeply involved in Bloods, Crips, and other gangs. He is from those streets. He has hustled, led criminal operations and been jailed on those streets. He turned his life around. Now, he’s obsessed with saving the children of our city. He is a father figure to kids around Edmondson Avenue and now down in Cherry Hill. At any rate, Ray took a job with DJS because he thought he could make a difference. Secretary Donald Devore, who I truly believe wants to and is trying to change the system, hired him because he knew Ray could make a difference. Ray, and another man he brought in to the Juvenile Detention, Dante Wilson, who runs Reclaiming Our Children, (ROCAP,) had the hardest cases in that joint listening, weeping and talking and on the move, the slow grueling move, to come face to face with their emotions and turn their lives around. Ray and I spoke everyday that he worked at the detention center. It was tearing him up inside. He kept saying to me “Man, it is out of control. They won’t listen (talking about the bureaucrats.) It is off the hook.” He quit in frustration.

Ray Cook is not a company man but an effective man who knows how to move children who are deeply damaged by the streets and poverty, in a way most with all the graduate degrees in the world cannot. This is not to disparage all the teachers, social workers, counselors, and therapists working with our kids who have been busted, detained, arrested, and jailed. It is a process where all parties and skills are needed to work together to salvage our collective future. It is to say, this is not new news. They would not listen to Ray and the others.

The solutions are right in front of us. Maybe the Juvenile Justice system ought to turn the school and therapeutic sections of that institution over to men and women who can run it successfully. Bring in an independent non-profit designed to do the job right. Give them the independence and power to do it right. Hire people who come from the streets themselves, who have track records of successfully working with children in trouble. Don’t be afraid to hire ex-cons and others who can make a difference. Maybe the state should think twice before building more maximum-security juvenile institutions. Maybe we should start investing in community programs, halfway houses and community corrections facilities instead of prisons. Maybe we should put money into recreation centers and after school programs, turning our neighborhood schools into community schools that operate 24/7. Maybe we should invest the resources we have now in new directions. Maybe spend a little more in the right and most effective places. Maybe the state government and bureaucrats should start listening to and heading the advice of the Ray Cooks of our world.

Then maybe we can start to turn this thing around.

-Marc

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May 8, 2008
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From Marc – May 8

VIOLENCE AND OUR SCHOOLS

On May 19th, from 6 to 8 PM, I will be hosting a special two-hour, live call-in with Baltimore Schools CEO Dr. Andres Alonso on WEAA, 88.9 FM, your community radio station.

One of the issues we will talk about is violence in our schools. In many city schools, it is palpable when you walk through their halls or when you talk to students and teachers who are in them every day.

It is fine to give more control to individual principals and schools, but there needs to be a system-wide policy to address what is in their control to address. Violence cannot be tolerated. Students who attack teachers and other students have to be dealt with firmly. Students have to know the limitations. The response can be therapeutic and healing, but it must be swift and with consequences.

Then you can talk about what individual schools can do.

So, please, join us on the 19th; it will be great being back on the air with you and taking your calls.

THAT RADIO STATION WHERE WE USED TO BE

So, I wandered over to the WYPR website yesterday. Don’t do that often. Actually, this may the second or third time I have done it since they kicked us off the air. I thought I would take a gander to see what was going on.

The Board of Directors meeting scheduled for May 20th at the Learning Tree has been turned into an internet meeting to be streamed live. Apparently, so many folks still outraged by the senseless cancellation of our show called in to say they were coming to attend the meeting. So, the folks at the top at the station said we could be in compliance with Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) open meeting rules by streaming it on the web.

It is amazing they really have no respect for the people of this community or their station’s listeners and members. It is outrageous and very telling when the leaders of that station are afraid to face and listen to their listeners.

For a while a few years ago, I was excited by how much underwriting was being brought into the station. It was to be a model for the nation’s public radio stations on how to address the dwindling federal support for public broadcasting. Then I realized that while underwriting grew, funds for expanding and building membership were being eviscerated at the station. Underwriting accounted for over 53% of funds and membership was down to the thirties. Underwriting by large corporations has steadily grown at WYPR since the station's founding. The influence that the corporate money buys is significant, but that is clearly to the liking of the management.

I now realize that this is not the salvation of public radio, but the bells chiming that could be its death knell. Public broadcasting is supposed to be adventuresome, where opinions outside the mainstream are heard and given voice, where creative experimentation is unleashed, where members and listeners actually participate.

We are losing control of our public airwaves and we must demand them back.

THE LIGHT RAIL

I was reading in the Sun about the MTA light rail dilemma, which got me thinking about mass transit. So, more people seem to be using light rail because of high gas prices. That is a wonderful thing. Most seem to believe we can’t get people out their cars into public transit. Well, I think over the long run we can. Keep gas prices high, stop building new developments, squeeze the auto industry to make hybrid/electric/hydrogen vehicles, and for god's sake put money into mass transit and stop building so many bloody highways. Life can change. It takes, it takes patience …… it takes money.

In the meantime, MTA has to get its act together. The state should take some of that highway money (those highway contractors and developers are powerful lobbies in Annapolis) and put it into MTA and the MARC to buy more cars, high speed (give them a lane) hybrid alternative diesel busses, and more maintenance workers and inspectors. In the long, they should build more rail (so MARC runs faster and the Light Rail has at least two tracks with more routes.)

That is the answer. Short term - buy more cars and busses. Long term - give us more rail.

It can be done. Am I nuts? What do you think?

DEMOCRACTIC PRESIDENTIAL RACE

The common wisdom has been, and primary election vote analyses tell us, that higher income people with more education, African-Americans, and younger voters are voting for Obama and that older voters, white women, Latinos, to a degree, and working people with less education are going with Clinton. No matter what happens, a portion of the Hillary voters will never vote for a Black man and a portion of the Barack voters will never vote for Hillary or a woman. The majority of primary voters, many of them new or voting for the first time in many years, could be Democratic voters in the fall.

It means that the two candidates have to come together and convince their supporters to support a new tomorrow together or they may once again lose despite Americans' frustrations and anger over the state of the economy and the war in Iraq.

They have to ignore the demagogic demons of cable talk TV, these so-called pundits with nothing to say but divisive viscera of mistrust and hate. Democrats have to stop talking about Reverend Wright, ignore and rise above the media’s obsession with their “bittergate" and dividing people with emotionally charged rhetoric over race and class. Sure, race and class are at the core of our fears, our mistrust, and the most horrendous parts of our history.

They have to speak forcefully, passionately, persuasively and intelligently about those things that concern Americans. You have to speak to people’s hopes and fears about the future. There is no reason why the wealthiest nation on the planet cannot guarantee a decent income, health care, and schools that we want our children to go to. Someone has to make sense of immigration and our relationship to the world economy honestly and clearly. People will hear it. Americans want us out of Iraq; we did not want to be there in the first place. Now it has to be clear that the Republican mess has to be cleared up, and it won’t be easy. Say it clearly; it will be heard. Most Americans want large corporations and the financial investment industry to be regulated and allow small business to flourish. People want immediate help and a vision for the future. Most folks don’t mind paying if they know where they are going. That is as long as the paying for is equitable where the wealthiest and the major corporations are carrying their weight and then some.

Talk about those issues and bring our future into the clear light of day and most Americans will go..."Reverend WHO?”

The Republicans have their vision and their candidate(s). The Democrats better see to theirs unless they want to sit by the gates of the White House panting like a thirsty dog for the next four years.

ABOUT TOWN

So, one of my favorite spots to eat near our new Hampden office is Soup's On, located on 36th Street in Hampden. They're closing this Saturday for three months. Just two days left to get your favorite soup, salad, chicken pot pie, iced coffee and dangerous cupcakes. The lovely Cynthia, proprietor and creator of Soup's On, is going to have a baby. Get her wares while you can, or wait till the end of the summer.

Also, went to Luca's Café in Locust Point, on Fort Avenue across from the Phillips Seafood HQ. The food was just phenomenonal and prices, well, four of with a few drinks was $96 bucks. Great wine list too. Check it out.

At the Baltimore School for the Arts, students and faculty are putting on four one-act Moliere plays. It runs through Sunday. Don’t miss it. The plays are really well acted by adults and students. My old friend Tony Tsendas is hilarious, right in his element (I think he channels the Marx brothers.) Richard Pilcher directs it all. Don’t miss it. Our School for the Arts (and Carver in Baltimore County) is among the best in the nation.

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May 2, 2008
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5/02/08 end of the week

I am sitting here at my computer; I have not blogged all week. I have really wanted to write something. The week has been taken up with planning the future of the Center for Emerging Media, so we can become the new public media for our community. It has taken time to raise money and plan productions. I am lucky that despite the uncertainty, Jessica Phillips and Justin Levy, my producers, left WYPR to work with me and build CEM.

So, this morning I was all set to wax forth on Presidential campaigns, Obama and Wright, the property tax wars in Baltimore City, and the future of the bay and the crabs that are trying to survive in it, but I am just not there right now. I will be, though, in the coming days. Right now, I keep reflecting on how this has been an interesting two weeks of lecturing at colleges and emceeing. It has filled me with a joy and hope for our future.

And this morning, I was all set to write, when I went outside to look at the field across from our home. A family of foxes dug its den across the road. The mama fox gave birth to five kits the other week. So instead of writing I went outside with my binoculars to watch the kits cavort with one another, leaping in the air and wrestling. Some wandered over to suckle on their mother, who sat calmly watching over her offspring to ensure their safety.

Then, just as I had my fill of my new neighbors the Foxes, Valerie called me outside again. Her hands were cupped around a baby finch that had left its nest too early. It was huddled up on the windowsill of our den. She called the wild animal rescue lady and now has the baby in one of the carrying cases she keeps around to rescue small things lost or injured. My lady is a reiki master and performed her reiki healing on the young bird. We will see how the young, downy-covered boy fairs today.

The spring is full of life and new birth, as I’m witnessing with the exciting and creative growth of the Center for Emerging Media.

We will be sending our fund drive letter out to you all soon, so you can support your new public media meeting ground in Baltimore. CEM will be doing some interesting things for and with you in the coming months.

Last night, I was the emcee for a Baltimore Green Week event at Morgan State University. The keynote speaker was Van Jones, who is the founder of Green for All. WEAA recorded his talk. It was so inspirational. He is working to bridge the gap between social and environmental justice. His thrust is that building a green economy creates jobs and is the way to start ending inner city poverty in America.

He is right. We have to build industries in this country based on solar and alternative energy technologies. Just retrofitting all the buildings in America can create millions of jobs. He calls for a Green New Deal to stimulate this economy, government stimulus that will release the entrepreneurial spirit to create new jobs and new industry. He is right we have to dream big and push for a new America. Our country needs to be the world leader of the new Green Economy. The earth and our future will not wait. It has to happen now and we have to make it happen.

This week, I also lectured to a graduate communications class at Morgan and moderated a panel of actors, a writer, director and producer from The Wire at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. You can hear The Wire panel right on our site.

Two weeks ago, it was Goucher, this week Morgan, and I continued to be inspired by this generation of twenty-somethings in our midst. They want to do the right thing, are socially committed, and the graduate students I met at Morgan want nothing to do with corporate media. They want to create their own and say what has to be said.

So, all in all, it has been a good week. And next week, well I promise to write more…and want to hear from you.

Have a wonderful weekend…see you at the Flower Mart in Mt. Vernon.

-Marc
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April 24, 2008
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4/24/08 Youth Violence and More

Youth violence seems to be in the air now.   At least it is all over the news.   Fifteen-year-old Nakita McDaniels was sentenced to the juvenile system for leading the attack on a woman on an MTA bus.   From accounts discussed in court and published, she seems to have a history of violently attacking people who she feels have disrespected her.    Disrespect - that is a key phrase. When I got home late last night from my speaking engagement with Goucher students, I got on the web to look at the latest KAL cartoon videos.  When I got to You Tube I noticed videos commenting about an earlier video of eight young people who invited another teen to a friend’s home, so they could beat her up for a comment she made.  The idea was to tape it and put it online.  It made me think of the teacher who was beaten up recently at Reginald F Lewis High School in the city.  A young person taped her beating and put it up on the web. It seems that it has become a badge of honor to commit an act of violence, videotape it, and put it online.      When I interviewed the students from the Algebra Project yesterday (available for podcasting on our website later today) they spoke about the hopelessness of stopping the violence in our schools.    They said it comes from the street and carries over into the schools.  It is a matter of respect they say.   You have to respond if you are disrespected.   The communities are a dangerous place they said.   They seem to be critical of the violence but accepting of the moral rightness of “defending yourself if you are disrespected.”  What we face here is more than implementing policy to address violence in our schools and among our youth.  We are facing an issue of major ethical and moral consequence for our world.     Violence is nothing new. Mob violence and gladiators are age old, as old as humankind.  This nation was built on violence. Lynch mobs and mass beatings resound throughout our history.    But it is different now.   When I was in elementary school and junior high school, we had fights.  I remember one big one in the 6th grade between a good, tough guy and the school bully.  It was the biggest fight I had ever seen, up to that point in my life, which is why it has stayed with me all these years.   I went to Garrison Junior High, known as little Alcatraz, I suppose, because it was where middle class/poor blacks and whites met for the first time in a school setting.  My second day there I got into a fight defending another kid who was being picked on.  I got the stuffing beaten out of me by another kid who later became my friend.  Those were fights.  But what are happening now are mass beatings.   There is a confluence of social events that is exacerbating violence in our world.     First, violence is in our face all the time.   Media saturation has changed the way we live and think.   One of the reasons that the Vietnam War was ended by protests was because it was in our living rooms every night on the evening news.   Our soldiers killed, wounded, and in distress were scenes America could not get out of its collective mind. Now with cable and the Internet and the market demanding its profit, the media is pervasive, with us 24/7.   So, the sex and violence that has always titillated us as human beings draws us in constantly through the television and our computers.  Once we had boxing and wrestling; now it is extreme fighting.  Sex was something we did or had to go to a foreign film or porno theater to watch.   Now, just click it on… any kind of sex, from joyful to perverse, is a mouse click away.  We are like kids on sugar.   Humans love sugar, but we had to search for the fruit to get it until we packaged chocolate and candy.   Now, look at us.  Put that access to violence with the culture of violence we breed in America and you have an explosion.  Those who live in the direst of inner city poverty in America absorb that violence like no other part of our culture.   It is reflected back out at us liking a blinding beacon.  Since the turn of the last century, America’s oppositional culture has come from or been reflected out of Black America, from blues to jazz to being cool and hip, to challenging the established order and world, and now on to hip hop.   We have kept Black America imprisoned and that prison culture has taken over the street and that street is the mirror America must face.  We have to recognize what we have done to ourselves, so we can figure how to fix it and mend our country.  We can do it. 

THE OTHER SIDE 

Last night I spoke at Goucher College.   I left so inspired by the young people I met there.  I met students who had gone to New Orleans to rebuild the 9th Ward, who were studying Chesapeake Bay grasses to save our environment, who were working with the Latino community in East Baltimore to tell their stories and start a low power AM station, who wanted to join Teach for America when they graduated…  An African American woman, a little older than the students, came up to me after my speech saying she read about it in the Examiner.  She was concerned about these kids being so naïve but wanting to do good.  She herself was trying to find out how to get involved in social change to lift up her community.  These were the Obama kids full of hope.   They want to use their minds, their skills, and new technology to change their world, to make it a better place for all of us.  I am meeting young people like this everywhere I go, in Baltimore’s public high schools and in private schools like Park and Friends.   They are at University of Maryland Law, Medicine and Social Work schools.   Undergraduates at UMBC, Coppin, and Morgan.      Students from UM and Baltimore law schools going to New Orleans in droves to provide legal services for the poor and incarcerated of Katrina.   The Albert Schweitzer scores from UM that are more interested in humanitarian work than raking in the bucks.  In this world, the positive and the negative dwell side by side in the dialectic dance.   These young people and the countless thousands like them in public, parochial and private high schools, in our communities, wealthy, middle class and poor, and in our colleges and universities, are our hope, are our future, are the beauty and joy in this madness we live in.  More about them in a later blog. marc

 

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April 21, 2008
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4/21 from Marc

Welcome!

Our new website is born. So please spend some time with us here. Our endeavor is to create a new public media that crosses all the platforms and makes you part of all that is going on around you. We have archived our Peabody Award winning series, Just Words and the documentary series we produced on the Vietnam War that we taped here in the states and Vietnam. Our new programming, like conversations with folks from the Wire, Phil Donahue, Andre Codrescu and others is here, as well. There are also video, still photography, and places for your comments.

Speaking of places for your commentary, we opened forums for you to comment on anything that is on your mind. It's sort of like open phones on the web. Please join us there and send us some story and interview ideas. Tell us what is happening in your communities and things of interest you think we could share with everyone.

Politics and the Media

The Pennsylvania primary is tomorrow. Thank God, at last, we thought it would never get here!

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama debate in Philadelphia. Photo Credit: AP Photo

I don’t know if you saw last week’s faux debate between Hillary and Barack on ABC. I do mean faux, it was just horrible. What is wrong with major media in our country? Is it just them or are we all becoming that shallow, uninteresting and banal? They are shirking their duty to all of us. Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were pushing Barack Obama on his relationship with Bill Ayers, former SDS Weatherman who went underground in the sixties. They're focused on Hillary and her claim that she had to run under sniper fire which turned out to be false. The media created “bittergate” as they call it, and are pushing the capital gains tax! Well that fits, most of the big media stars are so well paid and run with such wealth that I guess they are worried about capital gains. What about the rest of us?!

Where were the questions about Iraq, the economy, health care, our infrastructure, home mortgages, the financial market, No Child Left Behind and our schools, veteran's benefits, Afghanistan, global warming, the environment and the future of this nation?

It is all about selling product and the drivel they think will sell to the masses. Well, give the masses some credit. Those who are involved and voting deserve better.

In Pennsylvania, they could have devoted the debate to the economy. What are their ideas about the financial markets? Do they believe that hedge funds and speculation of billionaires need the same oversight as banks? What role does the federal government play in stimulating this economy? Can we create a green economy and rebuild the infrastructure of America the same we did in the 30’s or in the 19th century when the federal government stimulated growth by building the canal system and then later the railroads?

Give us something! America is at a crossroads with wars, the economy and a 21st world that will be very different that the last century.

WYPR

One small tidbit that I would like to share. I heard that management will be spending considerable money for an advertising firm to rebrand the station. It feels it must clean its tarnished image of the last several months. It must purge the identification of Steiner with WYPR.

They tried that before, spending at least $20,000 on the 5th anniversary for WYPR.

Oh, well…join me, join us at the Center for Emerging Media as we create a new public media for our community, for all of us, for the 21st century.

-Marc

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March 18, 2008
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3/18/08 Obama’s Speech Today

Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal

Today, I was a guest on Doni Glover’s show on WOLB.   When we finished our conversation on the air, I stumbled into their lunchroom.   Everyone was glued to CNN listening to Obama’s speech on race.  I sat down.   I became glued to the TV, to the words Obama was speaking to us all.  

I don’t know how many of you heard it, but you can watch and read it here.  I have never heard a politician running for office talk about race in that manner.  He tackled it head on.   

We live in a nation where race has always been at the root of our social and political discussion.   Race is at the root of our national persona.   It is complex, very complex.  Our generation, our race, our region, our gender, and our exposure other races define our feelings and sense of race as a nation.   Barak Obama clearly understands the complexity of race in America.   My own sense of him is that growing up as a Black child raised by a socially and politically open white mother, with conservative white grandparents in a white world, with an African father whom he did know, defined his own search for racial identity in America.   He lived in other cultures and saw race not just through the lens of Black and White but through Asian worlds that most non-Asian-Americans ever touch.   This is a life journey that took him, and continues to take him, wrestling with race through all its American complexities.  America needs to have this conversation with itself.  Maybe Barak Obama is the only one, at the moment, who is able to create this conversation among ourselves.   I really understood what he was saying about his minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.   White America easily dismisses Reverend Wright because they identify his words with the words of Farrakhan.  Most of us in the white world have to be willing to admit that this visceral reaction is what motivates us to become angry at the words of Reverend Wright. Obama said he could no more turn against Reverend Wright than he could his white grandmother.   He said Reverend Wright came out of a generation that grew up in segregation and in the face of outright racial hatred in America.   He is still a distrustful and angry man.  He also said how much he learned about his faith and life from Rev. Wright. Obama went on to say how much his white Kansas rural-raised grandmother loved him.   How much she loved this Black child in her life but how he cringed at her racist remarks.  This is life in America.   This is an America where love and family cross all those lines.  This is an America that must have a conversation with itself. When Obama turned his conversation to the white working class of America and its frustrations, it was clear that he understands the anger of white working class Americans who feels like Black folks are getting a free ride, while they worked for everything they have.   He understands how that is all wrapped around the economic conditions they face with factories closing, mortgage foreclosures, and crumbling public schools that intensify the anger around race. He understands the responsibility Black America must take for itself.   He called on Black fathers to come home to their children while understanding the devastation and desperation of life in the Black inner city streets of America.   He also understands that to get beyond race we need to have more than just a conversation with ourselves as Americans.  We need to rebuild our economy so that it supports stability and equality.   A nation rebuilding its infrastructure, breeding and teaching creative minds, a nation at work with decent paying jobs, a system that provides health care for all its citizens, and public schools where we feel safe and confident sending our children, just might allow us to go beyond race.  A movement fighting for this America has the power to transcend race. I hope and pray that Big Media in America will do this speech and this conversation justice.   I am not optimistic but will jump for joy if proven wrong.   Let’s see what sound bites they use from this magnificent speech.  Let’s see if the rabid hosts of hot talk television and radio and the knee-jerk response columnists can keep their powder dry.   Let’s see if they can stop to think for a moment and help us have this conversation.   I was sitting with a dear friend at lunch (yeah, I can have lunch these days – what a novel idea) who said his liberal Jewish mother and her friends could not vote for Obama if he defended Rev Wright’s words.   The first thing that came to my mind was, how short our memories are.   His Mom is obviously part of my Dad’s generation.    I remember growing up in a world where we Jews lived in our neighborhoods apart from the rest.  It was because of discrimination against us and by our own choice to live among one another.  Non Jews were not trusted not to be anti-Semitic until we were satisfied they were not.   Goyim jokes (jokes about those who were not Jews) abounded in the community.   I grew up with cousins with numbers on their arms tattooed on by their Nazi torturers in concentration camps.   I knew that at any moment they .. the proverbial they .. could turn on us before sunset.  There is a distrust born of being a discriminated against minority. You overcome it, you go beyond it, you fight against it, both in society and within your own being.  It is a complex thing.   I, too, understand the anger in Rev. Wright and in other dear friends of mine.   I don’t agree with it.   Race is both deep and superficial.  It means nothing in the reality of existence but it defines our every move in America.   President Clinton’s conversation on race when he was in the White House was superficial, elitist and detached.   Maybe now we can have a conversation based in the material reality of our everyday lives.  Obama’s words were eloquent but eloquence is not enough.   If he wins, he must build the America he preaches about.  If he loses, he has to build the movement he talks about.  Words of beauty will only take us so far.   I hope the substance is as powerful as the speech.   We will see. -marc
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