Commentary
THE LINES AT OUR LOCAL polling place stretched way outside, down the block, and around the corner. From the reports I've heard in the days after the election, that scene was repeated all across the country.
The pundits point to the now-famous sign at Clinton headquarters as defining the major single issue of this presidential campaign: "The economy, stupid." But the underlying themes and tensions during the election point deeper than the obvious reality of Bush's failed economic policies. During this election year, the word on most people's lips was "change."
That hunger for change among the American people may be the most important lesson to be learned from this election. This most unusual political season revealed a longing in the country for a new kind of politics that is more connected to people's lives and values. The public clamor for change set the stage for all the candidates' efforts to be elected—in Ross Perot's brash promises to end the "gridlock," in the populist rhetoric of Bill Clinton, and even in the desperate attempt of George Bush to pledge that things would be different.
In 1988, during the last presidential election campaign, Congress passed the Family Support Act—a much-heralded welfare reform measure that required all states to implement job training and educational programs for welfare recipients. The legislation symbolized a new "social contract," emphasizing government's responsibility to offer needed support for those seeking self-sufficiency, and a commitment to participate on the part of those seeking the benefits.
The idea was, and still is, a good one. But it hasn't brought the kind of radical social change it promised, as a recent study by SUNY's Rockefeller Institute of Government pointed out. The recession, combined with a lack of political will in many states to expand its services, has limited the effect of the job training program. (Because of budget constraints, states have used only about 60 percent of the $1 billion available in matching federal funds.)
Many experts now say that such welfare-to-work programs, while reducing welfare costs and encouraging self-sufficiency, must be supplemented by other government assistance if welfare recipients are to escape poverty.
Meanwhile, as economic conditions have worsened, the number of parents seeking funds through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) has skyrocketed. Many states have responded by freezing or slashing welfare programs such as AFDC and tightening eligibility standards.
In Michigan, where manufacturing jobs are on the decline due to closing plants, Gov. John Engler eliminated last fall the entire "general assistance" cash aid program to single adults in need—a move that religious leaders in the state described as "cruel and immoral."
Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the upcoming Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, described the primary purpose of the summit as "to lay the foundation for a global partnership between developing and more industrialized countries, based on mutual agreements and common interests, to ensure the future of the planet."
Some feel the Bush administration, in contrast, views environmental issues as cannon fodder in the partisan war between the Republicans and Democrats. Bush has threatened to skip the June 1-12 gathering—known formally as the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)—unless it produces a treaty the administration feels "serves U.S. interests."
June 5, 1992, will mark the international observance of World Environment Day and is the 20th anniversary of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment, convened in Sweden in 1972. Since then, however, the health of the planet's environment has been dangerously injured with substantive increases in ozone depletion, global warming, and production of toxic substances.
Leaders from environmental organizations around the world are viewing the Earth Summit as a historic moment when governmental leaders can be challenged to take more effective measures to bring development and industrialization questions in line with the growing worldwide demand that the planet's environment be protected.
I was up early in my Chicago hotel room and turned on the television to get more news of the previous day's Connecticut primary. The first words I heard were insurgent candidate and upset winner Jerry Brown's, intoning the biblical text from which I would be preaching that morning to SCUPE's National Urban Congress: "Without a vision, the people perish." It's becoming apparent to many Americans that we have a vision problem.
The issue was first officially named when George Bush joked, in a now famous remark, that he wasn't very good at "the vision thing." Subsequent events have proven the president right, but they have also shown that it isn't very funny.
In New York two weeks later, Brown and Bill Clinton slugged it out in the nastiest primary so far. The sordid affair featured a media circus, angry voters, and a low turnout that reflected public disgust and the often expressed majority sentiment for better options. Fifty percent of the voters believed the winner (Clinton) lacks the honesty and integrity to be president, and voters seemed to trust his opponent even less.
Low voter turnout, disappointment with the choices, and frustration with the direction of the country have characterized most of the primaries thus far. As many as 100 members of Congress may decide to leave office this year amid the cloud of corruption, paralysis, and growing public resentment. And all the candidates, including George Bush, can't say enough about how much they stand for change.
So far, most of the energy and enthusiasm of this presidential election campaign have been generated by the three "protest candidates." Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, and now Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot have each struck a nerve. Though the three have wildly different platforms, each has articulated the political alienation in growing sectors of the electorate.
Not a few people recognized the irony in the trip to Russia last fall by Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood. The Russians face the challenge of converting their military production establishment to civilian pursuits. Atwood's visit was to encourage and offer support for that daunting transition process.
The irony of the trip, of course, lies in the fact that while the Bush administration is willing to aid and abet economic conversion in the former Soviet Union, it is stonewalling federal conversion planning efforts here in the United States.
A recent Office of Technology Assessment report, "After the Cold War: Living With Lower Defense Spending," projects that direct job loss from Pentagon cutbacks will average 275,000 per year between 1991 and 1995. Already substantial cuts are under way. For example, Los Angeles County alone lost 38,000 defense jobs in 1991.
How is Washington, D.C., responding to this serious economic dislocation? Very inadequately, indeed!
In October 1990, Congress passed and the president signed very modest economic adjustment legislation that allocated $200 million for assistance to laid-off defense workers and military-dependent communities hit by the closure of military bases and defense plants. That amount of money is a drop in the bucket when measured against the need for assistance. But due to bureaucratic resistance in the Department of Commerce, very little of it has thus far been expended.
A recent study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Washington, D.C. Commission on Public Health found that AIDS cases in the capital likely will triple within five years. From a total of 3,500 cases last year, 10,000 District residents are expected to have AIDS by the mid-l990s.
This preview of Washington, D.C.'s immediate future constitutes more than a wake-up call; it is a fire alarm that should shake us out of our somnolence and neglect toward the pandemic that grips this city, the entire United States, and the rest of the world. The capital gives witness to a deadly disease now present in 163 countries and, according to World Health Organization projections, destined to infect as many as 40 million people by the year 2000.
Those working directly with AIDS sufferers—particularly those in the gay community—have known the extent of the crisis for years and have desperately tried to focus society's attention on it. Today the virus cuts across all lines in our society. While still devastatingly high among homosexual and bisexual men, the number of new AIDS cases among heterosexuals in Washington, D.C., will explode by 1995, according to the study; drug users will account for more than half of all new cases. The number of D.C. children with AIDS is expected to grow from about 500 now to nearly 1,300 by 1996.
These projections give serious pause to those involved in caring for persons who are HIV positive or have AIDS. One clinical psychologist with an already full case load, on top of group work and supervisory responsibilities, wonders if his burden—and that of others in similar positions—will triple in the next five years.
On March 26, former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was sent to prison to serve a six-year sentence for raping a Miss Black America contestant. Before the verdict, the odds in Las Vegas (where you could place a bet on the trial) were running 5-to-1 in Tyson's favor.
After the judge's decision, people lined up to call Tyson the victim--of either a racist judicial system or a sporting establishment that encouraged his aggressive violence in the ring and looked the other way when it spilled over into streets, parking lots, and hotel rooms. His buddy Donald Trump suggested that if Tyson would just donate some of his millions to a rape crisis center all would be well.
But this time the perpetrator didn't get away with it. Desiree Washington, an 18-year-old college student, went up against Tyson's notoriety, wealth, and handlers--and won. This, despite the predictable efforts of the defense to blame her for her own suffering; despite Tyson's claim in his pleading before his sentencing that he was innocent because "there were no black eyes, no broken ribs." For rape survivors everywhere, Washington's courage brought new hope that justice is sometimes done.
The Tyson trial was only the most recent in a series of controversial skirmishes in the battle of the genders in late 1991 and early 1992. The one that first riveted the nation's attention, of course, was last October's confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas. Although Anita Hill's charges against Thomas of sexual harassment were not enough to derail the Supreme Court nominee's confirmation, they served to bring the nation to a heightened sensitivity about the issue. According to The Washington Post, formal complaints of sexual harassment against corporate employers jumped substantially in the three months following the hearings, as did requests for sensitivity training and orders for a guidebook on combating sexual harassment in the workplace.
December 7, 1991, was the anniversary of another tragedy besides the bombing of Pearl Harbor: the beginning of East Timor's crucifixion in 1975.
On Friday morning October 11, there was a sense that the nation was about to witness a rare and overdue milestone in history.
Indigenous people have lived in the tropical rain forests of South America's Amazon basin region for millennia. And while their way of life has been threatened by outsiders (including Christian missionaries) for centuries, it is only in the last few decades that they have faced the threat of extinction due to development—i. e. gold prospectors, dams, cattle ranchers, oil wells, and lumber companies.
Saving the forests has become a popular cause in recent years, with presidents, kings, religious leaders, corporations, scientists, and environmentalists discussing their fate. But in all of the discussions on topics such as global warming and the genetic diversity of the rain forest, one group has been conspicuously absent: the 1.5 million people who live there.
As part of an effort to place themselves at the bargaining table for their survival, indigenous leaders from Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador—who are part of a coordinating body of indigenous organizations known as COICA—hosted environmentalists in May for what was called the First Iquitos Summit, held in Iquitos, Peru.
The environmental groups participating at the five-day meeting included the National Wildlife Federation, World Wildlife Fund, Rainforest Action Network, Conservation International, and Greenpeace. Many other groups, including the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Cultural Survival, and the Washington, D. C. -based Inter-American Foundation, were also present as observers.
On June 3, 1990, the church celebrated Pentecost. Sojourners sponsored Peace Pentecost 1990—"Breaking the Silence: A Call to End Violence Against Women." Worship services, vigils, and processions were held throughout the country.
In Washington, DC, we began our service at Luther Place Memorial Church. We followed with a procession to McPherson Square Park. Along the way we stopped four times: at Bethany Women's Shelter, where we focused on domestic violence; at The Washington Post building, where we made a note of the media's silence about incest; at an alley where a homeless woman had been raped; and at a video store which—like most video stores—carries a large selection of pornography. At each stop, we listened to statistics, then offered a litany and a refrain of the song, "O God, Give Us Power."
We concluded our service at the park, where we were moved and empowered by testimonies from survivors of the war against women. A bell was rung every three-and-a-half minutes throughout our service, a powerful reminder that every three-and-a-half minutes a woman is a target of rape or attempted rape in the United States. Below is the reflection offered by Joyce Hollyday at Luther Place Memorial Church.
—The Editors
When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1). So begins the Pentecost passage. In the verses preceding this one, the apostles are named: Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Matthias, whom the others had chosen to replace their fallen brother, Judas. These men have personalities—we know during the ordeal they have just gone through who was courageous, who doubted, who denied.
And after the list of their names, the scripture tells us they were together "with the women" and Mary the mother of Jesus. These other women have no names. Like most of the women in the record of our faith, these remain marginal, unknown, present but unaccounted for.
To attack the corporate buyout of Earth Day 1990 is somewhat like shooting at a house with a BB gun. It's an easy target. Many U.S. mega-corporations were none-too-subtle in their attempts to have their names and logos attached to anything that was worn, watched, eaten, or heard by the Americans who went outdoors on April 22 to clean up a little plot of God's creation.
Most people saw the irony in it all. Some corporations spent more money advertising their commitment to the environment than they did on improving the environment. You couldn't find an unopened can of green paint anywhere on Madison Avenue.
Recently at a conference for alternative press people and environmental activists sponsored by The Utne Reader, much of the discussion centered around the effects of corporate involvement with environmental organizations: Who gains? What is lost? One presenter, A.J. Grant, president of Environmental Communications Associates, Inc., convinced Burger King executives, whose annual advertising budget is $215 million, to use $7 million of it to demonstrate their commitment to the environment. In this way they would be encouraging others to be concerned, she thought, while still serving their own needs. But is that the best use of $7 million for the environment?
The American Petroleum Institute spent some of its cash on a half-page ad in The Washington Post explaining why the Clean Air Act's gentle encouragement of ethanol is "An Environmental Frankenstein." The API advertisement begins, "We want cleaner air. So do all Americans." That's as convincing of their environmental sensitivity as the ad in Newsweek by the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness which informed readers that "every day is Earth Day with nuclear energy."
While the Reagan administration and the U.S. Congress were presenting, debating, and voting on additional U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan contras in March, the contras were continuing to kill, wound, and kidnap Nicaraguan civilians.
The ministry of the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers, later known as the Shiloh Retreat Center, is no more.
The more than 400 women from 10 states, Canada, and the Netherlands who gathered in Des Moines, Iowa, March 4 and 5 for the third annual "Harvesting Our Potential" rural women's conference provided poignant testimony to the fact that the farm crisis is not over.
Just two days after the South African government dropped subversion charges against him, anti-apartheid church leader Rev. Allan Boesak was speaking as defiantly as ever.