(Part IV — Fooled Me Once, Shame on You)
Do you get the feeling that the Occupy protests have a tinge of “rinse and repeat”? Haven’t we been here before? Let’s do some counting: Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Coxey’s Army, the Bonus Army, the Seattle WTO protests, the Occupy movement — seriously, the problem lingers instead of getting better. Why are we still having this fight?
After the Great Depression of the 1930′s, new regulations introduced by Congress promised to prevent future economic disasters and the political discords that accompany them. Most notably, the Banking Act of 1933 (aka Glass-Steagall Act) introduced the FDIC to protect individuals’ bank deposits, gave the Fed the power to regulate interest rates, prohibited holding companies from owning other financial institutions (meant to separate investment and commercial banking), and addressed problems of conflicting interests in financial transactions. It seemed that we were finally leaning from the cycles of economic upheaval and popular protest. The law seemed to work. There were notable recessions after (for example, in the 70′s) but they weren’t as frequent, as extreme, or as wide-reaching as before. The Great Recession, which began in December 2007, however, seemed like a return to the kind of economic turbulence of pre-Depression times. The unemployment rate doubled in less than two years; in the same amount of time, global wealth was estimated to have been cut almost in half. Housing prices fell by 20% — leaving many owing more than their houses were then worth on the market, while foreclosure rates jumped five times higher in an equally short time. You have to ask: what the hell happened?
For one thing, in 1999, Congress repealed the part of Glass-Steagall that separated investment banking from commercial forms — prompting banks to mix the two again and put commercial holdings at risk from poor returns (or financial blowout) on the riskier investment side. The Securities and Exchange Commission allowed investment banks to increase their debts with less in reserve in case of loss, while other regulators allowed companies to hide debts through legal constructs that took liabilities off of their balance sheets. As a result, many US companies were already unhealthy before the housing bubble — which had been fueled by predatory and discriminatory (read: illegal) lending and grew too fast for the tiny branch of the regulatory mechanism over it to keep up — burst. Further, Congress refused to move to regulate expanding derivatives markets, which allowed institutions to trade inflated or faulty financial products that made profits off of uninformed suckers buyers. In short, the protections that had been introduced before (after a previous economic meltdown) and the regulatory apparatus that had been haphazardly constructed in the US over the years had been dismantled and/or disgorged. There was little left to serve as a necessary preventative then, when it all came falling down.
And, so, again, the people take to the streets. Disorder and political revolt necessarily follow from malfeasance on Wall Street and Capitol Hill. Once more, financial chicanery forces the people to occupy public spaces demanding loudly that those in power adopt restrains — and frustratingly enough, ones we had already adopted. It’s discouraging and outrageous that the people have to resort to such actions to have their complaints heard. It makes us wonder, yet again, if it’s the system that’s the problem, as we find ourselves in the same spot once more. Clearly, it is up to the people to remain unruly and outspoken and angry, if they don’t want to be fooled repeatedly by financiers and politicians in cahoots with one another to enrich themselves at the expense of the republic. Apparently, it’s money as speech versus disorder as speech, in a never-ending civic exchange. It seems, sadly, then that the democracy will not be civilized either.
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(Part III — There’ll Be No Pelters Here)
Here’s the thing that no one wants to say out loud about Occupiers taking to the streets: it is the unspoken threat that they will turn violent that makes people take careful note of them. That hint of danger from groups loose in our cities — it’s ominous; it’s disturbing; it invites resolution. The innate urge to protect oneself and one’s own immediately reacts to crowds of the vocal and disaffected on the prowl. You prepare for danger and move to eliminate any hint of a threat. Hence, you cannot ignore the protesters in the streets.
This sense is significantly amplified in a society built around the sanctity of property. In a place where it is considered completely legitimate to take a life to protect your flat screen TV or expensive jewelry, any disorder is immediately perceived as a threat to (sacred) stuff. Oh, my God! They broke a window. Can it get worse? They spray painted graffiti on a statue of Robert E. Lee. The indignities! You know, the world will end if anything with a value greater than $500.00 is destroyed. That’s felony protesting there. In the greatest turn of irony ever, conservative pundits online are in a tizzy because some protesters set fire to their own stuff. Where will it end if they don’t even have regard for their personal property?!
(As an aside, this is part of the reason that the government cracked down on Native American practices — the potlatch and fire ceremony — in the 19th century. As rejections of wealth and materialism, these acts conflicted with capitalism, and they, therefore, had to be stopped.)
Do you know who can least afford to have their property damaged? Psst, it’s not the one percenters. Burning your own shit is a powerful statement when you’re unemployed or living paycheck to paycheck. It’s economic immolation. Like the hunger strike, it’s an act of sacrifice that pricks the conscience. Of course, it’s actually more alarming to many that it’s a rejection of commercialism and materialism, otherwise known as the American way. There is perhaps no greater sin against consumerism.
So, these hooligans are on the loose, lacking any regard for the value of things — theirs or others’ — or the propriety of compliant behavior. They say they renounce violence, and some of them have even tried to prevent it. That threat, though, it haunts conservatives (even if they see that the system does unfairly favor the rich) — because they think the bell tolls for them. Really, it serves the movement best that this unspoken fear does linger. Truthfully, the monumental changes wrought by the Progressives in the early 20th century were driven by their fear of growing masses of disaffected poor people, who fought back and caused substantial unrest standing up for themselves. The law didn’t help them. They couldn’t turn to the government. So, they filled the streets, sometimes exercising their 2nd amendment right to bear arms. There was violence, and though we are removed in time from this now, the past lingers. We could return there again. Great recessions and depressions have driven Americans to violent acts many times before. It is possible — even with the domesticated citizenry of today — that this spirit reawaken and we experience a return to the way it was. The regulatory state and welfare society diffused unrest in the past, but it fails us today.
It could be that the peace of the post-World War II age was an anomaly and we have passed that historical moment. Perhaps we are now at a turning point, transitioning to a new paradigm. At this juncture, we do not know. There lies the incentive for the establishment to do as it did in the 20th century: institute reforms that ameliorate the worst of the effects of systemic inequities on the middle and working classes. The people were not in the street when the disparities were not so great. The wealthy elite has forgotten past lessons and gotten too greedy. It needs to return (at least some) power to the people to preserve the system. Otherwise, it may be that restraint gives way as the squeeze continues. Desperation fuels violence – and revolution. Perhaps, it will come to that.
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(Part II — Start Your Own Freaking Movement Then)
I’m so tired of hearing wannabe armchair know-it-alls and negative critics bitching about how the Occupiers are running their own protest. First, observers were mad that the protesters wouldn’t boil the movement down to succinct bullet-point demands that would allow them to cynically, glibly, shallowly treat the very big and complicated problems that our country is facing. Then, they wanted to tell protesters how they should conduct their direct actions: don’t block traffic or destroy property or be rude or obscene. Also, they wanted to make them leave their children at home (please don’t undermine the authoritarian indoctrination we are trying to give them) and stop looking weird. The last part kills me. Essentially, the critics didn’t have a beef with the protester’s thoughtful statements about politics and the influence of money on our society today. Rather, they were disturbed that this intelligent insight was coming from someone who didn’t comb their hair, wore a cape and/or a mask, or was covered in tattoos. The observers prefer that you look “normal,” thank you, and we appreciate your strict cooperation. Yes, please look legitimate when denouncing corporate America. We can’t stand to look at you…er, listen to you otherwise. Of course, a good number of the critics were, all the while, demanding protesters get jobs too, because bums protesting would be yucky and un-American.
To these obnoxious and annoying voices I want to say: “If you don’t like it, start your own freaking protest.” Be better organized and look/smell better and be effective. If you can fix the inequalities we face today, do it! Then, the Occupiers won’t need to be on the streets and they’ll go home. Show them how respectability does it. Damn.
But, I think you won’t. I think you won’t get your lazy butts up and actually do anything. I think you’d rather pick and complain. Honestly, I’d love to have you add your voices — or even drown the Occupiers out if it means you can accomplish what they can’t. The thing is, I think this is part of what the protesters have to do: they have to annoy you so badly that you gripe about it, and gripe about it, and gripe about it — just like you have been. They have to goad you into saying publicly that you agree with their message, even as you complain about their methods. What you are doing then is actually giving the movement its armchair legitimacy and taking the conversation from the streets where the protesters are living it and putting it in offices and meeting rooms and on talk shows. Even as you sniff at the protesters in doing so, you are repackaging the message so that politicians cannot avoid it. The government can clear parks and arrest protesters; it can’t censor MSNBC, CNN or Fox pundits as they cover the story and pester candidates with questions about the protests and responses. It also can’t keep citizens from blowing up Twitter about what’s going on or engaging in millions of conversations about it — even if derisive — with friends and colleagues across the country. In your own little curmudgeonly way then, critics, you are being part of the movement. Welcome to it.
Consider yourselves the 21st century versions of E.B. White. When the Bonus Army marched to D.C. in the 1930′s, White was sympathetic but critical of what the protesters were doing. Writing in The New Yorker, he expressed his own concerns that something of the greatness of the country was gone. It was still rich, he thought, but unemployment had broken the spirits of millions of men and this loss was as crushing as any ruined crop or wasted resources. However, White also dismissed the protesters as a special interest whose terrible condition separated them from their fellow Americans, who were not in the same boat. Feel sorry for the unemployed, he said, but don’t identify with them, Middle Class. Their pains are not yours; you have your own concerns on which you must focus. In short, White rejected the notion that it was the system that was broken, as so many others thought in looking at the country in the midst of the Great Depression.
Of course, many did look at the staggering unemployment and housing foreclosures and shuttered businesses then and concluded that the problem must have been the way the Wall Street fat cats and financiers had played the market on spec and banks had played fast and loose with reserves in the search for profits and corporations had responded to the downturn by slashing jobs and heartlessly forcing men onto the streets. It was completely credible for many to see this as a sign that the market had cruel intentions and the only party who could rein it in and force it to work for the betterment of all citizens was a strong regulatory government. Today, the absolute failure of safeguards to protect the market from the harmful effects of the greedy elite leads many again to question if it is the system itself that is the problem. Tired of being manipulated by the few and forced out of the political process that would help them respond to powerful interests, protesters see no other choice but to change the venue and work outside the system. I don’t know what’s so hard to get about that. Yet, critics and pundits keep complaining that protesters aren’t using the political process as they feel they should and expressing their discomfort in the face of recalcitrants who have had enough of the mendacity of the myth of the American Dream and are taking to the streets.
So, you critics and pundits who delusively believe you are so wise or expert in managing revolutions, you are today’s sympathetic but exclusive E.B. Whites. You think you are not one of these people on the streets — that you do not share a common tyranny (as White called it) with them. The truth is, you are more like them than you are the Koch brothers. It is just your snobbery that prevents you from promoting your self-interest here. If you can’t get over your middle class sensibilities and separate respectability from righteousness in your minds, you will never really be part of the movement. That’s okay, though. Keep doing what you’re doing and wrinkle your noses at those who see discomfort and disruptiveness as completely legitimate costs of fomenting change. You know in your hearts — and in your minds — that the protesters’ complaints are legitimate and that they are ultimately helping millions of Americans retake a political process that has squeezed them out in favor of the rich and powerful. That’s why you complain but you still sympathize. You retain your decency. Thank you for that, but feel free to do more. And, if you think you can do better, let us see it!
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(Part I — The Candy-ass Middle Class)
I worry that the Occupy Wall Street movement will accomplish anything with lasting significance for the future, as opposed to eventually petering out and falling into historical obscurity like previous movements (read: Coxey’s Army or Green Corn Rebellion). As a historian, I look back at the political fights that have taken place in the U.S. and I wonder if we have the stomach for it anymore. More specifically, I wonder if our success has made us less rebellious — and, therefore, maybe a little less “American” (since, you know, the founders were rebels). The more we’ve come to define ourselves as productive capitalists, the more complacent we’ve become.
The thing people wanted so badly in the 19th century — access to a stable, decent standard of living — the thing they were so willing to literally fight for, we largely achieved in the 20th century. A burgeoning middle class expanded to include not only educated professionals but even tradesmen and technicians. That economic status and the comfort that came with it sapped the revolutionary spirit out of participants though. The middle class today is too well behaved and too politely socialized for fisticuffs. Nothing is worth more to them than the sanctity of property or a convenient life. Mobs used to shut down cities over labor disputes. People used to consider it completely legitimate to set fire to something as a statement of absolute political rage. Not anymore.
Occupy Wall Street is no Haymarket affair. Shit, it isn’t even a substantial service interruption. Don’t blame its domestication on a lack of fiery leadership though. You couldn’t find more than a handful today to follow Mother Jones, if she was around, and she used to attract crowds. It’s all about good PR now, which is no longer on the side of the poor and uncouth. No one gets worked up about economic injustice or feels sympathy for the less fortunate anymore. Occupy protests aren’t about any war on poverty. The reason liberals who identify themselves as middle class have joined the resistance is simply because they are now suffering economically and fear joining the poor (which in many cases they have, and that is a great affront to those used to a better life). This is not bleeding-heart liberalism.
The middle class — so dominant in the political discourse — doesn’t have pity; it only has self-righteousness. For them, the morality of the cause (and its proponents) is the important thing. It’s not acceptable to “fight like hell for the living,” a la Mother Jones. It is acceptable, though, to march for political equality politely like Martin Luther King, Jr. — but now you have to meet that standard set: peaceful protesting only, no fighting back, patiently suffering the beatings and indignities of your opponents, facing hate with respectability, etc. It is only through your long-suffering that you gain effectiveness with the public these days. If you shit on a police car or disrupt traffic or interfere with Suits on their way to work, you have lost your moral standing and your legitimacy is dismissed. The middle class wouldn’t break a fucking window, much less the party line — regardless of the fact that corporate America regularly doesn’t play by the rules and screws people every chance it gets. Further, if the police don’t use excessive force on you, then you are a trouble-making instigator who can’t abide by curfews/city ordinances/health regulations. Basically, you have to get beaten up or be Sister Teresa for the middle class to back you. Otherwise, you’re SOL.
By “the middle class backing you,” of course, I mean telling a pollster on the phone that they approve of you. They aren’t going to march with you or anything. That requires inconvenience and/or discomfort. This, the middle class must never endure. Also, making noise just to be disruptive and being generally dismissive of social conventions and authority is uncivilized. These too should be avoided then. In short, the middle class is not a revolutionary class. When you go back through American history, you won’t find the leading lights of rebellion (Cesar Chavez, Big Bill Haywood, Emma Goldman) among them. The poor and the wealthy will fight, but Middle America is a candy-ass class. They will be at home, judging the revolution.
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Forty-eight years ago, at the hopeful and ignorant age of twenty, JoAnn Roxbury was a young wife recently transplanted to Houston, Texas from her native Michigan. She worked for a company that made oil field equipment in their Accounts Payable Department, coding invoices for data entry by a co-worker. The office was in downtown Houston, although in one of the smaller high-rises there in the heart of the city. On her birthday, November 21, 1963, she was greatly excited because the President was coming to town and she would see him in person — something at the time that was rare for average citizens in the heartland and a special treat for a girl from a small town still getting used to urban life. The staff members in her office were notified by the management that they were closing the office early that day, due to the President’s visit. They were told that there had been a threat against the President’s life and extra security measures were being taken as a result. Previously, when parades had passed through downtown, the employees opened windows and threw confetti down on the participants below (like the Colt 45′s/Astros and other local teams/dignitaries); however, this time, they were informed that windows were to remain closed and everyone was prohibited from throwing anything out the windows. In the end, they closed the building altogether and the employees were forced to leave.
The motorcade itself passed in mid-afternoon (around 3:00pm), and it consisted of four or five cars. The Kennedys were in one car — a convertible (which Roxbury recalls as a Cadillac), and the Governor, Mayor, and other persons of note were in accompanying vehicles. There was a motorcycle escort from the Houston police and other officers and Secret Service members walked along with the cars. One of these was black and had darkened windows, which indicated it was a Secret Service vehicle. A large crowd packed both sides of the street, and this included people of all ages. In the heart of downtown, the faces were mostly white, but as the motorcade moved farther to the edges of downtown, it passed into a largely African-American part of the city. This is actually where young Roxbury (who is white) watched the President and First Lady pass. Although some of her co-workers stayed by their office and watched together, Roxbury’s husband fetched her in their Corvair and drove further out to try and avoid the worst of the crowd. Eventually, they were unable to continue on due to street closures, so they parked and got out to watch.
Roxbury was too young to vote in the 1960 election (when one had to be 21 to vote), but she liked the Kennedys very much. They were young and stylish, with a family. She saw them as a breath of fresh air in politics and admired them greatly. In particular, Jacqueline Kennedy seemed an elegant change from the dowdiness of Mamie Eisenhower, whom Roxbury did not particularly like. Houston was a Democratic bastion then and a port city, so there was quite a demographic mix there. It had a significant black population — as well as Hispanics and immigrants. The main of the town, then, was eager to see the President and his wife as they drove from the airport to wherever they were staying (which was never announced to the public). The Kennedys were to attend a fundraising dinner that night, Roxbury thought. She was very eager to catch a glimpse and was thrilled to find herself about fifteen yards from the Kennedys’ car as it passed. Being the only white people in the crowd at that part, Roxbury and her husband stood out — and she thought it was because of this that she caught the Kennedys’ attention. Looking over, Jackie Kennedy eyed her directly and waved, smiling brightly. Roxbury thought Mrs. Kennedy looked very elegant in her suit and hat. People around them were calling out to the President and First Lady, cheering, and talking excitedly. It was quite a treat for the young wife’s birthday, and she looked forward to telling her family back home about it later.
After this momentous and special birthday event, Roxbury reported to her office as usual the next day. She stayed in for lunch. Returning co-workers brought devastating news: going on to Dallas for a visit that morning, President Kennedy had been shot as his motorcade went through town there. Roxbury was stunned. But, she had just seen him the day before. He was so young and healthy-looking. She and her co-workers pressed their boss’ secretary to turn the radio on in his office (they didn’t have any TV’s there), and the woman finally relented. Initial news reports said that the Governor had been shot and killed, while Kennedy was rushed to the hospital with a bullet wound. About 1:30pm, they got the news that, instead, the President was dead.
The office fell strangely silent. The employees were shocked and stunned; some were crying. It seemed so unreal that they had just seen the President the day before, and the next, he had been brutally and shockingly assassinated. Again the office closed early for the day — and it remained closed for the next few days. In downtown Houston, people poured out of office buildings into the streets. Many stood around in a daze. This was America — not some unstable third world country. Roxbury thought: Aren’t we supposed to be better/more tolerant than this? Are we resorting to violence to settle our political disputes now? It was too much — and it would get worse as she watched the President’s assassin killed himself on live TV the following day. ”What have we become?” she asked, just a day after the joy of seeing the head of the great Republic and marking her entry into her second decade. It was all hope and tragedy, and she was starting out.
– Oral history with JoAnn Roxbury, 11/21/2011, Tulsa, OK
(Happy Birthday, Mom.)
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Nov 112011
“If any of you ever becomes President of the United States,” I told my class a couple of weeks ago, “your takeaway lesson from this course is simply this: Don’t shoot veterans. It doesn’t go over well with the public.” I was lecturing on the Bonus Army and the government’s response to veteran protesters setting up camp in Washington, D.C. to demand relief during the Great Depression. Within two days of my lecture, the police in Oakland, California allegedly cracked the skull of a protesting veteran at Occupy Oakland and put him in the hospital in serious condition. Before another week and a half passed, they wounded another veteran (who was actually not participating in the protest at that time). I didn’t think this historical lesson was what you would consider brain surgery, really. If you are the party in power and there are veterans protesting, don’t injure, maim, kill, wound, abuse, or otherwise harm them. It never goes good for your side to harm military heroes — or even Regular Joe servicemen. Duh.
Let’s see how it played out the first time: After World War I ended, as was customary, Congress passed legislation giving a “bonus” to veterans for their service as a way to give them some compensation for lost career opportunities during the war. The bonus was a whopping $1.25 for each day served overseas and $1.00 for domestic service. Only, the country was broke at the time, so payment (if greater than $50.00) was delayed until 1945. After the Depression hit in the ’30′s, desperate veterans began chomping at the bit for payments. A group of them from Oregon (about 300) who had been living in Hoovervilles (shantytowns named after President Hoover) and unemployed decided to march to Washington, D.C. and camp out (Occupy Washington) until legislation introduced by Rep. Wright Patman (D – Texas) that would give them their payments early was approved. Along the way, they picked up more of a crowd — additional servicemen and their families, hungry and homeless and discontented. In the end, somewhere between 10-15,000 made camp at various places around D.C. — condemned buildings, “Camp Marks” by the Anacostia River, and new Hoovervilles around the capital. They bathed in the river and lobbied their Congressmen, getting a crash course in the democracy they had previously fought to preserve.
From March to May of 1932 they accumulated at the capital, only to be disappointed when in July, the Senate killed the bill. It was then that the Attorney General ordered them to leave and return home. They were now trespassers on federal property with no purpose for continued occupation. Some veterans left voluntarily, while others evacuated federal buildings to join the local camps that were already full. On July 28th, the forced eviction of the shantytowns began. At some point during the day, shots were fired, and two protesters were killed. Rather than ease off then, President Hoover sent in the army, with General Douglas MacArthur and Majors George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower in the lead. The troops used bayonets and sabers to clear the shanties and then knocked them down. The army followed the fleeing veterans and their families to the Anacostia River where it burned out the Hooverville there. Both MacArthur and Hoover blamed agitators among the marchers for causing insurrection and threatening the overthrow of the government (presumably as they fled). State troopers barred the way into Maryland, but the refugees escaped to an abandoned amusement park in Pennsylvania. Newsreels of the burning shelters and fleeing families played in movie houses around the country thereafter. In the end, one baby died, a pregnant woman miscarried, hundreds had to be treated at hospitals, and 135 marchers were arrested in the conflagration. It wasn’t until 1936, over President Roosevelt’s veto, that Congress finally passed legislation authorizing early disbursement of the bonuses to aid veterans and their families.
Today is Veteran’s Day. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for veterans is currently 12%. For non-veterans, it’s 9%. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, a third of homeless adults in America are former service personnel — many of whom have service-connected disabilities. In fact, according to the Veteran’s Administration, approximately 20% of the persons who committed suicide in the last year were vets (obviously suffering from depression, PTSD, or other conditions). Each day, about eighteen of them kill themselves. As the war on terror drags out, we see them — as after World War I — struggling due to high unemployment (and it’s effects: hunger, poverty, homelessness) and difficulties with the return to civilian life. Today, they are joined by non-civilians who are also suffering, and like the Bonus marchers, they are setting up camps to pressure politicians to address their situation and end favoritism toward the wealthy. Walter White, leader of the Bonus Army, said: ”When big business wanted action on vital legislation, it did not content itself with merely sending letters; it sent people.”* This is the same urge today.
Some complain that the Occupiers are committing (minor) violations of curfews and health regulations. Well, the Bonus marchers panhandled and trespassed and scuffled with the law themselves. That’s pretty much the nature of poverty and protest. Let’s hope that this time, our leaders have better patience, wiser policy, and slower anger. Whatever they do, they must not shoot the veterans.
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* Donald J. Lisio, The President and Protest: Hoover, MacArthur, and the Bonus Riot (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), p. 65.
I know I’m the only one who thinks about the usefulness of history anymore. Academics study the thing for itself — knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Laypersons are interested in history strictly for the entertainment value, and political scientists try to make history a primer for politics. All due respect to George Santayana, circumstances from the past do not perfectly repeat themselves so that we get a second chance to retry the same problem (though some rough lessons can apply). Even if historical knowledge gave us hindsight for practical application in the present, the frequency of its usefulness would be limited at best. None of this is to say that history offers us no practical benefit. I am always harping on how it gives consciousness to our lives and informs our choices. Since that isn’t “hard” science with obvious application, some might resist embracing the notion that this makes history useful; however, there is a concrete way of applying this consciousness that is an often ignored aid.
Happily, we have come to a point in human development where we have informed understanding of society and its function. We no longer believe that events are caused by spirits and sprites or that divinity resides in the whims of the king and they are therefore to be honored. We understand today about the structure and function of our society and our ability to shape our communities. This is to say, we can exercise conscious management of our societies through planning and effective legislation, enforcement, and cooperation. We see now that while our world may be a Ship of Fools, it still has a rudder. Even such fools can learn to maneuver the boat, and our choices are the rudder that directs us. You can’t control life, but we can manage our responses to it.
Friedrich Nietzsche noted more than a hundred and thirty years ago that history can and should serve the purpose of living life. Humans can use it to inform our choices — particularly if we are doing “critical history” or writing about the past in ways that undermine the worship of it. Then, we are able to leave off and reject that past in search for something better. Or, as Maya Angelou says: ”When you know better, you do better.” History gives us knowledge from which we can learn and use to build a new future. Since we can choose what we want our society to look like and what values we want it to reflect, we can look at the past and see what we have done before that helped in reaching our goals and what has not (and therefore needs to be abandoned).
So, firstly, we must use history to remind us of why we made these choices. What was the impetus for doing this or that? For example, the social and health effects of industrialization on workers were what led to passage of workers’ compensation programs and safety regulations. Studying this development makes clear why there was a need and what the chosen response was. Next, we look at how this solution operated in practice — what is the history of how that choice or action developed? We want to see what we did. This will of course allow us to avoid repeating errors as Santayana suggests, but it also lets us judge generally on how we are doing at achieving our ends. Have we accomplished what we had hoped? What is working? What good have we done? What isn’t working and what effect has this failure had? Once we see how the thing developed and judged it, we can then make choices for the future. We can reaffirm or redraft our goals. We can adjust our efforts to respond better in areas in which we have not succeeded. Or, we can expand our response or reduce it based on the effectiveness of past actions, need, and interest.
In short, history provides use a means for social analysis. We can use it to make a grade card for ourselves. As a community, we can assess our performance and make choices based on this for our future. In this sense, history is a very real and obvious tool — and it has a substantive rather than just ethereal value. Knowing this, failure to make use of our history indicates not just ignorance or foolishness but also that we are people who fail to try to exercise any will on our society and are content to lead lives lacking consciousness — in which case, we do no better at shaping our world than the unlearned or superstitious who came before us.
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Sep 042011
I read a lot of articles, blog postings, and opinion pieces — I like things that make me think. Generally, I would say, there isn’t a lot in the papers or online that comes close to deeply affecting me though. Much of it is interesting and informative; some of it gets me worked up. Frequently, it even makes me feel more dejected about where I live and further drains my hope for the future. The stories, themselves, however, aren’t generally….moving, is I guess the word for it. There’s a lot of drama to them, but they aren’t that important, in that in twenty years they won’t mean much anymore. They are part of the temporary din — filler for my days and information on the fleeting doings of the world. Really, though, in my lifetime, Michele Bachmann’s crazy eyes and GOP infighting will come to matter very little. We may be crippled by political gridlock now, but this will pass. We will survive it and then it will just be the Era of Bad Feelings. And all the words about it — all the thousands and millions of words — will be as little important as the patriotic pandering of the day.
But this week, I read what is one of the most important pieces I have read in I can’t remember how long. A local media outlet, This Land, published an edition that examines the historical cloud that hangs over the City of Tulsa. One of the pieces incriminated a notable city founder. Another piece gave history to the real estate over which important legal and political battles were fought. And, my God! the cover was black-and-white rendering of Klansmen as figures of power and ghosts of our past. It is absolutely tragic if everyone in Tulsa does not read what the publication has to say. It is necessary that everyone know this truth and understand how that legacy still impacts choices the citizenry makes today. This is history at it’s most powerful and important. This is not knowledge for the sake of knowledge or antiquarianism. This is so very much more real to people’s lives.
One of the most important reasons that it is necessary reading, though, is so that we can just finally put an end to the deceit we have lived with for so many years. I grew up here, and I knew then that it was a segregated city, if by practice instead of by law (anymore). Ironically divided North and South, the races mingled little here, and barbecue dinners were the only desegregated hour of most people’s week. (Though even then, blacks and whites often differed in their preferred haunts. Black Tulsans patronizing Elmer’s and whites eating at Elliot’s — a mere couple of blocks from each other on opposite sides of the street.) No one talked about the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 back then, but I learned about it in school from an unconventional teacher — and believe me, it was not part of our Board-approved curriculum or included in our Oklahoma history textbook. It is mandatory to take Oklahoma history in school here, but I didn’t learn there about the Klan or lynchings or even much about segregation, which was established in our Constitution — which means I didn’t really learn Oklahoma history. You aren’t to talk about such things. That’s long past, and there is no sense in dwelling on the negative. When you fail to talk about it though, it festers. The legacy, the lasting impact of the event — these don’t go away, and you make even more bad choices in trying to ignore it. How can we talk about revitalizing downtown and boostering the Brady Arts District if we don’t talk about Tate Brady’s role in the riot and his membership — and that of so many white Tulsans and all of our political and social leaders of that time — in the Klan and how the area that is being built over was the site of a race war? How can north Tulsa and south Tulsa work together to build a better place when there is lasting resentment and hostility between us? How can we move past the battles over funding better streets and access to medical care and even healthy food (for a long time, there wasn’t even a grocery store on the north side of town), if we don’t acknowledge that the segregation of our past and it’s lingering effects have created a disparate experience depending upon in which side of town you reside (and, largely, that is still related to the color of your skin)? How can we try to build a community with a decent quality of life for all its citizens, if we don’t recognize that violence was a tool to suppress political dissent in our past and that set a standard of intolerance toward unions and leftists that still exists today? You cannot fix what you do not recognize as broken, and painting over mold doesn’t make it go away — or keep you from getting sick from the allergens and toxic substances it produces.
There are now a handful of academic books about the race riot. Few of them do it in the way that the articles in This Land covered it (read it online here) — that is, make it relevant and necessary for now — and I mean for the citizens of Tulsa now. These are not merely intellectual examinations for sharing with other academics. They are together a call to recognize and repudiate the past. First, let’s talk about what happened publicly — and name the names of those involved. Let’s challenge the existing hierarchy that benefits still from the things done by their fathers and grandfathers — founders like Brady and Eugene Lorton and T.D. Evans. Then, as this edition does, let’s begin to repudiate that past. Let’s remove Mr. Brady’s name as an honorific for the downtown arts district and instead recognize those who stood up to the violence by giving civic awards in their names and find ways to assure that our new revitalization projects don’t just pave over the memories of these spaces with concrete and commercial projects that ignore the history literally under foot there (by installing art and other means of commemoration that honor the past and help with healing for the future). If this paper/media outlet gets us to undertake these efforts, it is easily the most important thing that I have read in years. It is history (not academic or professional) with the power to awaken and spur change. That is the noblest purpose any history can have and it matters.
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Aug 172011
I recently came across a new blog (Hysteriography — note the wonderful similarity to my handle). I found it because the author, William Hogeland, had a timely post that ran on Salon.com. It was about how self-described “constitutional conservatives” misread the Founding Fathers’ views on public debt. The comments on the article were fascinating. So many of the respondents accused Hogeland of playing politics and being anti-conservative — just because he pointed out that people were getting the history wrong. The assumption was that you must be a partisan liberal if you disagree with them, and, conversely, if you are a conservative, you have to share their view (and defend it, as they were). Well, the commentators were wrong. There’s a third way, and that is to just insist that the history be accurate, whichever side you take.
There are those of us who love to study history. We hate to see the past misrepresented and abused — particularly when it’s out of unnecessary ignorance or with malicious intent. We like to call people out when we see them doing this. It’s a natural instinct. We are protective of our territory and hate to see it wrongly politicized and untrue statements passed off as real history. We want to correct falsities. More that just that, it’s much like wanting to give driving directions to someone who’s clearly lost. In that sense, it’s benevolent — as well as being corrective.
So, you see, I am not the only one who feels this way. There are others like me — a corps of individuals scattered about, who in our own ways stand up against the manipulation of history for political gain. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: my dream job would be serving as a history police officer. Whenever and wherever politicians and public figures in our country break out false history to give legitimacy to their positions, I would like to be able to issue a ticket for the Misuse and Abuse of History. In egregious cases, I’d like to be able to use a Taser.
When Michele Bachmann claims, then, that the Founders were eager to abolish slavery, I would be there to issue a citation. When Mike Huckabee ludicrously claims that George Washington, et al didn’t believe that one person should be allowed to own another — hence the “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence — I would have license to tase (especially since this is a bizarre attempt at an anti-abortion argument and abortion wasn’t made illegal in most jurisdictions in our country until the mid-19th century, well after the Founders had passed). Lest you accuse me of being anti-conservative, let me add that whenever Democrats want to cloak themselves in the mantle of Camelot by laying claim to John Kennedy’s strong support of civil rights, I want to call them out too. And, apparently neither side is above claiming ad nauseam that our country was founded by believers seeking religious freedom (and that one deserves a tase every time).
The thing is, if we didn’t always want to lie about ourselves in order to score political points or if we were educated enough that no one could get away with bad history, we wouldn’t need a history police. Imagine if, instead of defending a politician who misused the past or even misstated historical facts, the whole of us insisted on a correction. What if that would cost someone real credibility across the board — because being true to the facts (read: verifiable) was the most important thing to us regardless of political party…Oh, now I’m just being naïve and ridiculous. Being human is being partisan, and people lie when it serves their purposes. That’s why people like me — and Mr. Hogeland — take it upon ourselves to act as an informal history police. It’s a natural result of studying the past — wanting to protect it from manipulation. It’s like a sacred duty or public service — and one of the highest forms of patriotism I think there is. It’s a dedication to American history that has no party.
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Aug 012011
Do you know how hard it is to get Americans to agree on anything? Seriously, we didn’t even get majority support for the Revolution. At best, 45% of the British colonists were for breaking out on their own. In contrast, about a fifth of the colonists supported staying loyal to Great Britain. The remaining 35% tried to just stay out of it. And that’s about as good as it gets here. Really, as it turned out, U.S. independence didn’t hinge on the support of the colonists anyway. With the help of the French, Spanish, and Dutch, the war was won — in the interest of the landed colonial elites who wanted to be free of rule by their social betters back home. The local militias and colonial army had just managed to force a stalemate with the relatively small forces the British committed to the fight here. Fortunately for the rebels, the French developed a foreign policy consideration in the matter. The more they could use the American colonies to suck British resources away from the wars in Europe, the better it benefited them. It was in their interest to undermine British control of the colonies then — even though France no longer held any territory in North America anymore. But, they could plague the British by fueling the Revolution, so they enabled us to win with financial support/loans, supplies, and even soldiers and military leadership.
In so doing, they created a monster. Never having earned our independence on our own and by thus stumbling into nationhood learning that paying taxes is a necessity for good government, we learned to expect that you can get the benefits without paying the costs. So it is today that people want government that will protect their food supply and pay their social security checks and police the world (in the words of Thomas Wolfe, making it safe for hypocrisy), but they don’t want to have to pay high taxes to do it and support the unrealistic ideology of conservatives who promise them good government for a dime. The French, by enabling us, actually set the bad precedent that led to all this. It’s their fault. They — and the Spanish and the Dutch — ought to have let us lose or at least let the war drag out until we figured out how to do what India and South Africa and other former colonies did. Perhaps if we had been forced to win it on our own — if it hadn’t been a relatively easy victory for us, it might have engendered a different character in us.
Instead, we were led into nationhood mostly be a group of privileged men who got used to having their own way and chafed when the British expected us to actually contribute to our own defense against the French and the Indians. We haven’t much matured beyond that demanding and childish position. We wanted to control the continent from sea to shining sea, but enacting a tariff that could support a government that could run such a large country brought us to our second constitutional crisis. Throughout our history, what has staved off the worst of depressions and recessions has been government intervention, and yet, when we face this same situation again now, Americans want the government to spur recovery and create jobs but do so without accruing more debt. And even then we can’t agree on how to achieve that goal (probably because it is not achievable — but we will find out). Perhaps, if the French had let us fail when we were small enough, we might not be where we are now, when we are big enough to drag foreign markets down with us.
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