Recently released 2010 census data shows the gender gap unimproved from the year before—women still make only 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. For women of color this discrepancy is even larger. African American women earned only 67.7 cents and Latinas earned 58.7 cents to the male dollar. Despite the fact that women are becoming more educated than men on average, they still continue to have significantly lower salaries.
Cleanliness is Next to Crowdliness
Reports (and neighbors) suggested to the staff of the TYDK that the people at the protests were good-for-nothing teens who didn't shower. We heard the no showering thing several times while on our morning constitutional (little or no legalistic relation). The staff of the TYDK noticed that there were many different kinds of people at the protest, among the thousands and thousands who were there. There were young people who, as far as conversation went, were good for a lot, it seemed. There were the group of writers and artists that the TYDK staff was invited into, men and women in their 20s and 30s and maybe the occasional 40s, carrying excellent silk screen posters (above right). There were people in musicians unions, student unions, teachers unions, as well as un-affiliated musicians, students and teachers; we saw women who were nuns and women who were priests. There were Socialists handing out literature, and movies stars handing out high fives, and people we had not seen for years, who live up state a bit—a small group that included Jer, who took great photos of all the protestors, each of whom, in certain afternoon lights, looked a lot like me and perhaps like you too, especially if you are a doctor (right).
But a point we at the TYDK would like to stress is that, in the case of the management of the TYDK, we showered, just before we left. We looked kind of great, in retrospect, or at least pretty tidy, as far as our occupation goes. And, when we got back, we looked even better, charged with the power of all that union.
What Took Them So Long?
A point that Naomi Klein made on the Brian Leher show was not that people in countries outside of the U.S. were asking: What are they protesting for? Rather, she said, people outside the U.S. had seen the disparity in wealth increasing, and are asking instead: "What took them so long?"
Reading
Some reading—a few pages from the introduction of There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, by Philip Dray. But it now.
Contrast of Message Messages
Some people think the Occupy Wall Street Protest is too vague in its stated (or unstated) demands and that that is a problem, a strike against the Wall Street strike. Other people don't. Here are two videos to compare. We at the TYDK think that Nicholas Kristof makes a good point about, say, taxing financial transactions (the Tobin tax) but at the same time we think that the idea makes a bad placard, as opposed to what we are seeing out on the street. (We also find the tone condescending, like much of the coverage of the protest in New York City.) A better direction for message refining comes from the Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen, who describes his union and the Occupy Wall Street protesters are "singing the same song and fighting the same battle" against economic inequity. This is more about battle songs than people who are not interested might imagine, and singing songs, as inarticulate as that might seem, certainly help with what Samuelsen rightly calls "the sense of desperation."
Rowdy
Has everyone been following William Hogeland's blog on the subject of the Wall Street protests? It's deeply applicable:
Hogeland, though, presents an (excellent) reading list, which I hereby re-present:
But I write about the deep, founding roots of rowdy, American populist protest and insurrection, often visionary and even utopian, yet informed and practical too, specifically over money, credit, and the purpose and nature of public and private finance. And despite my pop-narrative books on the subject, and despite my articles here, and in such place as Newdeal20.org (articles picked up by AlterNet, Huffington, Salon, Naked Capitalism, and others), key indicators of my relative impact (like royalty statements!) give me a sneaking suspicion that most people still don’t connect the American founding period with a rugged drive on the part of ordinary people for equal access to the tools of economic development and against the hegemony of the high-finance, inside-government elites who signed the Declaration and framed the Constitution and made us a nation.The TYDK team does not necessarily agree with the too-vague accusations being thrown at the protestors, the number of which grows on weekends, when people are off from jobs that pay wages that have fallen (in real dollar terms) since the seventies. We tend to think of the protest cellularly, and we are not talking phones: the encampment is like a nucleus, the cell growing in times of greater protestation activity, such as tomorrow. We were there last week, on the portion of the Brooklyn Bridge where the cops didn't arrest people, and we saw plain clothes police, plainclothes nuns, people with dreads and people who dread drinking decaf in the afternoon, since they wake up in the night as it is. A mix, in other words. (And a guy standing beside us, who was ostensibly not part of the protest, said that though he was himself making six figures, and though he could, as he put it, make fun of about a group of "people who might smoke weed," he was pleased that it was happening. "I'm happy they are out here," the six figure-er said. "Things are screwed up.")
Hogeland, though, presents an (excellent) reading list, which I hereby re-present:
I would only add How Not To Get Rich, which is already currently in the Occupy Wall Street library.The Putney Debates. 1647. Rank and file in Cromwell’s Army believed they deserved the vote. Cromwell disagreed. The “Levellers” lost — but this is one of the first articulate demands for disconnecting rights from property.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail. 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., argues for the validity of taking direct action in the street, not just waiting for courts to catch up.
The Port Huron Statement. 1962. In a time not of recession but of immense prosperity, students who had benefited from that very prosperity questioned its basis and demanded a renewal of American political values, at home and around the world. Prescient or self-fulfilling or both? Anyway, at once passionate and crystal clear.
The Populist Party Platform. 1892. “We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists.”
Common Sense. 1776. Paine’s call not only for American independence but also, and more importantly — and this is the part routinely and deliberately ignored or marginalized by liberal “consensus” historians — for social equality, in a new kind of American republic.
That’s a start. . . .
Let Them Eat Only Organic Snacks!
Frank Bruni's column on famous chefs' food fights, gets at the things often unsaid about fancy foods, such as this:
A great deal of American obesity is attributable to the dearth ofand this:
healthy food that’s affordable and convenient in low- and even
middle-income neighborhoods, and changing that requires a magnitude of
public intervention and private munificence that are unlikely in such
pinched times.
But these preferences reflect privileges and don’t entitle me,
Bourdain or anyone else who trots the globe and visits ambitious
restaurants — the most casual of which can cost $50 a person and
entail hourlong waits — to look down on food lovers without the
resources, opportunity or inclination for that.
Matthew Sharpe's Powell's Expedition
The Echo Maker is the title of Sharpe's first Powell's guest blog post, one of a week's worth of posts and posts. Take heed!
I find this humbling: the possibility that always and everywhere, our understanding of the world and of each other and of ourselves is at best a fairly attuned and nuanced fiction.
Dave in Meadowlands!
Meadowlands aficionados will be excited to know that my friend Dave is in and out of the Meadowlands today—to wit:
Reykjavik Watch
Just as the red maples lead the chorus of turning leaves as they set south from Nova Scotia and Maine, slowly setting fire to the woods in the Middle Atlantic states--set fire figuratively speaking, of course, as we have surely had our share of floods and fires and quakes of late--so the music scene in Reykjavik leads the way, in some instances, when it comes to music in New York. A place that the staff of the TYDK has long dreamed of visiting and yet never actually has is Reykjavik, which was recent host, apparently, to The Murphy Beds. The Beds, as they are sometimes known, are normally a four-member ensemble, making this Icelandic permutation a kind of twin Beds thing. Góða nótt og dreymi þig vel! Via reykjavik.com.More Icelandic saga:
More Murphy Beds:
And Yet
Right! Nothing you do matters!
You reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.This is the kind of thing people love to read, a relief. And yet, it is, we here at the TYDK would argue, short-sighted, a view of the trees that purports to be a view of the forest. It has put us in mind of this, which is where this post takes its title, "And Yet."
Good.
Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.
Free Agency, Part 2
The response by the NYPD to the Associated Press report on the New York City police department's counter terrorism program was notable for being as petty-seeming as it claimed the A.P.'s report is.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne defended the city’s counter-terrorism efforts following allegations that police have been spying on Muslim communities with the CIA’s help, blaming criticism partially on petty "jealousies that success sometimes breeds.”
The Swamps of Jersey
I wrote a piece about the new development plans in the Meadowlands, here, which is rendered (my word) like so:
And if I am not mistaken, Rosalita is the tune that includes the following lyric" "...somewhere in the swamps of Jersey..."
And if I am not mistaken, Rosalita is the tune that includes the following lyric" "...somewhere in the swamps of Jersey..."
Free Agency
This morning WNYC featured Matt Apuzzo, the Associated Press reporter who co-wrote this story:
Just out of curiosity--where were our other news organizations on this?Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD has become one of the country's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying. Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what's going on.
Downgrade
Why does the job market get such short shrift? Why do we outsource ourselves in the foot? Where is the Walden Pond we can visit that will allow us to see we cannot have a long-term solution to a debt crisis with out a short term solution wherein people have jobs, with rising debt-solving incomes? Can we worry a little less about the stock market and a little more about the job market? It's depressing, for sure, which is why humor is a kind of stimulus.
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