We Ride Bikes

Memorial Day

The last Monday in May has traditionally been reserved as a federal holiday to commemorate those who died in service of their country. It is a sacrifice that I am not certain I could make.

However, my concern on a day to day basis, lies not with those who do not come back from battle, but for those who do. This country pays a tremendous amount of lip service to our military might and supporting our troops. We have the best military in the world, several times over. They are better funded, better trained, better equipped than any potential ally or enemy. But all too often, we do a couple of things: 1) We forget about the human element that is inherently required when fighting a conventional war, and 2) drop the ball when those veterans come home.

The numbers of veterans who are homeless is staggering. The number of veterans who batter and/or kill their intimate partner is reprehensible. The profound effect that war has on people may not ever truly be realized. Ignoring, for the moment (as the mainstream media are apt to do), the civilian casualties, what we ask of the men and and women in uniform is too great a burden to ask of any person. We ask them to go risk their lives, kill other people, watch the people with them be killed or wounded in the most horrific ways, then return to normal lives and quash the killer instinct which we systematically inoculated within them.

Ideally, I would say that the costs of war far outweigh the benefits. We should be trying to stop war on the front end, rather than ignoring the effects on the back end. The billions spent on defense should go to equalizing the wealth disparity across the globe, building infrastructures in countries that need it, raising the quality of living of every being on the planet. Paul Wellstone said, "We all do better when we all do better." That idea should be implemented on a global scale. If we eradicate the need for war, we can eradicate war itself.

However, shy of my naively optimistic idea of what the world should look like, we should support our troops. We should support our troops with more than yellow magnets on our trunks. We should support our troops by providing better resources for them and their partners and families. At some point we have to recognize our own culpability in this. This is simply a matter of we trained them to kill, we asked them to kill, and they did. We, as a society, as a country, owe them the most we can offer in support for them for doing what we've asked of them.

Good times.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -Edward Abbey

I am so ashamed of my country right now. The Washington Post reports "Senate Votes English as 'National Language'."

I remember when I learned, as a kid, that we didn't have a national language. And I was so proud of the fact that while we used English more, we embraced other cultures as the "land of opportunity." This nationalism that started to get out of hand following 9/11 has done nothing, absolutely nothing but bring us closer and closer to the type of government the framers of the Constitution wanted to avoid. They wanted to keep churches and government separate. Well now we have the Christian Right conflating religion and patriotism into a new Christian Nationalism. People are willing to give up liberty in the name of homeland security. I'm not saying that protecting ourselves from terror is not an important goal, I simply believe that protecting our liberty from our own government should take precedence over protecting our lives from outside invaders. What is security if there is no liberty? And now, despite this nation being built upon the backs of immigrants we expect to indocrinate them by institutional force.

Understand, I don't think that making English the national language will have a chilling effect on people in their own communities or homes. People will still speak their native languages in those places, and there will still be neighborhoods where the signs are all in Spanish or Mandarin or Vietnamese or anything else depending on the neighborhood. I'm talking about what our institutions say to people who want a better life by coming to this country. Before the President's speech on Monday, we attempted to embrace our differences. This country respected, at least symbolically, the different cultures that came together to make this country great.

On 17 May 1968,

nine people walked into a Selective Service office in Catonsville, Maryland, removed 378 draft A-1 files from a filing cabinet, took them outside to a parking lot, poured homemade napalm over them, and set them on fire. They did this, "because everything else [had] failed." The peace activists were Philip Berrigan, Daniel Berrigan, David Darst, John Hogan, Tom Lewis, John Melville, Marjorie Melville, George Mische, and Mary Moylan. They were arrested, tried and subsequently convicted of destruction of U.S. property, destruction of Selective Service files, and interference with the Selective Service Act of 1967. This is civil disobedience at its best--an active refusal to obey certain laws of a government without resorting to physical violence. No one was harmed, and their point was made. To read more, click here. To see the action, click play.

In other news, I am finally back in Dallas, and I've completed my first year of law school. It's great to be home. I start work tomorrow at the DA's office, but have been trying to take it easy lately. More soon, I'm sure. And thanks for all the well wishes during finals, they finally ended, and were just as bad as I imagined. Off to bed, gotta get up early tomorrow...

Video

I think the Hitler videos may go a little far. Not because I think it's an inappropriate analogy, but because I try to view things like this through the eyes of an individual who is on the fence and could go either way, and when that sort of person sees that analyitic jump I think they tune out the message. Regardless, this video contains footage that Portland Police took at a protest. It's unsettling, and inspiring. This is why I legal observe.
Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Where are we going? And why are we in this handbasket?

The past couple of weeks, in preparation for finals, the school has provided a coffee maker, coffee urns, coffee, sugar, creamer, cups, stirrers etc. in the library free of charge. Last week, I went over and there wasn't coffee, so I made some. It was quick painless and straightforward. This evening I took a break from studying, and walked over to grab a cup of coffee. Not until today, one of the last days of finals, did I notice there were instructions for how to make coffee. This, of course, sent me on an entire thought process of how many people need instructions on how to make coffee. Have that many of us, spent so long in our ivory towers of acedemia, that we can't be bothered to learn or remember how to make coffee? Do we just assume that it's someone else's job to make the coffee for us? I don't know, maybe I'm taking this a bit too seriously, but it just rubbed me the wrong way to think that we, as law students, might think for a second, that we are above making our own coffee. As if the instructions were posted there simply as a reminder that if there's no coffee, and you want some, you're going to have to make it yourself. As far as I'm concerned, the instructions should go without saying. Not only should anyone who drinks coffee, know how to make it, but if there isn't any, you should know to make more.

Bill Cosby used to do a bit about the pitcher of water, or Kool-Aid (OH YEAH!) that most families keep in the fridge. How someone would always leave that little bit, just enough so they wouldn't have to refill it. Okay, going back to studying. More updates to happen soon.

Today in labor history:

In 1972, workers at the five Farah Manufacturing plants in El Paso, Texas were organizing and demanding management recognize their union. A union sponsored march was held, and workers from a plant in San Antonio were fired for attending. Five hundred workers in the San Antonio plant walked out in response. In solidarity with their fellow workers in San Antonio, workers in the Farah Manufacturing plants in El Paso walked out as well.

On 9 May 1972, 4,000 workers staged a strike to demand union recognition. Despite management bringing in strikebreakers from all over El Paso, and Ciudad Juarez, the union called for a national boycott, looked to the Catholic Church, and maintained solidarity in order to win recognition two years later. In January 1974, the NLRB ordered Farah Manufacturing to reinstate the striking workers and to allow union organizing. The subsequent contract included pay increases, a greivance procedure, and job security and seniority rights.

Yesterday.

It's official, I'm an uncle. For more pictures and such go here. Go to the link called "It's Cold Out Here." And if you don't think I'm going to take every opportunity to remind Rogers about May Day, Haymarket Square, and yesterday, you're crazy. For me, yesterday was the culmination of what makes this country great.

Not so many years ago my families came to this country so that their children could have a better life. And yesterday seeing families take to the streets to demand justice, to demand their rights, and to reclaim their dignity while my family celebrated the birth of a new life... It gives me hope. It gives me hope that Rogers will live in the country of my dreams--where no one is subject to oppression, abuse, control or even ridicule for who they are. I dream of a country where 'tolerance' is abandonded in favor of 'acceptance.' I envision a world that celebrates rather than dillutes our differences. I hope for a country where the people retain the power, and where the lip service paid to education is replaced with action.

"We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community…Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own." -Cesar Chavez

I hope.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled radio silence.