December 18, 2020

Called it


 

I have a binge-watching confession to make: I'm hooked on The Crown, Netflix's portrayal of the drama of the British royal family. I'm not proud of it.

A lot of the show is pure aristocratic soap opera, which is also arguably the case of the real life counterparts. But it's not all melodrama. I was particularly hit by the portrayal of the cruelty of the Thatcher regime. And for what it's worth, X Files star Gillian Anderson does an amazing job of portraying that person...which couldn't have been easy for anyone with a living soul.

I think one reason for my reaction was living through the American version during the Reagan years, a time of extreme economic hardship for millions of Americans and most West Virginians, including myself. 

Those years were, in the words of the Gospel of Matthew, "the beginning of sorrows," of decades of bad policies, tax cuts for the wealthy, growing inequality.

And the results are in: the London School of Economics just released a report that looks at the effects of tax cuts for the wealthy over a 50 year period and covering 18 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And there's no surprise here.

As Hamlet said, O my prophetic soul! Here are some nuggets from the report:

We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment...

Furthermore, we find no effect of tax reforms on real GDP per capita. When looking at the effect on unemployment rates, the estimates show a slightly different pattern. Here, tax cuts for the rich lead to slightly higher unemployment rates in the short term...

We find that major tax cuts for the rich push up income inequality, as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The size of the effect is substantial: on average, each major tax cut results in a rise of 0.8 percentage points in top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect holds in both the short and medium term. Turning our attention to economic performance, we find no significant effects of major tax cuts for the rich. More specifically, the trajectories of real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate are unaffected by significant reductions in taxes on the rich in both the short and medium term...

...cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance.

The sad part is that I'm pretty sure the WV legislature is going to try to push for even more of this garbage in the coming session.

What could possibly go wrong?



December 15, 2020

More of a tweet...and apropos of nothing

 If you ever wondered what you might have done if you lived in a time and place where a leader seen by many to be charismatic undermined democratic processes and unleashed some of the worst aspects of human nature...well, I guess you know now.

December 08, 2020

West Virginia's southern strategy

Around 1969, a Nixon advisor named Kevin Phillips wrote an influential book titled The Emerging Republican Majority. A very crude summary of its main thesis is that the backlash of white voters against the civil rights movement would provide a base in that party in what had historically been a Democratic stronghold for years to come. It took a while, but this "southern strategy" eventually worked, ironically flipping the historical traditions of both parties. 

West Virginia's equivalent of a southern strategy arguably worked better and faster. It was the creation of a "war on coal" narrative that conveniently blamed all hardships in the coalfields, where employment had been on  a steady downward trend since the end of WWII, on the nation's first black president. 

As the Church Lady would say on the old SNL skits, "Isn't that convenient?"

According to this narrative, President Obama's environmental zeal--or just plain meanness--was the cause of all things bad rather than market forces. It worked like a charm, eventually helping not just to flip the legislature for the first time since 1932 in the 2014 elections, but even contributing to supermajorities in both houses of the legislature in 2020.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to bring back mining jobs, even telling miners here "you're going to be working your asses off." The results are in. No doubt some current or former miners are doing just that, although it might not be in a coal mine. The number of working miners in the state, around 11,000, is lower than it was when even you-know-who was president, despite the Trump administration's efforts to roll back regulations.

As conservative commentator Hoppy Kercheval (who a few years ago touted coal's comeback under Trump) noted, "there were other forces at work, market forces that are making thermal coal less marketable."

I'm sure that knowledgeable people among industry supporters knew this was going to happen. But by then the spell had achieved its purpose. 

And the political results of West Virginia's southern strategy for workers, including miners, has been disastrous, with repeal of the state's prevailing wage, passage of right-to-work-for-less, and proposed policies to undermine public sector labor organizations. 

Attacks on the labor movement ultimately undermine the position of all workers. Union jobs typically pay better and have more benefits than non-union jobs, but many non-union employers feel compelled to improve wages and conditions to be compete for workers. The more unions decline, the less pressure employers feel to step up and the harder it is to push for worker-friendly policies. And the race to the bottom continues on its merry way.



December 04, 2020

Public health and politics

 Most people would agree that West Virginia is pretty close to being Ground Zero for the opioid crisis after being virtually cluster bombed for years by pharmaceutical companies dumping highly addictive drugs around the state. 

As the supply of pills declined, more people switched to injecting opioids, which of necessity involves needles...and which has become a political hot button issue in places like Charleston, WV. In 2018, the city shut down the needle exchange program operated by the Kanawha Charleston Health Department.

Of course, people with substance use disorder don't stop using when the supply of clean needles goes away, which can lead to all kinds of horror stories, including an underground market in used needles. It's a classic example of what economists call inelastic demand. 

What could possibly go wrong with that scenario? 

A grassroots group called Solutions Oriented Addiction Response (SOAR) took up the slack, which until recently offered sterile syringes, Naloxone, condoms, snacks, HIV testing, conversation and such until they came under fire from city officials. They're still around, although they've stopped syringe distribution.

This excellent report by WV Public Broadcasting shows what can happen when public health is politicized. And you may learn more about reusing needles than you ever expected to.





December 02, 2020

COVID and jails: stop the spread

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - As the number of COVID-19 cases in West Virginia jails skyrockets, advocates for incarcerated people are urging Gov. Jim Justice to follow recommendations in a new report to curb the spread.

As of December 1, more than 1,150 people serving time and correctional officers have contracted the virus, according to Lida Shepherd - program director with the American Friends Service Committee.

With regional jails at 35% over capacity, she said state officials should reduce pretrial detention and release anyone close to their parole date who isn't a threat to public safety. Those suggestions are in a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

"An outbreak anywhere reduces our state's overall ability to get this virus under control," said Shepherd. "And so, that's why it's just critical that the governor really take action to prevent them - not just respond to when they happen, but to really prevent them through some of these recommendations."

The state Legislature had passed House Bill 2419 before the pandemic, which aims to reduce the number of people being held pretrial for low-level misdemeanor charges.

But Shepherd said she thinks, even with jails and surrounding communities becoming pandemic hotspots, the new law isn't really being applied.

Not using the new law creates what's known as "churn" in regional jails - where a lot of people are entering for short periods and then exiting, Shepherd said.

"In the midst of a pandemic, that obviously has some pretty dire consequences, as we are now seeing play out in some of our regional jails," said Shepherd. "With the virus being introduced not only necessarily by inmates, people who are coming into the system, but of course, by staff as well."

The report also recommends that people not be reincarcerated for minor, technical parole violations. Shepherd said not only would this help stop the spread of COVID, it could help restore lives and reunite families.

(Note: this news story was published by the WV News Service, a local affiliate of the Public News Service.)

December 01, 2020

Let the weird times roll

 

The coolest news for me last week was the metal monolith found in the middle of nowhere in Utah. Then it got weirder when it disappeared. Now, NPR reports that another one showed up in Romania. This has got to be one of the best practical jokes of the century so far. 

Or maybe the mayor of the Romanian city where it showed up got it right: 

"My guess is that some alien, cheeky and terrible teenagers left home with their parents' UFO and started planting metal monoliths around the world. First in Utah and then at Piatra Neamt, I am honored that they chose our city."

Move over, Dracula. 

November 25, 2020

Finally...the good kind of weird



 I don't know about the Gentle Reader, but the news in the last month or so has really worn me out. It was weird, but the bad kind of weird.

That's why I was so grateful to run across this story about the good kind of weird, to wit a 10 to 12 feet tall three-sided metal monolith found out in the middle of nowhere in Utah. It's almost the best news I've seen since some asteroid near misses.

If some wild artist with a sense of humor and ability to delay gratification to put it there I'm OK with that. After all, in junior high during a UFO craze, a friend and I wrapped up in aluminum foil so we could look like space aliens and walked around on I-64 at night.

But I'm kind of holding out for some kind of truly bizarre. C'mon, 2020! 

November 23, 2020

Pandemics and prison overcrowding are a recipe for disaster

 Gov. Jim Justice in a news conference regarding the latest spike in COVID-19 cases, now famously said, “I don’t know what else I can do.”

To give credit where credit is due, starting in March Justice has shown a willingness to listen to public health experts and take proactive measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

However, for the thousands of people who are incarcerated or who work in state correctional facilities — all of whom are at elevated risk of sickness and death from COVID-19 — there are many responses that have not yet been taken by the governor and state officials that would help prevent more outbreaks.

Incarcerated people are infected by COVID-19 at a rate more than five times higher than the nation’s overall rate, due largely to the fact that social distancing necessary to prevent the spread of the virus is virtually impossible in overcrowded facilities.

As of this writing, according to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources COVID-19 website, there are 254 positive cases of COVID-19 in the Stevens Correctional Facility in McDowell County, which means 64% of the prison inmates have contracted the virus. Statewide, there are 58 employees of Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation who are currently positive for COVID-19.

Our state’s regional jails are 35% over capacity, and what’s worse is that nearly half of those incarcerated are pre-trial, meaning they have not been convicted of any crime but, more likely than not, are too poor to come up with the bail money to purchase their freedom as they await trial. This has dire and potentially fatal consequences for these individuals and their families.

To put this problem in perspective, and also as cautionary tale, a recent report by the University of Texas at Austin found that 80% of those who had died from COVID-19 in Texas jails had not been convicted of a crime but were incarcerated pre-trial.

According to public health and safety experts in their October report, “Decarcerating Correctional Facilities During COVID-19,” commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, state officials can prevent outbreaks and deaths if they take action to reduce incarceration.

The first recommendation is to reduce “churn” in regional jails by law enforcement officials using their discretion to divert individuals from incarceration through citations in lieu of arrests.

Additionally they recommend judges and prosecutors adhere to “strong presumption against pretrial detention” through issuance of personal recognizance bonds.

Prior to the pandemic in early March, the state Legislature, wanting to reduce county jail bills, passed House Bill 2419, which instructs magistrates to grant personal recognizance bonds for low-level felony and misdemeanor charges “unless for good cause shown.” To date, even with correctional facilities and their surrounding communities becoming COVID-19 hot spots, there is little indication the new law is being applied.

The report also stresses the need to expedite release for people who are nearing the end of their sentence or are medically vulnerable, and who pose no threat to public safety.

According to data from the West Virginia State Parole Board, between March 3 and May 2, 389 people were granted parole, while 438 were either denied or deferred parole, meaning that the majority of people who were parole eligible were not released.

One way to expedite more releases would be the governor empowering the DOCR commissioner to work with staff to identify individuals who are parole eligible or within a year of parole eligibility, who are deemed low risk for reoffending, and see to their release.

The report also recommends that probation and parole policies be revised to “greatly limit revocation for technical violations,” and instead direct that only when a new crime is committed should parole or probation be revoked.

Last but not least, the report underscores the importance of reentry support to ensure people’s safety and well-being after release. Even in non-pandemic times, reentry is tremendously challenging for those who don’t have resources for housing, transportation and food.

Pile on lack of employment opportunities during a global pandemic while saddled with a criminal conviction, and one can imagine how crucial it is we invest in reentry, especially transitional housing.

As inspiration, other states have safely reduced their prison and jail populations. Most recently in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy and the state legislature worked together on legislation that allowed for the release of over 2,000 adults and juveniles with qualifying offenses who had a year or less left on their sentence.

Why not here?

When leaders of our state realize the urgency to reduce incarceration during this pandemic, lives will be saved.

Then beyond this pandemic, if we take bold steps for criminal legal reform and reinvest the $250 million we spend annually on adult and juvenile incarceration, we will see lives restored and families reunited.

And we can look back and know West Virginia was on the right side of history, as we put our country’s failure of mass incarceration behind us once and for all.

(This ran as an op-ed by AFSC's Lida Shepherd in the Sunday Gazette-Mail.)

November 19, 2020

Latter day Neros


 The old story goes that the mad Roman emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned, a disaster that he blamed on the early Christians, who paid for it with some nasty persecution. 

In fairness to Nero, however, this didn't happen. At least the fiddle part, since these weren't made until the Renaissance era. If he played anything, and I'm not saying he did, it would have been a kithara, a harp-like stringed instrument whose name morphed into guitar.

But that's not important right now. The meaning of the saying is about how some people in power cheerfully ignore the sufferings of others.

A case in point of the latter is congress dithering around rather than passing another round of COVID relief in the face of massive unemployment, hunger and suffering. This post from the Center on Budget and Policy reminds us that as this Thanksgiving approaches, less than half of all American households are confident about their ability to afford food in the days ahead.

In West Virginia, that's 57 percent, with 12 percent reporting having trouble feeding kids now and 9 percent not at all confident about the future. All around West Virginia, people are making heroic efforts to ensure access to food, but that's no substitute for meaningful action related to food security, housing assistance, unemployment, and help with utilities.

It's way past time for action. 

(Meanwhile, speaking of Roman emperors, it seems like Caligula is alive and well in the USA.)

November 16, 2020

Not all bad news...really


 It looks like over 4,000 unionized frontline workers who have been keeping people supplied with food and other necessities at the risk of their own health and lives won a huge victory this week, assuming the agreement is ratified by members. As reported in WV MetroNews, Local 400 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union reached a tentative agreement last week that includes:

-Health care funding that experts say will fully fund our health care for the life of the contract

-Real raises for EVERYONE

-Premiums for ALL department heads

-No increase to prescription drug costs maximums + a new diabetes program to reduce drug costs

-New hours eligibility measurement period doesn’t start until after ratification

-All raises retroactive to November 1, 2020

All this despite a horrible economic and political climate. UFCW workers voted to authorize a strike--and Kroger threatened to hire strikebreakers, but fortunately that seems to have been averted.

That's kind of a sentimental thing for me. I did what I could to support WV's Kroger workers in a 2003 strike (I foolishly thought things were tough then). At the time, WV's labor movement was stronger than it is now and its legislature wasn't controlled by people who  hate unions. Kroger actually closed its stores until a deal was negotiated. It turned out well. 

I hope this one does too. It looks good now anyhow.

Solidarity forever!


November 09, 2020

It's not just elections: how policy change happens.

 Although it’s hard not to think about such things right now, it’s not all about elections. Those of us who want to make the world more just also need to think about and advocate for specific policies to move things in that direction in real time at the national, state, and local level when opportunities arise.

I’d like to share a simple nonideological model for thinking about how policy change happens—or doesn’t. The model was developed by political scientist John Kingdon’s 1984 book “Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies.”

I’d been doing policy work for years before a friend mentioned the book. I checked it out and had to admit that, yeah, this is pretty much how it happens. I’m going to share a ridiculously simplified version.

First, let me state the obvious, policy change doesn’t happen just because it’s rational, because it’s the right thing to do, and/or it would help thousands of people. It happens when certain things come together.

In Kingdon’s model, a window for effecting change opens when three “streams” come together: the policy, problem, and political stream. 

The policy stream

The policy stream consists of ideas that trickle up from the “primeval soup” of advocacy groups, “policy entrepreneurs” (more popularly known as wonks), attorneys, staffers, and such. Ideally, policy ideas should be specific and well thought out, which usually means getting in the weeds.

For example, “health care for all” isn’t a policy, although I’m all for it. It’s a goal that could be achieved by several different policies, such as a national system on the British model, single payer as in Canada, or a hybrid. The same is true of calls to abolish this or that institution. I’m down, but actually moving in that direction would require enacting or repealing several specific policies.

However, even the best idea won’t go anywhere unless somebody—more like a lot of somebodies—care about it.

The problem stream

This is where the problem stream comes in. Some of the most important social change work consists of getting people to think of the issues we care about as problems that can and must be solved. Kingdon distinguishes between problems and conditions: 

“There is a difference between a condition and a problem. We put up with all manner of conditions every day: bad weather, unavoidable and untreatable illnesses, pestilence, poverty, fanaticism. ... Conditions become defined as problems when we come to believe that we should do something about them.”

It can take weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries to get people to think of things as problems that must be solved rather than unavoidable conditions. A great example is the battered women’s movement. When I was a child, comedians on television actually joked about domestic violence; that doesn’t happen anymore because of years of public education and advocacy—which led to major policy changes.

Given the extremely divided state of U.S. public opinion, clearly much work needs to happen here in terms of coalition building, communications, popular education, and messaging—which means reaching out beyond bubbles and comfort zones.

An example

For a longer view, think that for millennia many people believed that systems of forced labor such as slavery or serfdom were inevitable conditions of civilization rather than problems that needed to be solved and ended. A classic example of people who made progress in getting an issue into the problem stream are the Garrisonian abolitionists. 

They weren’t policy wonks: Immediate abolition of slavery based on moral suasion wasn’t a doable policy. They weren’t revolutionaries like John Brown and his biracial band, who pushed the issue past the breaking point with their raid in what is now my home state of West Virginia. They weren’t practical political actors, like Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln. Nor were they the pure force of the Union army or the thousands of slaves who flocked to Union lines in what W.E.B. DuBois aptly called “a general strike.” 

Still, they got the anti-slavery issue out there for decades, without which some of the other work may not have happened. As Garrison summarized this approach, "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. … I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD."

The political stream

Once an issue is in the problem stream, it’s possible to link policy issues as solutions, which leads us to the foulest and most polluted stream: the political.

Lots of things influence and shape the political stream. The most obvious is on all our minds lately: election results. But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. The death or retirement of a key politician or Supreme Court Justice, a change of leadership, or even a quarrel between influential politicians can directly impact this stream.

The political stream can also be influenced—and opened or closed—based on social movements, which unfortunately can’t be manufactured at will; galvanizing events, such as natural or social disasters; or changes in the public mood. With any of these changes, what might have been possible becomes impossible and vice versa. And the situation changes all the time. 

We can’t always—or usually—anticipate or control such changes. But we can prepare for them and move when openings occur.

Case studies

Maybe some examples could help. Let’s start with health care, a key concern of mine these days. The first “mainstream” politician in the U.S. who advocated for something like national health care was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, when he ran as an independent Progressive Republican.

He lost. In the 1930s and '40s, his distant cousin Franklin and successor, Harry Truman, advocated for it but were blocked by racist Southern politicians and powerful lobby groups. The political stream was blocked.

For a while the problem stream was blocked. Health care wasn’t terribly expensive. Many expensive procedures hadn’t been developed. And many Americans could access health care through their employers.

That changed. More and more jobs provided no health benefits. By the late 2000s, around 50 million Americans, many of them working, had no health care. And their lack of coverage drove up costs for everyone.

Thanks to the efforts of advocates and experiences of impacted people, this became a problem.

In the aftermath of the 2008 elections, Democrats, for good or ill, controlled the presidency, the House of Representatives and a veto-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. The window for reform was open. For a few weeks.

In 2009, the majorities of both houses of Congress worked on a health reform plan, eventually coming up with a hybrid version that included expanding Medicaid for low income working families, establishing a mandate for some individuals and employers to provide health care, and creating a market or exchange where people could purchase more or less subsidized health care.

Neither version was perfect, but with the loss of the supermajority, the lesser version became the only option. No further improvements could be made immediately. Then it was time for defense. That’s where we are now.

Or consider the Iraq war. In the 1990s, neo-conservative activists proposed the policy of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime to supposedly bring peace and stability to the Middle East (and we all know how that worked out). They gained no traction until the political and problem streams changed with the 2000 election and the 9/11 attacks. Then they linked their policy (war) to a problem (fear of terrorism) in a changed political stream (new president). 

A negative example

Here’s a case, one of many for me, of one that got away. Around the same time as passage of the ACA, a window opened for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have been a true game changer in terms of rebuilding a middle class. It would have made it easier for workers to join unions, which could in turn negotiate for better wages, benefits, and conditions while also educating workers about policy issues.

The U.S. House passed EFCA around 2007. With the supermajority in 2009, a window was open in the Senate to make it the law of the land. That didn’t happen. People dithered. The supermajority was lost. The window closed.

When that happens, one can waste time, energy, and often money on beating one’s metaphorical head against a wall—or, without giving up hope, focus on things that could help the situation right now.

There are lots of negative examples like this one. Windows for major policy change can be opened or closed, but the latter is the most frequent option. Still, by tracking changes, we have a chance to distinguish between the possible and impossible.

So what does this all mean?

I’m convinced the model can help us figure where we are and where we need to go in our pursuit of more human and liberating policies. The stream metaphor can point the way.

First, are we really clear about the specific (and probably imperfect) policy we want? Is it doable and specific about implementation?

Second, does anyone who can help make it happen care? If not, that signifies more work that must be done in the short and long term.

Third, what needs to happen politically to make this happen? How can we engage and influence it, even if that involves waiting for opportunities? 

Fourth, what do we do if it’s not going to happen? (Solution: without abandoning one’s goals, move on to the next thing and deal with the threats and/or opportunities that emerge, while circling back when things change.)

Working it backwards

Then there’s the other side of the coin. This model can also be useful in trying to “kill” bad policy ideas that might roll down. Specifically, we can attempt to show that the proposed policy idea wouldn’t solve the problem suggested and could indeed make things worse, as is often the case. And we could offer realistic alternatives.

We could also argue that the issue at hand isn’t the real problem or could make the problem worse. Or we could direct our attention to figuring out what we can do to influence or close the political stream or at least redirect it a bit.

This overall approach is more a compass than a road map. But then, as many before us have tried to say, the map is not the territory.

But it can help us move in the directions we want to go.

(Note: this essay first appeared in a blog post on the American Friends Service Committee's website. There's also a link to a Facebook live discussion on the topic there.)

November 07, 2020

Thinking ahead

 Well THAT was interesting. I'm hoping today's results will signify the end or at least the beginning of the end of America's latest dark journey, although I think we're not out of the woods yet.

I've been thinking a lot about my walk across Spain two years ago on the Camino de Santiago. More than once I passed through what were mass graves of people like me who were murdered by Franco's fascists during the Spanish civil war of the 1930s. For the last few years, I kept reminding myself that many admirable nations had gone on journeys as bad and much worse than ours but eventually emerged.

Still there's a lot to watch out for. Lot's of people, including myself and colleagues with the American Friends Service Committee, have been thinking about worst case election related scenarios, up to and  including the possibility of a coup. We of course are willing to accept an outcome that accepted all votes but were worried about other irregularities that might threaten the integrity of the eleciton, such as voter suppression and/or intimidation.

Assuming the constitutional anchor holds, the next big fight starts next week, when the freshly stacked deck of the US Supreme Court will consider taking away the health care of millions of Americans, to the delight of West Virginia's attorney general Patrick Morrisey.  There are any number of scenarios there.

Keeping that assumption, we might be in for gridlock in Congress but will at least be spared an American approximation of authoritarianism. 

West Virginia is going to be weird in any case. But, as my late friend and WV poet Norman Jordan, who with his wife Brucella operated an African American heritage museum in his home town of Ansted for years, wrote in a funny poem, I guess you can't have everything.

On the positive side, and assuming no funny stuff, we're going to see the end of a federal department of education, led by someone who never attended any institute of public education, trying to sabotage it. We're going to see the end of administrative policies aimed at taking away food assistance of millions of low income Americans and public school students. 

Assuming parts of the Affordable Care Act remain, we're likely to see the end of federal policies encouraging states to impose bogus work reporting requirements designed to deprive people of health care. We might at least see some harm reduction on the climate change front.

There's still so much to do. Many people with whom we disagree were our friends and allies not so many years ago. The country is still tragically divided. Even with a peaceful transition, many of the policies some of us hope to see will be blocked  until that is changed.

But I'll think about that tomorrow.

October 30, 2020

Remembering a great West Virginia writer


 It's no secret that my favorite West Virginia writer is Breece Pancake from my hometown of Milton. If you know anything about him, you probably know that he took his own life in Charlottesville, Virginia on Palm Sunday in  1979.

By the time of his death, he had published some stories in The Atlantic and literary magazines. His book of short stories, appropriately titled The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake was put together posthumously and published in 1983 after massive efforts by his mother Helen Pancake, my friend and co-worker at the time, and author/teacher John Casey.

Although the last few decades hardly qualify as the Golden Age of short stories, Breece's book has never been out of print and has been translated into several languages. I was pleasantly surprised when a friend sent me this link to a recent post about him from The Paris Review by fellow West Virginia writer, by way of Buckhannon, Jayne Ann Phillips.

Here's a sample, but there's way more:

Breece D’J Pancake’s dozen stories, completed in the last four or five years of his life, include some of the best short stories written anywhere, at any time. Forty years of the author’s absence cast no shadow. The shadings, the broad arcs of interior, antediluvian time, are inside the sentences. The ancient hills and valleys of southern West Virginia remain Breece Pancake’s home place; the specificity and nuance of his words embody the vanished farms, the dams and filled valleys, the strip-mined or exploded mountains. His stories are startling and immediate: these lives informed by loss and wrenching cruelty retain the luminous dignity that marks the endurance of all that is most human.


October 27, 2020

Another one to watch

 Universal Basic Income is an idea that's been around for a while, arguably for centuries, but it's started gaining more traction in the wake of COVID. It tends to be popular in progressive circles, although it has some surprising support from libertarian and conservative circles where it's non-paternalistic and unbureaucratic approach resonates.

The idea is pretty much what it sounds like: guarantee every citizen a certain amount of money on a regular basis. It's been touted as a solution to poverty, a degree of protection from automation, and a safety net for the growing "gig economy" (a phrase that makes me think of unfortunate frogs hunted for their legs).

It's been tried to a limited degree in some places and the results seem promising. The latest city to announce an experiment with it is Compton, CA, a city with a poverty rate about twice the national average (sounds like a place I know). According to Mayor Aja Brown, the idea is to "challenge the racial and economic injustice plaguing both welfare programs and economic systems." According to CNN, 800 low income residents will pilot the program, as described in this fact sheet.

It will be interesting to watch the results. One thing I'm pretty sure about, in a climate of growing inequality, we're going to need something like a universal basic income or guaranteed employment program. Pope Francis issued a similar call earlier this spring.

October 23, 2020

How to limit terms: by voting

 Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of (unsolicited) posts on social media that picture different political candidates and say that they’re either “good” or “bad” on term limits, with “good” meaning being for them.

I think being bad on term limits is a good thing.

First though, I get it. I’ve had conversations with people across the political spectrum who like the idea. People are tired of gridlock in Congress. They are tired of career politicians losing touch with constituents. They are tired of what has been called the Good-Ole Boy system, although it’s no longer an all-male club. Many people like the idea of having a fresh set of eyes on the issues of the day.

A famous Japanese-born Zen master Shunryu Suzuki talked about the advantages of having a beginner’s mind: “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few.” That said, I think there are better ways of getting there — and that imposing congressional or legislative term limits could actually be harmful to democracy, whichever way one leans politically.

First, there are two very powerful ways of limiting terms already. The first is simply for a politician to decide not to run again. The second, more powerful, option is equally simple: Vote out the people who are causing the problems.

While it’s true that incumbent officeholders often have an advantage over challengers, that advantage is no guarantee. Nearly every primary or general election cycle brings a story of a powerful politician swept out of office. Some election cycles are more like tidal waves, sweeping away longstanding majorities.

In West Virginia a few years ago, for example, Republicans gained the majority in the Legislature for the first time since 1932. To wax biblical, every two years or so, there’s a chance to say “how art the mighty fallen.” Term limits also would deprive voters of the chance to support candidates of their own choosing. But there are other compelling reasons to oppose congressional or legislative term limits.

For one thing, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” it takes a long time to get good at anything. Specifically, he talked about the “10,000 hour rule,” as in, it takes about that long to master a complex skill or body of knowledge. I’m not sure about the exact math, but I think he has a point. Even with expertise, in politics, it can take a long time to rise to positions of influence, such as leadership of committees.

Some aspects of public policy, from education funding to taxes and budgets to health care and beyond, are really complicated. It takes a good while to get a handle on them. To sweep out people arbitrarily before they get there — or even worse, once they do — is to ask for trouble. Put it this way: Would you want to fight in an army or serve on a fire department where officers, and rank and file, are new at the job and inexperienced?

The alternative is to let knowledge of the inner workings of complicated systems stay in the hands of unelected officials. Talk about a deep state.

There’s another reason that I think is more compelling in polarized times. People often lament “gotcha” style politics, in which scoring points against rivals is more important than getting things done.

This is an area where game theory can shed some light. A classic scenario with very wide application is the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” a situation in which two people are arrested for the same crime and held in isolation. If neither confesses, the sentence will be light for both. If both confess, the sentence will be moderate. If one confesses and the other doesn’t, the first one gets off easy and the second gets hard time. In this scenario, confessing is called defecting and keeping silent is cooperating with the other. The risks are highest for the one who cooperates.

What’s the best solution, since the two can’t talk to each other? The short version is that, in a one-time situation, there’s no incentive not to stick it to the other guy. That’s probably why it’s usually not a good idea to buy a used car or a racehorse from a total stranger you’ll never see again.

One of my favorite vents in the Gazette-Mail wound up on my refrigerator for months. It was something like: “To whoever sold me a F-150 pickup in the Walmart parking lot, you are not a true Christian.”

The incentives change, however, if the game is played over and over again. The longer people have to interact with each other, and the more people know and remember reputations from past behavior, the greater the chances that people will cooperate. In the words of political scientist Robert Axelrod, “Once ‘the shadow of the future’ lengthens, we have the basis for more durable relationships.”

Term limits would drastically reduce the “shadow of the future.” If you think things are bad now, I think they’d only get worse with term limits that would reduce the incentives to try to work things out. My suggestion: If you want to limit someone’s term, try the old-fashioned way. Vote.

October 20, 2020

No time to waste for WV COVID relief

 

Governor Jim Justice has just 70 days left to spend almost $1 billion in CARES Act funding, which is to help West Virginia's affected by the pandemic. Only $231 million of the $1.2 billion received from the federal government has been spent, leaving $969 million on the table. 

Recently, around 17 WV groups have joined together to call on the governor to direct this money to where it's urgently needed before we lose the chance. Here's the text of the letter and here's the content of a press release that went out today on the issue:
West Virginia Non-profits Call on Governor Justice to Reallocate Remaining CARES Act Funding
 
WV United Coalition drafts a people-centered proposal to address the urgent needs of West Virginians by reallocating and targeting remaining Coronavirus Relief Funds. 

CHARLESTON, W.V. -  As part of federal COVID-relief legislation passed in March, West Virginia received $1.25 billion to address the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. As of October 19, there is still over $969 million remaining unspent with the December 30 deadline for utilizing the funds approaching. Governor Justice’s current proposal would send over half of the remaining funds, or $587 million, to the state’s unemployment trust fund, despite WorkForce WV”s projections that the trust fund will only have a $216 million shortfall at the end of the calendar year. Allotting such a large share of the CARES Act funding to the trust fund when we have access to other funds to replenish it means that urgent priorities including housing insecurity, hunger, and testing and tracing, are not addressed. 

WV United, a group of nonprofits and community advocates in the state, have been advocating  for better targeted use of these funds. Recently, members of the group sent a letter to Governor Justice, asking for him to re-evaluate his plan and offered  a people-centered proposal on how this money can be spent to address the hardships so many West Virginians are facing.

The full letter to governor Justice can be viewed here.

“Our state’s most vulnerable citizens are facing hunger and homelessness through lay-offs and evictions,” commented Gary Zuckett, Director of WV Citizen Action, “Federal CARES funds now in the hands of our governor need to make it to these folks to avoid preventable Covid casualties and human suffering.”

This People’s proposal to spend the remaining CARES Act funding includes:

● Rent and mortgage relief for West Virginians facing eviction and foreclosure. 
● Utility assistance to prevent service cut-offs.
● COVID-19 testing, tracing efforts, and hazard pay. West Virginia’s current testing capacity falls short of the need to successfully suppress or mitigate the virus.
● Funding to support child care centers and parents with child care needs, including reimbursing child care options for families unable to find state-supported child care. 
● Increased payments to unemployed workers. 
● Food assistance and transportation needs for rural West Virginians. 
● Emergency Home Repairs. 
● Increased clothing vouchers. 
● Funding for Marshall University’s Minority Health Institute to study the disparate impacts of the crisis on Black and brown communities across the state.

The proposal also outlines that each of these areas must be funded with a recognition that Black, Brown, and low-income communities are disproportionately negatively impacted by this virus. The resources must be prioritized to these communities as they continue to face the most significant health and economic costs from the pandemic.  

“Even before COVID-19 hit West Virginia, working-class communities have been overburdened by expensive utility bills while out-of-state investors racked in huge amounts of profit.” said Karan Ireland, WV Sierra Club’s Senior Campaign Representative. “At a time when West Virginians are getting hit the hardest and as the weather gets colder the Governor must act to ensure all utility debts be forgiven and no family loses water orpower. Everyone must have access to their utilities so they can safely socially distance during this unprecedented pandemic.“

"Though time will tell how effective the CARES Act has been in relieving the hardship faced by West Virginians, we know that there are West Virginians still suffering the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Jessica Ice, Executive Director of West Virginians for Affordable Health Care. “Our Governor has the opportunity to direct funds to alleviate suffering in many areas. Our hope is that he chooses West Virginians when distributing funds and chooses them quickly before time runs  out."


You can help by calling the governor's office at 304-558-2000 or messaging him on social media (@WVGovernor on Twitter) using the hashtag #CARESACT4WV. 

 


October 13, 2020

An interesting approach to ending homelessness

 One huge policy idea that has been gaining more traction is the idea of a universal basic income (UBI), which would be guarantee a basic stipend to pretty much everybody to do with as they will. It's a huge subject and I won't go into all the pros and cons but would like to share a news story that might shed light on what effect something like that could have.

According to this CNN report, researchers in Vancouver gave a sizeable amount of money in a study appropriately called "New Leaf." It went like this:

"Researchers gave 50 recently homeless people a lump sum of 7,500 Canadian dollars (nearly $5,700). They followed the cash recipients' life over 12-18 months and compared their outcomes to that of a control group who didn't receive the payment."

The researchers report these preliminary findings: contrary to what stereotypes people may have about homeless people and their possible spending habits, those who received the lump sum:

 ● Move into stable housing faster

● Spend fewer days homeless

● Retain over $1,000 in savings through 12 months

● Increase spending on food, clothing, and rent

● Achieve greater food security

● Made wise financial choices with a 39% reduction in spending on alcohol, cigarettes and drugs

● Reduce reliance on the shelter system of care, resulting in cost savings to society

Most recipients knew right away what they wanted to do with the money. On top of all the other benefits, this program saved around $405K in shelter costs. Since homelessness is increasing in the wake of COVID, innovative approaches like these are worth considering.

 

October 04, 2020

How bout a poem?


 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882

I can't say I'm a huge fan of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. My closest brush with him was staying near his house for a few days in Cambridge years ago. His longer poems like Evangeline and Song of Hiawatha never tempted me, although I kind of like his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. He was even a character in Matthew Pearl's entertaining 2003 mystery The Dante Club, but I digress.

Anyhow, I somehow stumbled upon a charmingly retro poem of his that I think is worth sharing,  especially in times like these:

A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
   Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
   And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
   In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
   Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
   We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
   With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
   Learn to labor and to wait.


September 30, 2020

Counting the cost of health care repeal

 It’s too soon to say, but the people who want to overturn the Affordable Care Act, a group that includes West Virginia’s attorney general, are closer than before to getting what they want, even in the midst of a pandemic that has already killed over 200,000 Americans.

Opponents of the ACA, often referred to as Obamacare, give many reasons for wanting to kill it, although I suspect that, for many, the main reason is that it can be associated with a Black man.

But what would it mean for ordinary Americans if the ACA haters get what they want? The answer is pretty grim, if you do the math.

One feature of the ACA is protection of people with preexisting conditions in qualifying for health insurance. According to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, as many as 133 million Americans, over half of the non-elderly adult population, have some such condition.

Given the frailties of the human body, it has been argued that “life is a preexisting condition,” or at least one waiting to happen. This was especially true for women before the ACA passed, for reasons of medical costs associated with pregnancy, breast cancer and conditions unique to them. The National Women’s Law Center said that before the ACA “just being a woman could be considered a preexisting condition.”

Then there’s Medicaid expansion, a part of the ACA that became a state option after a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 39 states and the District of Columbia, have adopted this measure, which covers about 12 million Americans, most of whom are low-income working people and many of whom are the “essential workers” that everyone else depends on these days.

The ACA guarantees that states that adopt the expansion will never have to pay more than 10 percent of the costs. Without it, states would be unable to sustain coverage.

About 160,000 West Virginians are covered by the expansion at any given time and probably 200,000 or so are covered during a year. Aside from improving and saving lives, federal expansion funding also helps keep rural hospitals and health care facilities open and supports thousands of jobs.

Medicaid expansion has been a huge help in confronting the opioid epidemic. According to the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, “Medicaid expansion was associated with a substantial increase in opioid addiction therapies, particularly in states with high opioid overdose rates.”

Nationwide, about 800,000 Medicaid expansion recipients are dealing with opioid addiction.

A 2020 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that states that adopted Medicaid expansion had a decrease in opioid deaths, compared to states that hadn’t expanded Medicaid.

I’ve interviewed people in recovery about the role Medicaid expansion has played in their access to treatment. One woman summed it up neatly: “Without it, I’d be either dead or in jail.”

Then there are those who buy health care on the marketplaces. Kaiser reports that, in 2020, this amounts to 11.4 million Americans and over 20,000 West Virginians. Of these, an investigative article in The New York Times said that, “If the marketplaces and subsidies go away, a comprehensive health plan would become unaffordable for most of those people and many of them would become uninsured.”

The Times also reports that ACA repeal would hit Medicare recipients as well, affecting around 60 million Americans and over 440,000 West Virginians. Among other effects, if the law were struck down, “Medicare beneficiaries would have to pay more for preventive care, like a wellness visit or diabetes check, which are now free. They would also have to pay more toward their prescription drugs.”

Young Americans also would take a hit. The ACA allows about 2 million young adults to keep their parents’ health insurance up to age 26. The last numbers I could find suggest that about 20,000 young West Virginians are covered in this way. Without it, companies could withdraw coverage.

Killing the ACA also would dramatically increase the cost of health care, including uncompensated care, raising copays and premiums as these costs are passed on to individuals and families. The Urban Institute reports that “Demand for uncompensated care would increase by $50.2 billion, an increase of 82% compared with ACA levels.”

Oh yeah, and then there’s the prospect of millions of Americans losing health coverage while COVID-19 is still ravaging the country and the world.

To sum it all up about ACA opponents, and to paraphrase Winston Churchill, seldom have so few tried to do so much harm to so many. God help the country if they get what they want.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

September 28, 2020

Ring them bells


It's hard for me to believe, but two years ago today, in a different world and on a different continent I had a peak experience on Day 3 of walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. The day began with a fall and bloody knee and the pain from walking in new boots but it got better. Here's what I wrote at the time: 

One of my favorite Dylan songs is Ring Them Bells, a spiritual and prophetic  song from Oh Mercy. I had a Ring Them Bells moment on day 3 of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. About 40 some miles from St. Jean Pied de Port on a hot day, the arrow marking the trail led straight up a nasty hill. The place was Zabaldika.

At that point my legs screamed in protest at the slightest incline. But I came here to follow the Way so up I went.

At the top of a hard climb was a church built in the 13th century, before Dante penned the Divine Comedy.

An elderly woman there beckoned me to enter. It was like she was waiting just for me. I tied to refuse but she wasn’t having it. She led me in the empty church and played recordings of medieval chants. Then she guided me to a seat and gave me a laminated sheet with the history of the church and a page I could keep of Camino prayers and blessings.

I intended to attend to the spiritual aspects off the Camino but had been too rushed up to that point. This was a bit of a reset.

The church was dedicated to St. Stephen. Above the altar were statues of Christ, the Virgin, Stephen, and assorted saints. I just went with it.

After a period of silence, I prepared to leave, but she wasn’t having that either. She pointed to the stairs of the bell tower and told me to climb it and ring the bell two times and really hear and feel it.

It was a spiral stone staircase built like a screw that I had to craw up on my hands and knees. At the top was a huge iron bell. I rang it once and gave myself to the sound (Buddhists, yogis and meditators will know something about this).

It was a beautiful moment, but she wasn’t done with me. She took me to a statue of the crucified Christ and showed me where hundreds of others had posted their thoughts and prayers, I did the same, but all I had to say was "Thank you!"

By then she was ready to let me go. I thanked her and left with tears in my eyes. If I wasn’t so shut down, I would have cried for a hour or so.

For Alanis fans and viewers of the movie The Way, it was a “Thank You” moment.

(Note: I had to pay for that with several hours of heat and pain and bad food and thirst. But as Dylan said, ‘pay for your ticket and don’t complain.)

September 23, 2020

More of a rant really

I'm still shaking my head by the hypocrisy and...other stuff...shown by some members of the US and WV senate. The majority in the former couldn't be bothered to come up with a workable COVID relief bill for the last two months or so but is racing to stack the Supreme Court deck before the election. 

Of course, WV senator Shelley Moore Capito is all on board, despite saying this four years ago when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the court:

“Before a Supreme Court justice is confirmed to a lifetime position on the bench, West Virginians and the American people should have the ability to weigh in at the ballot box this November. My position does not change with the naming of a nominee today.”

This time around, she had this to say:

 “I support the choice to move forward with the confirmation process and will consider President Trump’s nominee on her merits as West Virginians would expect me to do. In these trying and polarized times, it is important to exercise our constitutional authority and move forward with the process.”

Then there's this: 17 Republican members of the WV Senate signed on to a letter sent to the presidents of WVU and Marshall University that among other things expressed outrage over WVU football players putting BLM stickers on their helmets. Oh yeah, and the senators referred to Black Lives Matter as a "domestic terrorist group," basically saying the assertion that Black lives indeed matter amounts to hate speech.

Apparently this tantrum kept the senators too busy to express outrage at the death of over 200,000 Americans to COVID due in part to a botched response from the Trump administration.

Can't wait to see what happens next...

 

September 16, 2020

My last word (for a while) on a fallen friend and comrade


 Elaine Purkey, 1949-2020. Vintage early 90s, wearing a tee-shirt expressing solidarity for union Steelworkers locked out of Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation from 1990-1992. Story below.

The labor movement and the people of West Virginia lost a powerful voice (literally) last week with the death of Elaine Purkey from COVID-19. Among many other things, she was a singer/songwriter whose music has reached many around the United States and beyond. And she was my friend.

We met during the UMWA-Pittston coal strike of 1989-90, my first big fight after joining the American Friends Service Committee. The strike wasn’t about wages; it was about protecting health care and benefits for retirees, miners with disabilities and their families.

It was a wild and uncut struggle that rumbled throughout the coalfields beyond the Pittston mines. Two union miners were shot, one fatally. I remember burning buildings, vehicles smashed by nonunion coal trucks, evictions from land company property, private “goon guards,” State Police and federal marshals, arrests — but also music, laughter, humor, mischief and love.

(I’m not necessarily proud of this, but some of us were having the time of our lives.)

Elaine’s husband, Bethel, still among us, was a grassroots union leader. Elaine was just finding her voice writing labor songs. At first, I thought Bethel was running the show, at least as far as Logan County was concerned. He was a natural leader who radiated charisma, looked out for everybody and got things done. I’m not even sure he had an official position at the time. A big man with red hair and a red beard, he struck me as your basic Viking, although to my knowledge he never raided an Irish monastery.

I had my first major conversation with Elaine at the Hardee’s in Chapmanville, where she was working at the time. Strike support from the union helped, but it didn’t make up the difference from working miner’s wages.

I was just learning to play guitar, so wanted to talk music as well as strike. I asked an incredibly stupid question in retrospect: Did she flat pick or finger pick? As if a self-respecting mountain singer would arpeggiate on nylon strings. The immediate result was an impromptu concert in the parking lot. It never took a whole lot of effort to get Elaine to perform.

Nothing was ever the same afterward. We did a lot together over the years, not just labor related, but also things like fighting racially motivated police violence and even doing mountain stories and songs with kids.

Elaine grew up in a large musical family near Harts Creek, in Lincoln County. Her father, Winford Moore, was a railroad worker and musical prodigy who could play any instrument he picked up and never bothered with sheet music. Most of the rest of the family was musical, as well. I still remember a magical summer day long ago that I was absorbed in the embrace of several generations of the family.

When Elaine was a child, Winford would pick her up and put her on a rock so that she could sing to whoever was there. While you could never forget that she was a powerful woman, I always also saw in her the little girl singing on a rock for her daddy.

She was very intuitive, like someone who could solve complex math problems without showing her work. Sometimes I’d pitch her a bare song idea, which she’d weave into gold in short order. I think her best is “One Day More,” which was written in 1992, when 1,700 steelworkers were locked out of their jobs at Ravenswood Aluminum Corp. for nearly two years.

Their average age was over 50 and most had worked at the plant for more than 20 years, yet the company declared them permanently replaced, despite the union’s willingness to continue working under their old contract.

Some things are addictive, and a justified fight is one of the best addictions, as such things go.

A lot of people thought the fight in Ravenswood was hopeless. I asked Elaine to write something to boost morale, suggesting a theme like lasting one day longer than the company, something Bethel always said in the earlier fight, and recommending a minor key. Always a lover of snarky banter, Elaine shot back, “Do you want to tell me the words and melody while you’re at it?”

We met in Logan the next morning and I gave her some info on the situation there. At about 11 p.m., I got the call and heard her sing it for the first time. Even then, I felt sure people would be singing it long after we were gone.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple filmed the first performance at the USWA Local 5668 union hall while doing a documentary for PBS on the lockout (I think you can see the neck of my old 12 string on it, too). I knew music was powerful in the struggle, but never saw anything like that, with people crying, clapping and singing along the first time they heard it. The song became their anthem.

And the good guys actually wound up winning.

That song had legs, even showing up in a songbook of the 2011 Wisconsin protests against union busting. I just heard that a co-worker of mine learned it at a rally for hotel and restaurant workers in California in the 1990s. It was included in the Smithsonian’s collection of labor songs. Who knows where it’s been or where it will show up next?

Over the years, we’d sometimes go a good while without seeing or talking with each other, but the connection was always like a live electrical wire. As the ancient Chinese classic the Tao Te Ching says, “That which is firmly established cannot be uprooted.”

I can’t imagine a world without her in it, one way or another.

Along with her family, she took her religion very seriously and was a devoted member of the Church of Christ. If anybody was ever right with Jesus, I’m sure Elaine would make the team, assuming the latter had a sense of humor and a tolerance for banter.

I think her message to us in these dark days would come straight from that song: Hold out, one day more.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail)

September 09, 2020

The faculty of effort


 William James, 1842-1910

Sometimes I hate getting good advice. Like this:

“Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1

I totally get it, but often feel like the character Bartleby in Herman Melville's story: "I would prefer not to." 

September 07, 2020

Labor Day: Remembering a giant

Labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph

 Two recent events made me think of A. Philip Randolph, an underappreciated hero of the labor movement and the African American struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.

The first was close to home. In West Virginia, Aug. 26 is officially Katherine Johnson Day in honor of the brilliant African American mathematician whose story is featured in Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race.” The book was made into a film of the same title that was nominated for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards.

Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918. A mathematical prodigy, she attended what is now West Virginia State University, a historically Black college, at age 15, graduating at 18 with majors in math and French. She was one of a handful of students to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate school. 

In 1952 she joined the all Black Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA’s forerunner, which was headed by Dorothy Vaughan, a fellow West Virginian. She would eventually play a major role in doing the math that made the lunar landing and other space advances possible.

At age of 97, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. She died earlier this year at the age of 101. Her obituary in the New York Times began with these words: “They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them.”

The second event that reminded me of A. Philip Randolph was more somber. It was the Aug. 28 “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” March on Washington for racial justice and an end to police brutality. The march was held on the 57th anniversary of the original march best known for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Neither of these events might have happened if not for the life and work of Randolph (1889-1979), an African American writer, editor, democratic socialist, union leader, and civil rights pioneer who made a huge mark on American history over several decades.

Born in Crescent City Florida, his father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and tailor and his mother was a homemaker and skilled seamstress. Both were fearless advocates for racial justice.

Randolph headed to New York as a young man, working and attending college classes. He loved theater, and founded a Shakespearean society in Harlem, where he played many of the leading roles. Always concerned with the rights of Black workers, he edited radical monthly periodical The Messenger beginning in 1917, which the Department of Justice referred to as "the most able and the most dangerous of all the Negro publications." Randolph himself was called “the most dangerous Negro in America.”

In 1925, Randolph became the founding president of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union representing Black workers on the luxury rail cars manufactured by the union-busting Pullman Company. The Brotherhood was the first Black-led union to be affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Despite the name, the union also represented women who worked as maids on the rails.

It took a dozen years—and the help of New Deal labor legislation—but in 1937, the Brotherhood won major concessions from the company in what was probably the first major contract a white employer signed with a Black labor leader. 

The Brotherhood was instrumental in opening the path to a decent livelihood for tens of thousands of Black workers. It’s no accident that one of the leaders of the 1950s Montgomery bus boycott that propelled Dr. King to national prominence was Brotherhood member E.D. Nixon.

Randolph also opposed segregation in labor unions and eventually helped end it, serving as a vice president of the AFL-CIO.

He was as comfortable playing hardball with presidents as with corporations. As the nation ramped up production during World War II, Randolph threatened a march on Washington to protest discrimination in federal employment and companies receiving government contracts—a move that pushed the Roosevelt administration into issuing Executive Order 8802 in 1941, which barred hiring discrimination in defense industries and federal agencies and created the Fair Employment Practices Commission. 

This would eventually help open the doors of federal employment for Dorothy Vaughn, Katherine Johnson, and other brilliant “hidden figures” in the aeronautics and space industries.

After the war, Randolph founded the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation that went head to head against the Truman administration. The result was Executive Order 9981, which ended official discrimination in the U.S. military.

He was assisted in these efforts by Bayard Rustin, a brilliant Black organizer (and Quaker who worked with AFSC). When Rustin, a gay man, was attacked for his sexual orientation by U.S. senator and segregationist Strom Thurmond and others, Randolph responded by expressing complete confidence in Rustin, saying “I am dismayed that there are in this country men who, wrapping themselves in the mantle of Christian morality, would mutilate the most elementary conceptions of human decency, privacy and humility in order to attack other men.”

Rustin would later say of him that “no one has stood beside me in times of trial the way Mr. Randolph has. He is the only man I know who has never said an unkind word about anyone, or who refuses to listen to an unkind word about anyone, even though it may be true.”

Randolph and Rustin’s greatest effort was organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which featured speeches and performances by Dr. King, the late Congressman John Lewis, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, West Virginia-born labor leader Walter Reuther, James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and many others.

Randolph himself spoke as well, saying that “we know that we have no future in a society in which 6 million black and white people are unemployed and millions more live in poverty.”

That march inspired generations of Americans, including those who marched this summer.

This is only a partial list of the accomplishments of an amazing life. This Labor Day, I’ll remember many of those who fought for workers’ rights, but Randolph holds a special place for me. 

In the words of his beloved Hamlet, “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”

(This ran as a post in the AFSC blog and ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail in a slightly different form.)

September 03, 2020

Losing a voice


 

The labor movement and the people of West Virginia lost a powerful voice (literally) yesterday with the death of Elaine Purkey from COVID. Among other things, she was a singer/songwriter whose music has reached many around the US and beyond. And she was my dear friend. 

We met during the Pittston coal strike of 1989-90, my first big fight after joining AFSC. Her husband Bethel was a grassroots union leader and Elaine was just finding her voice writing labor songs. It was wild and uncut class struggle: there were shootings, at least one fatal, burning buildings, vehicles smashed by nonunion coal trucks, evictions from company property, private gun thugs, state police and federal marshals, arrests, and a bit of the wooden shoe and black cat. Also music, laughter, humor, mischief and love. 

(I’m not necessarily proud of this, but some of us were having the time of our lives.)

We did a lot together over the years, not just labor stuff, but also things like fighting racist police brutality and even doing mountain stories and songs with kids. It never took much to get her to whip out her guitar. She was very intuitive, like someone who could solve complex math problems without showing her work. 

Sometimes I’d pitch her a bare song idea, which she’d weave into gold in short order. Her best song is One Day More (here’s the Smithsonian version), which was written in 1992 when 1,700 Steelworkers were locked out of the Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation for nearly two years. 

A lot of people thought the fight was hopeless. I asked her to write something to boost morale and she came up with one for the ages in less than 24 hours. The first time I heard it, I knew people would be singing it after we were gone.

The Oscar winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple filmed the first performance at the union hall while doing a documentary for PBS on the lockout (I think you can see the neck of my 12 string on it too). I knew music was powerful in the struggle but never saw anything like that, with people crying, clapping, and singing along the first time they heard it. The song became their anthem and the good guys actually wound up winning. 

The idea behind the song was just to hang on one day longer than the company. It had legs, even showing up in a songbook of the 2011 Wisconsin protests against union busting. If you decide to listen but aren’t used to Appalachian twang, you may want to stand back and play it low. 

I think her message to us in these evil days would come straight from the song: hold out one day more.

August 26, 2020

Time to get serious about reforming bail

 Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, in the unimaginably distant days of springtime, somebody came up with the slogan “West Virginia: Practicing social distancing since 1863.” It made it to a T-shirt.

There’s some truth to that, although we didn’t prove to be as immune to the disease as it seemed at first. Still, living in a rural state with ample open space made things a bit more bearable for lots of people I know. I have friends in big cities who were cooped up in tiny apartments, experiencing claustrophobia.

We know now that the virus is most dangerous in places where social distancing is difficult or impossible. Known as congregate settings, these are places where groups of people live, meet or otherwise gather in close proximity for limited or extended periods of time. Examples include nursing homes, shelters, prisons, jails, juvenile detention centers, workplaces and schools.

Examples of disease spread in such settings include the recent nursing home deaths in Mercer County and the more than 100 cases reported in the state prison at Huttonsville in May and June.

Congregate settings pose a health risk to those who live in them and those who work in them. Many of these workers, who live in communities all over the state, do difficult jobs with not enough compensation or appreciation for the work they do.

One setting that poses a particular threat to public health is the regional jail system.

A lot of people, including myself, tend to use terms “jail” and “prison” interchangeably, but they’re very different. Usually, a jail is a place for detaining people serving relatively short sentences or awaiting trial, while prisons confine those already convicted and sentenced, generally for longer periods of time.

However, that definition gets blurred in West Virginia. For years, prisons here have been so overcrowded that hundreds of people who are supposed to be serving their sentence in a state prison wind up backlogged in overcrowded regional jails. A big difference is that jails don’t offer as many programs or educational opportunities that people might need to complete to be eligible for parole.

According to the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, the average jail population in West Virginia increased by 30% between 2010 and 2019, despite a declining population and dropping crime rates for many offenses.

Jails are particularly prone to becoming COVID-19 hot spots because of the constant churning of populations, as so many people wind up there for minor offenses.

It’s important to remember that more than half of those confined in regional jails haven’t been convicted or even tried for the offenses for which they were arrested.

With a cash-based bail system, that comes down to money — or the lack thereof. Many people are in jail not because they’re a threat to public safety, but because they can’t afford to get out.

In a time of pandemic, they’re at risk of a death sentence for being poor.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Earlier this year, the West Virginia Legislature passed House Bill 2419, which encouraged judicial officers to release people charged with certain offenses on personal recognizance bonds, impose the “least restrictive bail conditions determined to be reasonably necessary to assure appearance as well as ensure the safety of person in the community,” limiting the amount of bail imposed, and requiring a hearing within 72 hours of the first appearance of the accused in court, if they are unable to make bail.

There has been a growing awareness across the political spectrum that the consequences of even a few days in jail can be dire for families and communities: loss of income, jobs, child custody and housing.

Then there’s the cost to counties of about $50 per inmate per day. Further, evidence suggests that people confined before trial are more likely to be convicted and sentenced to longer jail or prison terms than those released.

That bill passed before the pandemic really hit the United States. The stakes for reducing the jail population are even higher now. It went into effect in June, although, unfortunately, so far, it doesn’t appear to have had the intended effect of reducing the jail population.

In late March, the West Virginia Supreme Court issued guidance to lower courts to “identify any pretrial individuals who do not constitute a public safety risk and may be appropriate candidates for [public recognizance] or reduced bond” and to balance “the safety of the public and victims, whether PR or reduced bonds are appropriate to address concerns related to COVID-19.” In some cases, police officers were encouraged to issue warnings or citations, rather than make arrests.

It worked. Between March 2 and April 20, the population in regional jails dropped from 5,200 to 4,108, a 21% decrease. Incarceration of pretrial detainees dropped from 2,685 to 1,842, a 31% drop.

More to the point, this drop in confinement wasn’t followed by a spike in the crime rate, which demonstrates that it’s possible to reduce pretrial detention without compromising public safety.

Unfortunately, the numbers began creeping back up as things returned to something like “normal,” whatever that is these days. Now, the regional jails are about as crowded as they’ve ever been — sometimes more.

That needs to change. It never made sense to criminalize poverty. It makes even less sense to do so in the context of a catastrophic health and economic crisis.

August 19, 2020

Where's Dante when you need him?

 

Botticelli's version

I've spent a lot of time reading Dante's Divine Comedy but I'm having trouble figuring out, purely as a literary exercise, what circle of hell Dante would assign to people who want to take away health care from millions of Americans. As in goodbye to protections for pre-existing conditions and completely killing Medicaid expansion in the 39 states (including DC) that have adopted it. 

Last time I checked there were around 160,000 West Virginians covered by the expansion and over 700,000 non-elderly state residents had some kind of pre-existing condition.

In the Inferno, hell is kind of like a funnel, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The best place is Limbo, where virtuous pagans reside, There's no punishment there beyond desire for the divine vision without hope of attainment. Then comes the places of punishment first for the intemperate, then the violent, then the fraudulent and those who betray. Things tend to get worse as you go down.

That's where it gets complicated. It seems like in this case, it's a combination of intemperate greed, ambition and ideological zeal that wants to impose economic violence on a wide swath of the population while making fraudulent claims about the Affordable Care Act and betraying the needs of their fellow citizens. Oh yeah, and doing all this in the context of a deadly pandemic that has already killed over 170,000 Americans.

If Dante was around today, I'm guessing he might add another canto or two.