West Virginia leads in a good way. Really.

I mentioned in a blog post last week that there was a major breakthrough in police/community relations in, of all places, Charleston WV. Here is a blog post by my co-worker Lida Shepherd about how all this came together.

And here's how it starts:

Editor’s note: As cities across the U.S. continue to grapple with issues of racist police violence, Charleston, West Virginia made headlines last week when its police chief and local community groups announced a plan to improve race relations in the city. 

Lida Shepherd with the AFSC West Virginia Economic Justice Project was part of the 14-month collaborative planning process that led to this remarkable agreement.

Our first meeting with Chief Brent Webster of the Charleston Police Department in October of last year was slightly tense. We were sitting around the table to discuss the fact that the arrest rate of Blacks in our small city of just over 50,000 people was more than double that of whites.

At the table were a team of student and faith leaders, and representatives from NAACP-Charleston, Black Ministerial Alliance, AFSC, ACLU, Kanawha County Public Defender’s Office, East End Family Resource Center, and the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 

Before getting into the problem at hand, we each shared our personal thoughts on why it was important to address racism—a dialogue that emphasized this meeting was not about singling out the Charleston Police Department as a racist institution but rather addressing the broader problem of systemic racism that plays out not only in our city but across our nation.

(It's a good story, and one that I hope will get better. Click the link above to read the rest.)

Tough times

The latest Front Porch podcast, which was recorded before the latest shootings in Baton Rouge, looks at race, Black Lives Matter, police-community relations and more.

Meanwhile, this Washington Post item by Jared Bernstein talks about what racial injustice in the US looks like.

And now, from way out on right field, this is another example of what uncivil discourse looks like these days: a Republican member of the WV House of Delegates calls for Hillary Clinton to be "tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution... then hung on the Mall in Washington, DC.”

That's yet another reason for my campaign to update the state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up."

Before the lights go out

A big storm is about to hit Goat Rope Farm, which could mean nothing or days without power and phone. So here's one while the lights are still on, an interview with historian Eric Foner, who has written extensively on the Civil War, slavery and Reconstruction. Incidentally, he'll be coming to WV for a lecture in October.

This pod's for you

Here's the  latest installment of WV Public Broadcasting's newish program The Front Porch, in which executive director Scott Finn moderates discussions on live issues between Charleston Daily Mail columnist Laurie Lin and yours truly. This one jumps all over the issue of race and racism. This program is now available on iTunes.

Race matters

I've been running around too much lately and this blog has been a casualty of all that. However, I had a pretty good excuse for at least part of the time. That would be the Race Matters in Appalachia that my organization, the American Friends Service Committee, was proud to sponsor, help plan, and participate in.

(Sorry about ending that last sentence with a preposition.)

Race in Appalachia is a timely topic, especially given the racial dog whistling that helped flip WV in the last election. Here is some of the coverage from the Charleston Gazette, the Charleston Daily Mail, and WV Public Broadcasting. For good measure, here's an op-ed by my friend the Rev. Ron English.

This event was meant to be a conversation starter and just the beginning of a whole lot of needed work.

A little good news

According to longtime WV statehouse reporter Tom Miller, 

The idea of housing West Virginia's state prisoners at a private, for-profit prison in neighboring Kentucky has been shelved and is no longer a priority, Commissioner Jim Rubenstein of the state Division of Corrections told state legislators last week at one of the interim committee meetings.

Rubenstein said the idea has now "been put way back on the back burner" because of the current decrease that his agency has been seeing "within the total (inmate) population." This seems to put to rest this earlier proposal that called for the state to possibly house up to 400 inmates at a prison in eastern Kentucky that would be operated by the Corrections Corporation of America.

This is welcome news for all kinds of reasons. I was proud to work with WV allies to keep this from happening. The main reason it didn't was the success of a 2013 bill addressing prison overcrowding.

RACE MATTERS IN APPALACHIA. If you get a chance, please consider attending this conference or race on Nov. 10 and 11.

In lieu of a serious post...

...how about another gratuitous animal picture? This photo, taken this weekend shows Arpad, our Great Pyreness and official People's Commissar of Public Safety at Goat Rope Farm, with his latest treasure find, to wit a decomposing deer hide.

I don't presume to channel what he's thinking, but if I had to hazard a guess, it might be something like:  "Deer season--the gift that keeps on giving." For him, it's yet another proof of the generosity and benevolence of the universe.

And, while I love him dearly, at times like these I'm glad he's mostly an outside dog.

SPEAKING OF DOGS, Paul Krugman wonders here whether Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan's recent musings on "inner city" folks might be a "racial dog whistle." My only reservation about this conclusion is that I thought dog whistles were supposed to be so subtle that humans couldn't detect them.

SO WHERE WERE DOGS in the infinitesimally short explosion that gave birth to the universe? I'm guessing they were very tiny. And well insulated.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of manna and rot

I heard an unexpected but decent sermon this weekend at a showing of a new film on food insecurity in American titled A Place at the Table. The "sermon" consisted of a few remarks about the issue of hunger by a state senator who is also a Lutheran minister.

He referred to the manna or bread from heaven that miraculously fed the Israelites in the desert after their liberation from slavery in Egypt. Part of the deal with the manna was that you could only gather enough for one day at a time (except on Sabbath eve, when you got a two day pass). If you gathered more than one day's worth and hoarded it, the manna would rot.

The senator suggested that the tendency of a few people in our society to hoard money and resources and keep them from the less fortunate is causing a good bit of rot in our communities.

I thought that wasn't bad for a politician.

META. Here's an effort at a conversation about the conversation about race in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict from the Rev. Jim Lewis.

CHARITY OR JUSTICE? While we're at it, here's a thought provoking op-ed on the "charitable-industrial complex."

WONKY BUT IMPORTANT. West Virginia should end an obsolete tax break for thin seam coal.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

On the road again

Last weekend marked a welcome milestone. A bit shy of four weeks after having arthroscopic knee surgery I ran, sort of, my first post-op 5K. I was really slow but it was nice to be in motion again.

Jogging had been out of the question this summer due to persistent knee pain. Other favorite activities had to stop too, like jumping rope, kicking a bag and sparring. Karate became pretty much impossible towards the end. I tried to make do on a bike but it just wasn't the same.

One thing that made the run more special was the fact that I completed it with my 7 year old grandson, who ran every step of the way. In fact, the little bugger finished ahead of me.

I think I can still take him in karate though.

YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNEW THIS, but the price of health insurance is going through the roof.

THE MORAL ARC THING. As far as I can tell, the moral arc of the universe swings around randomly (in fact, "moral universe" seems like an oxymoron, but here is an interesting alternative perspective.

WHAT DO YOU SEE? Human perceptions of race vary with perceptions of social status--and vice versa.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Odysseus and Telemachus open a can on the suitors. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Along with links and comments about current events, the theme at Goat Rope lately has been the Odyssey of Homer and what it has to say to us today. We're almost done. So far we've followed his wanderings from Troy to his home at Ithaca. It has involved 10 years of fighting and 10 more of various adventures and (largely self-inflicted) disasters.

Now, like many veterans returning from war, he finds himself at home but doesn't recognize the place. Disguised as a beggar, he will be abused by arrogant suitors even within his own house.

You probably remember how the story ends. In the home stretch, Odysseus will wreak terrible vengeance on the suitors who have been devouring his substance, abusing the hospitality (xenia) of his house, harassing his faithful wife Penelope, and plotting the murder of his son Telemachus. In the end the people of Ithaca are so upset by the carnage that another battle almost ensues until the gods intervene and make peace.

But first he must alternately deceive and then reveal himself to those he knew, including the swineherd Eumaeus, Telemachus, his nurse Euraycleia, Penelope herself, and his father Laertes.

He is clearly in a dangerous position. Aside from the 108 suitors, many in Ithaca are angry over the fact that not a single one of his fellow countrymen survived the journey, largely due to the mistakes of their commander. But so ingrained is his tendency to resort to lies and stratagems (Greek: metis) that he often lies even when he has no reason to do so.

Not only that, but we've seen all the way along that he is secretive to a fault, that he conceals vital information from his men, and that he has absolutely no social trust. What is his major malfunction?

Maybe a scar holds the key. More on that tomorrow.

BAILOUT. Here's the latest on the compromise version of the Wall Street bailout, which is likely to be voted on in the House today. Short version: it's a little better than that originally proposed but leaves out a lot. Holy free market, Batman!

INJUSTICE KILLS. This article reviews research on inequality and health.

THE POLITICS OF RACE is the topic of this op-ed by yours truly.

MOTHER GOOSE! 50 million years ago, giant geese-like birds with a 5 meter wingspan and bony teeth flew over England. I want one!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ?????

SOCIAL PSYCH

Caption: Venus the goat, left, is all about Adlerian psychology.

Aside from news and links about current events, this week Goat Rope is looking at one of psychology's lesser known Old Guys, Alfred Adler. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

As a psychologist as well as a Social Democrat, one of Adler's main ideas was about the importance of social interest or community feeling, so it's not surprising that he was also concerned about the need for social reform. He basically had a public health approach to psychology.

Living as he did during the rise of Nazism, he was aware of the dangers of prejudice:

Those who have travelled have found that people everywhere are approximately the same in that they are always inclined to find something by which to degrade others. Everyone seeks a means which permits him to elevate himself at little cost.

Economic hardships could make social hostilities increase:

Difficulties in earning a livelihood, bad working conditions, inadequate educational and cultural facilities, a joyless existence, and continuous irritation, all these factors increase the feeling of inferiority, produce oversensitivity, and drive the individual to seek "solutions." To an individual in this state of mind any outside interference appears as a threat to his security and rouses him to active or passive self-defense. Motives of hatred appear most clearly in the economic disturbances of our time.

War and group idolatry (my term, not his) were examples of how our natural tendency to social interest could be abused:

...the psychologist must work against nationalism when it is so poorly understood that it harms mankind as a whole; against wars of conquest, revenge, and prestige; against unemployment which plunges people into hopelessness; and against all other obstacles which interfere with the spreading of social interest in the family, the school, and society at large.

He also had an acute understanding of the pitfalls of power that echoes the ancient wisdom of Lao Tzu:

The struggle for power has a psychological aspect, the description of which appears to us today as an urgent duty. Even where the welfare of the subjugated is obviously intended, the use of even moderate power stimulates opposition everywhere, as far as we can see. Human nature generally answers external coercion with countercoercion. It seeks its satisfaction not in rewards for obedience and docility, but aims to prove that its own means of power are stronger.

The results of the application of power are apt to be disappointing to both parties. No blessing comes of the use of power. In power politics the man in power wins followers who are actually his opponents and who are only attracted by the intoxication of power. And he finds opponents among those who might be his followers if they had not automatically become oppositional. Those who are excluded from power line in wait for the revolt and are reception to any argument.

Adler probably isn't read or studied much these days--but maybe he should be.

RACIAL DISPARITIES persist in the criminal justice system.

THE MESSAGE. Here's an interview about communicating social issues with Thom Hartmann, author of Cracking the Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion.

DON'T WAIT FOR THE MOVIE. The CIA apparently destroyed videotapes of some "severe interrogation" sessions.

THEM BELLY FULL BUT WE HUNGRY. I almost missed this one. The USDA recently reported that 35.5 million Americans, including 12.6 million children, are having trouble meeting their basic need for food.

FULL COURT PRESS. The Manchin administration has joined Massey Energy in opposing federal court rulings about mountaintop removal mining that may limit the ability of coal companies to do whatever they want to.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FISH AND WHISTLE

Caption: Seamus McGoogle has a tragic sense of life.

El Cabrero has been musing on optimism and pessimism lately. It has occurred to me that I know some pretty miserable people who consider themselves to be optimists.

I tend to be pessimistic at times about the Big Picture by virtue of temperament and persuasion but otherwise am pretty content. I'm even optimistic about small things. The universe as a whole may be tending towards entropy but not all parts of it are at any given moment.

Camus once said that while he was pessimistic about human destiny, he was optimistic about people.

Let me explain the pessimistic part first. While I don't think the universe is out to get us, it probably won't go out of its way to cut us any slack. In the human world, bad things happen to good people and vice versa all the time. The distribution of wealth, power, and prestige seems to me to have more to do with randomness than with merit. As the writer of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes put it:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. (9:11)

Another prophet, Leonard Cohen, put it this way:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

(Parenthetically, the next verse of the song pretty well sums up life under the Bush administration:

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died)

Then there's the whole Buddhist thing about the noble truth of suffering. That tradition speaks of six major kinds of suffering that can happen to everyone: birth/becoming, death/dying, sickness, aging and the loss of abilities, having what you don't want and wanting what you don't have. That's a pretty good list.

Many religions teach that all this will be straightened out farther along. That would be nice, but it's beyond the view of the naked eye.

Not that I'm complaining or anything. All this doesn't mean we can't win sometimes--it makes it sweeter when we do. And even though we can't fix everything, we can fix a lot.

Nietzsche spoke about "Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems."

That works for me.

THE LAST WORD on President Bush's CHIP veto goes to Jon Stewart.

AN ENDANGERED SPECIES. The US invasion of Iraq and subsequent events is threatening the survival of what may be the world's last remaining authentic Gnostic sect, the Mandeans. Gnosticism was once a powerful movement within early Christianity and had pagan and Jewish varieties. Here's an interesting op-ed on the subject.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL. At first I thought this was a joke, but it looks like for a time some folks at the Air Force considered the development of a bomb that would lead to rampant homosexual activity. It even won an "award" of sorts. The possibilities of snark are overwhelming to me at this point, so I'll just pass.

FACTOIDS DEPARTMENT. According to The Week Magazine

The salary of Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, works out to $493 a day. Senior managers of Blackwater, a private contractor paid by the U.S. government to provide security in Iraq, make $1,075 a day.

and

More than three times as many blacks live in prison cells than in college dorms, according to a new Census Bureau report. For Latinos, the ration is 2.7 inmates for every dorm dweller. Twice as many whites live in college housing as in prison.

PUT UP OR... E.J. Dionne's newest column asks "Would conservatives and Republicans support the war in Iraq if they had to pay for it?" Speaking of which, I actually got something useful out of a George Will column, to wit this Adam Smith quote:

Were the expense of war to be defrayed always by a revenue raised within the year...wars would in general be more speedily concluded, and less wantonly undertaken.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CONFLICT: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Caption: Lily is ready to rumble.

The 1950s has the reputation of a decade of conformity and mediocrity which I think is undeserved. There was a lot of creativity in American life in that period, including some of the cleverest critiques of conformity and mediocrity.

Not to mention Elvis.

El Cabrero just finished revisiting a sociological gem of that period, Lewis Coser's The Functions of Social Conflict. It's a little gem that holds up pretty well.

Coser was one of the first to integrate two strands of social thinking, conflict theory and functionalism. Conflict theory is pretty much what it sounds like, with a particular emphasis on inequalities of wealth and power. Marx would be the classic example.

Functionalism is kind of what it sounds like too, an approach that examines how the various aspects and institutions of a society function or dysfunction as a whole and for particular groups.

When the book was written--1956--the dominant strand in sociology was what C. Wright Mills called "grand theory," an elaborate and largely unreadable brand of functionalism represented by Talcott Parsons which tended to view social conflict as a bad thing or symptom of dysfunction. Coser, inspired by the quirky German theorist Georg Simmel (1858-1918) looked at the positive as well as negative functions of social conflict.

(Here are some nuggets about Simmel.)

Coser distinguished between conflict and hostile feelings or attitudes:

Social conflict always denotes social interaction, whereas attitudes or sentiments are predispositions to engage in action. Such predispositions do not necessarily eventuate in conflict; the degree and kind of of legitimation of power and status systems are crucial intervening variables affecting the occurrence of conflict.

In other words, sometimes hostile attitudes are not openly expressed in conflict. When it does happen, though, conflict "helps to establish and maintain the identity and boundary lines of societies and groups."

Far from causing societies to fracture, it can sometimes be part of the glue that holds them together.

About which more tomorrow.

LOGAN ACTION PLANNED IN WAKE OF MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE. The American Friends Service Committee and the Logan County Improvement League are holding a candlelight vigil Oct. 2 at 6 p.m. at Big Creek, the area where Megan Williams was tortured and sexually abused. Dr. Johnny W. Meade, pastor of the Church of God in the Name of Christ Jesus, invited the organizations to conduct the service at his church, which is located on the right about one and one-fourth miles up Trace Fork Road off Corridor G behind the Thornhill Chevrolet dealership.

Organizers are hoping that this event will give residents of Logan County and other people of good will a chance to come together to make a positive statement. For more information, call 304-752-3422.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's an interesting article on the history of race relations in southern WV which appeared in Friday's Gazette.

ON THE DOWNSIDE? Here's an item on the apparently declining political clout of the religious right.

IT'S ALL ABOUT TABLES. The Rev. Jim Lewis has a great knack for picking a theme or image and spinning it out in all kinds of ways. The theme for the latest edition of Notes from under the Fig Tree is Table Talk.

VETO BATTLE EXPECTED THIS WEEK on the Children's Health Insurance Program is likely to happen this week.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED