Some states and organizations are already thinking past just the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In 2017 states will be eligible to improve upon the ACA and implement a plan that is truly universal and finally gets costs under control. Leading the way in California is the Campaign for a Healthy California (CHC), a coalition of organizations committed to moving California further along the road of health care reform. One of the most active—and informed—voices, CHC’s goal is to develop a strategy and plan to win Improved Medicare for All in California.  Find out more here.

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Mark Dudzic of the Labor Campaign for Single Payer

As a recent gathering of the CHC, Mark Dudzic, Coordinator for the Labor Campaign for Single Payer gave a detailed analysis of the pros and cons of the ACA, and its impact on collective bargaining: “No union today can bargain without facing a demand of hard choices on health care coverage in our contracts. The absence of a social model health care system significantly depresses our members’ wages, despite the productivity gains their work produces”.  Read more about labor’s push in California for single payer.

The Affordable Care Act is a baby step to what we really need, a single payer delivery system.

Six months more of auto deductions to go until full implementation of the Affordable Care Act. As the June deduction hit my checkbook I wondered:  The chance for real affordable healthcare is so close; the Minnesota Health Exchanges will be up and running for consumer selection by October. My health is holding up…should I just stop paying $329.91 a month for a policy that ultimately I can’t use. Do I take the gamble?

And always as that deduction hits I ask myself: Why do I live in the only industrialized nation in the world that somehow thinks the insanity of for-profit insurance companies equates to health care coverage for its citizens? Why can’t there be a single payer system? Medicare for all.  Everybody In-Nobody Out. Call it what you want. The rest of the industrialized world calls it health care at a far more reasonable price than what we have here in the United States.

For the last 20 months as a breast-cancer survivor I have had the distinct honor of paying more than $300 a month for a health “insurance” policy that carries a $10,000 deductible. Who in their right mind would call that health care coverage?  Any trip to any doctor for any condition requires I pay the first $10,000.  Who has that kind of “disposable income?” I can barely make it from paycheck to paycheck. When the dust cleared from the initial breast cancer treatments in 2009 (I chose no chemo therapy and no recommended 5-year drug therapy), the insurance premiums on the private policy I had increased nearly 20 percent for the next two years. When the monthly premium hit $709 for a $5,000 deductible I cried uncle. I was approaching 60 years of age; I had exhausted my savings to pay for a health insurance policy that was no longer financially sustainable, and I had a pre-existing condition.

I still remember the insurance broker I called to help me sort through the options I already knew didn’t exist.  She cringed and said, “Honey. No one’s going to insure you.” And she was right. My only option was a high-risk pool and continued prayers that my health would hold up.

Now I stand 6 months away from what could be my bridge to Medicare. And yet I hear that politicians are once again trying to repeal the ACA; trying to make a 2014 political campaign issue out of the first real band-aid to our intolerable health care delivery system in this country.  I always wonder: Who are these people and don’t they know how many Americans are literally dying as we await the implementation of this baby step toward a real health care delivery system that works for people and not million-dollar CEOs of for-profit health care systems?

Here in Minnesota we have a fighting chance of implementing a health exchange that may actually serve the average person like me struggling to find health care coverage. As I literally count down the days to the Exchanges going “live,” I know more than ever that single payer remains the only answer and that anyone who tries to campaign on repeal of the ACA is heartless.

I plan to blog about what it’s like as we countdown to January 1, 2014 and the first date of ACA implementation. If you don’t know what single payer is, learn! I plan to write more about single payer and the great organizations around the country pushing for it even as the ACA takes all the headlines. Telling our stories is the only way to breakdown the ignorance of those who think that somehow health care is a privilege only for those who can afford it. How many of these people, I ask myself, are “good Christians?” Did they never hear, “when Lord, did we see you sick?”

What’s your health care story?  Send a note, post a comment below, talk to a neighbor or even better, talk to your state legislator or congressional representative.  Look for my thoughts on UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley’s recent comments about his for-profit company deciding to stay out of the Exchanges in many states because people will have a “pent up appetite” for medical care. Youbetcha Steve – we sure do. A basic human right that you deny us as you bank your 2012 $34 million total compensation package.

You will hear the constant refrain from me as we move toward ACA implementation: Singe Payer remains the only real answer to the health care delivery crisis this country faces. I encourage everyone to stay informed and learn more about the organizations working in your state is to implement single payer. Health Care For All Minnesota (HCAMn) continues its relentless pursuit of bringing single payer to the Land of 10,000 lakes where I live.  As the ACA readies for implementation, Executive Director Erin Anderson knows why single payer is what’s needed.

“The complexity of implementing and understanding the reforms required under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) is becoming more apparent,” Anderson said. “We believe that this complexity will lead not only to confusion for patients and caregivers but also to increased costs for premiums and other administrative costs that will continue to drive the cost of health care ever higher. The ACA also perpetuates the for-profit health care system that values money over helping the sick and injured. Health Care for All-Minnesota knows the only true way to ensure everyone has access to the care they need regardless of age, income, health and employment status is through a single-payer system.

Actor Michael Milligan’s one act play Mercy Killers dramatically portrays the human pain associated with our current health care delivery system.

One of the best examples of how our current health delivery system continues to ravage “average” people is the one person, one-act play Mercy Killers, performed by Michael Milligan. This powerful drama brings to life in a passionate display just how deeply lives are impacted by our current system. Milligan returns to Minnesota on Thursday June 20 to perform his play as part of HCAMn’s Summer Celebration.  For more information on that performance, click here. For more information on Milligan, the play and how to host a performance of this riveting drama, click here.

The two main elements of my progressive identity are the bedrock “love your enemy, we are all one” moral message of basic Christianity, and my love of writing, which became my primary vehicle for taking a moral stand.

He embraces life with a courage and conviction that serves as a reminder of the human condition in all its joy and sorrow. In researching another topic, I found a reference in a student newspaper from 1901 that said: “We live with the vital truths, which we have become familiar as we live in our material environment – heedless, unobservant, indifferent; and our real self is starved because it lacks the nourishment of divine thought and yearnings.” Robert Koehler’s writings offer nourishment of divine thought.

We are honored to have had the opportunity to capture a few of his views for our June Progressive Profile. His insights serve as a daily reflection for how to live our lives.

Q.        What in your DNA has provided you the insights and “progressive” thought that fills your writing?

I wonder about this all the time. I wasn’t raised as a progressive. My parents were apolitical Ike-Republicans when I was a kid. I grew up as a conventional Lutheran, having been taught that all non-Christians went to Hell. There were no blacks or Jews anywhere in sight when I was growing up, in the nonchalant, endemically racist world of 1950s white America. But I would say my parents were good, loving people who never taught me to hate or fear others, but to act with Christian charity to all.

That remains my basic moral template. As I grew up, I simply applied this to the real world as I encountered it. I challenged lots of society’s far more superficial values. I came on my own to question the logic of violence and incubated antiwar sentiments throughout my childhood and adolescence, but externally I was apolitical. Even as the civil rights movement started rolling, I remained apolitical — abstractly supportive, but never motivated to be an activist. I rejected my religion at age 16, influenced by two books, Exodus, by Leon Uris, and The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. I was 18 when the Berkeley Free Speech Movement hit the news and that really resonated with me.

By then I knew I wanted to be a writer and recoiled at the pseudo social horror surrounding taboo words. In college, at Western Michigan University, my rebellious tendencies finally pushed me toward progressive politics, and I became active in the civil rights and eventually antiwar struggles then going on. Western was a fairly conservative school but had a progressive contingent that I embraced — and in the process found myself as a person more fully than I ever had in my life. The two main elements of my progressive identity, I would say, are the bedrock “love your enemy, we are all one” moral message of basic Christianity, and my love of writing, which became my primary vehicle for taking a moral stand.

Q.        I see you spent some time in Kalamazoo. With the Alberta tar sands spill that has polluted the Kalamazoo River, what are your thoughts about what we are doing to the planet and our environment?  Do you see hope in what is going on today to try and save the environment and the planet?

I was horrified when I learned about the oil spill in the Kalamazoo River, which I knew well. I went to college in Kalamazoo and lived in that part of Michigan for ten years. I was in my early 20s when the environmental movement came into being and became a back-to-the-lander for a number of years, living on a communal farm and learning many basic farming and gardening skills. Even though I eventually moved to Chicago to find a career in journalism, the cause of environmentalism is very close to my heart; I am active in urban gardening. I feel a great deal of frustration and despair about the out-of-control economic forces that exploit, consume and trash the environment, and have less optimism about this than most other problems we face. My hope is with the many passionate young people in Chicago and around the world who have begun devoting their lives to social change and eco-sanity.

Q.        Peace. The word rings through most of what you write. Did you think at this point in your life, that the concept of peace would be something that you would need to defend or have to explain and/or try to defend?

Yes and no. 9/11, Bush, the war on terror — these things have shattered the national soul. This is the new normal — an Orwellian permanent war, now hardly more than background noise. This sort of thing I never, of course, foresaw in my younger days. Now the quest for peace has intensified in urgency tenfold or a hundredfold. Human civilization is unraveling environmentally, politically, culturally, spiritually. A warped economic system depends on war: the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex. We have a system that requires enemies, that weeds people out. To hear the stories of those who are on the wrong side of the divide, whether at home or abroad is so heartbreaking, but what it has done is open up the urgency of peace like never before — the urgency of learning how to build a new sort of society, based on connectedness, the Golden Rule.

“Peace” is an endless experiment; it’s always tentative. We have to start by finding a few basic principles: the new social bedrock. We’re in the process of doing this, and involvement in this process is what gives meaning to my life.

Q.        What keeps you motivated today to keep writing on topics such as peace and non-violence?

I do have a fragile optimism. My passion these days is for restorative justice, restorative practices, peace circles: People finding new ways to connect and communicate and resolve conflict. There are people who have moved beyond the win-lose paradigm and domination culture. As Einstein said, “We can’t solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” I believe many of us are living, or learning to live, at a new level of thinking. I call it power with one another, as opposed to the current political-economic-religious paradigm of power over one another. While I despair at the pending consequences of our current short-sightedness, I remain passionate that millions of people across the globe are working quietly to build the world that must evolve.

Q.        What has dealing with death as directly as you have taught you about living life fully each and every day?

Perhaps the most important thing I learned when I lost my wife to cancer 15 years ago is that death is not the enemy. I was at her side as she died. She became radiant, the pain furrows loosened. She became beautiful and whole as she let go. It was, except for being present at the birth of my daughter, the most amazing experience of my life. Death is not what we need to fear; we’re embraced in a loving universe. The sticking point is human behavior, human fear. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “We’re not human beings having a divine experience. We’re divine beings having a human experience.” Re-remembering this, as I must do every day, pulls me out of whatever anger and anguish may be gripping me at the moment.

Q.        Are there “heroes” you admire?  Who from the past or today inspires you?

This could be a long list but I’ll talk about three. The first is my late wife, Barbara, who was a public interest attorney with an extraordinary passion for social justice. Her courage in the face of a fatal illness remains my life’s beacon. She was also an unreconstructed hippie who reawakened my social conscience after I had become a journalist and had begun drifting into cynicism. She reconnected me to my soul, to my love of justice and fairness. She turned me, or inspired me to turn myself, into a peace journalist.

As hero #2, I choose the late Ken Macrorie, a writing teacher and mentor I had as an undergraduate at Western Michigan University. He developed a teaching technique called free writing and taught me how to find my own voice as a writer. Every day I feel indebted to him for his encouragement and support so many years ago.

Finally, I will mention a writer named Rupert Ross, who wrote an extraordinary book called Returning to the Teachings, which is about restorative justice and the peace circle process as we Westerners learned it from aboriginal cultures in Northern Canada. A Canadian crown attorney, Ross wrote about his own experience with tribal men and women who insisted on reclaiming the culture the Europeans had destroyed in the previous century. His book taught me, among much, much else, that civilization is not a linear path of progress, from a primitive to an advanced state, but that “advanced” Western culture is spiritually impoverished and knows very little about the forces that tie us to one another and our planet. Thank God for the native peoples everywhere who can help us relearn what we’ve been forgetting for the last five or six millennia.

Q.        As a journalist who probably cut his teeth during the Watergate days, what are your comments/insights into the state of journalism today?  Where do you see (if you do) signs of hope for the 4^th Estate?

My journalism career began in the early ‘ 70s, just before Watergate. It may be that the Watergate revelations were the culmination of “liberal journalism,” a several-decade run that began with the civil rights movement in the ’50s. While the alleged liberal media initially kept its mouth shut about Vietnam, eventually it embraced an antiwar stance and was instrumental in ending — and forgetting about — that horrific war. Post-Watergate, at least as it has always seemed to me, the mainstream media underwent convulsions of remorse for speaking truth to power and promised never to do it again. Political scandals came and went but the media never again, even during Iran-contra, dug down to bedrock moral principles in its reporting. It more or less reverted to a sophisticated form of yellow journalism, titillating the public with violence and celebrity gossip. Where do I see signs of hope? Well, I have admiration for every journalist who is able to claim a sense of independence in his or her work. The big problem, in mainstream, well-compensated journalism is at the top. It’s big business. The newsroom isn’t independent of the interests of the owners. In such a context, most reporters control their curiosity and practice self-censorship, only digging for the truth in acceptable directions.

The hideous unanimity with which the mainstream media supported the post-9/11 Bush agenda is a crime against humanity, and any official media remorse for supporting this ghastly mistake has been tepid and superficial, and certainly doesn’t translate into skepticism toward the next war. My main sense of hope is in the flourishing progressive sites on the Internet, such as Common Dreams and Democracy Now; in the concept of peace journalism as developed by Johan Galtung at transcend.org; in the many fabulous documentaries being made. The collapsing media empires no longer have a corner on legitimacy.

Q.        Do you think life runs in cycles?  Or do you sense that what we are experiencing is really different from other cycles of history?

I think both are true. Life is cyclical and also it is evolving — thus every cycle thrusts us a little further into our becoming. Our economic system is consuming the planet, as well as our spiritual life; at some point in the not too distant future, as so many people are saying, this can’t keep going on. The system will collapse and something new will have to emerge. It’s frightening to contemplate, unless I let myself relax and trust the great unknown. I think humanity is moving toward something beyond itself. I also believe love is a tremendous force in the universe and it embraces us whether we know it or not. Just as molecules became so complex that cellular life emerged on the planet out of inanimate matter, so this complexity of connection continues, and it involves us.

Q.        Tell us a bit about your book.

My book is called Courage Grows Strong at the Wound. You can get information about it at commonwonders. There’s a lot in it that’s personal. It moves from the inward journey to the outward journey — from dealing with my wife’s death to groping for an end to war. It’s also about the comedy of errors of being a single dad raising an adolescent girl; it’s also about everyone’s inner genius. The book is deeply reverent and irreverent as hell. We’re divine beings having a human experience. This book takes a close look at that human experience.

Q.        What “advice” would you give to keep people engaged in trying to make positive change in the world?

Keep on keeping on! Understand that there is an inevitability to what you are doing, and that your work is connected to that of millions of others. Understand that you are an inspiration to all the rest of us.

Rep. Keith Ellison at a town hall meeting: Everybody Counts. Everybody Matters.

On a day that brought news of Wisconsin’s voter ID law being upheld by a circuit court, it was good to hear Ellison remind the crowd of the great accomplishments last fall here in Minnesota when we voted no on a Republican-backed amendment to enshrine voter ID in our state constitution. It was encouraging to hear that during this non-election year, Ellison and his staff will be focused on expanding the electorate and getting more Minnesotans to the polls. Few needed to be reminded that Al Franken, up for re-election in 2014, won his seat six years ago by a mere 300+ votes.

This year Ellison will literally be living his campaign slogan: Everybody Counts. Everybody Matters. “We’re going to keep on turning out the vote,” Ellison said, “because politics is about engaging people, building relationships, talking to people you don’t know. Because when you do that, you find out you have more in common with people.  We all want to retire with dignity so that means saving Social Security. It means increasing wages and looking at the youngest among us and making sure we’re investing in them. We’re all in this together.

“The next election isn’t about one person,” Ellison said pointing to himself. “It’s more about what we are all about as a country. It’s not about personalities; it’s about policies. We want to change the political paradigm.”  One wondered how it is that Ellison’s district could bump up against that of Michele Bachmann, who just days before announced that she would not be seeking re-election. The woman who personified personal gain over public good in her tenure literally occupies the neighboring congressional district to Ellison.

“We’ll be doing this at the grass-roots level,” Ellison explained. “We’ll be registering new voters who have just turned 18, we’ll be talking to new Americans and we’ll go into apartment buildings where the disabled live. We’ll meet them where they are. Every congressional district has 700,000 voters. We need to get them to the polls; to help them understand that their vote matters. If Franklin Roosevelt could govern from a wheel chair, we need to let people with disabilities to know that their ideas count.”

The best comment from the group came from Lamar, a Vietnam veteran who reminded the audience and Ellison that when he put his uniform on to fight for his country, he didn’t fight for Republicans or Democrats, he fought for America. Lamar expressed his frustration at the gridlock in D.C.  Although Ellison had no immediate answers on how to solve the crisis, the solution remains simple, if not easy. More Americans need to become as smart as Lamar or embrace Ellison’s campaign motto of Everybody Counts. Everybody Matters.

Jim Wallis’ newest book explores the ancient idea of the common good

The common good. I wondered again why it is that people stumble over what the definition of that is. It was the fabric of my youth and adult life. Public parks, public schools, public libraries, public works departments. We made attempts to take care of everyone. We worked at making a place at the table for everyone. Sure, you had friends who had their lake cottage, but I had the public swimming pool and picnics at the public beach on Lake Michigan.

Wallis, an evangelical, acknowledged that many people define the term “common good” in different ways. He includes in his book one of his favorite definitions from Catholic social justice teaching: “The common good is the whole network of social conditions, which enable humans and groups to flourish. All are responsible for all.”

Or phrased yet another way:  The common good benefits the community. It is the welfare of the whole community, as the proper object of a just law. It is distinguished from individual good, which looks only to the good of a single person.

Try it another way, which is the ancient golden rule to which Wallis refers: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. “We have broken our social contracts,” Wallis told his audience. We are hungry for a new social contract. Inequality damages our way of life and life today in the United States is dramatically unequal. We need to inspire the ideal of the common good because life today is unfair, unsustainable and it is making us unhappy.”

He stressed the need to broaden our definition of that famous question the lawyer posed to Jesus of Nazareth:  Who is my neighbor? “We need to ask, who is my poor neighbor? Who is my immigrant neighbor?  Who is my gay neighbor?,” Wallis said.

Jim Wallis challenges us to expand our definition of “neighbor.”

“We need to talk about reclaiming democracy,” he added. “We need a transformational ethical view. Checks have replaced balances in Washington. But remember, the common good comes last to Washington. It’s social movements that change Washington. We need a social movement today that harkens back to the ancient idea of the common good that says our life together can be better than our life alone.”  For more information on Wallis’ book and to hear Wallis in his own words, click here.

Wallis’ talk sent me scurrying back to another great book and organization that promotes the common good. If you’ve not seen the book by Jay Walljasper:  All That We Share: A Field Guide To The Commons, we invite you to check it out here. As part of the organization On The Commons, Walljasper writes several thought-provoking ways to look at how the commons are defined. He answers the question of what is a commons-based society quite simply: “It is a way of life that values what we share as much as what we own.” It was the introduction to the book by Bill McKibbon that gave me pause. In it he writes:

“If we are to somehow ward off the coming (environmental) catastrophes, we have to reclaim this atmospheric commons. We have to figure out how to cooperatively own and protect the single most important feature of the planet we inhabit – the thin envelope of atmosphere that makes our lives possible. Wrestling this key prize away from Exxon Mobil and other corporations is the great political issue of our time…The last few decades have been dominated by the premise that privatizing all economic resources will produce endless riches. Which was kind of true, except that the riches went to only a few people. And in the process, they melted the Arctic as well as dramatically increasing inequality around the world.”

The recent environmental news – in case you missed it because they played second tier to talking points blathering on Fox News – is frightening. Recent stories told of the dying bees and the impact on the food chain; the fact that we broke a three million-year-old record for amount of carbon in the air; the reporting that those carbon emissions are eliminating an approximate 50,000 species from the planet; that homelessness will develop and has developed because of climate change; and on and on the list goes.

There can be no more dramatic example of the interconnectedness of all living things than trying to sustain life on this planet. And yet we continue to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to what is going on. We cannot say we weren’t warned. The prophetic voices have been crying out for decades. Rachel Carson. Gaylord Nelson. Bill McKibbon. Jim Wallis. Jay Walljasper. And of course Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said: “We must all learn to live together as brothers or perish as fools.”

It was a time when conservative thinking lambasted scientific thought and reason. Immigrants were under assault. The death penalty awaited “anarchists” who dared to speak out for livable wages and against corporate rule taking over the United States.  The interests of politicians and industrialists ran in tandem.

Clarence Darrow: “It seems to me and for me that I have no right to save myself when the injustice is so great.”

It was also the dawning of the American Progressive Movement, a time in which notable individuals fought for “we the people” against the greed and power of their day. One such individual was Clarence Darrow, born in Kinsman, Ohio, on April 18, 1857, and often referred to as the “attorney for the dammed.” He earned his mark in history by defending the lost, the unpopular cases, the murderers, anarchist, the innocent, and the guilty.

The Scopes Monkey Trial could be considered Darrow’s most famous case.  In 1925 Darrow defended Tennessee high school teacher John T. Scopes who tried to teach the theory of evolution despite a newly enacted state law that forbade it. Raised in a small Ohio town by a father who was an atheist, Darrow said:  “The fact that my father was a heretic always put him on the defensive. We children thought it was only right and loyal that we should defend his cause.”

Darrow entered the Scopes Trial on the heels of his successful argument against the death penalty in the Richard Leopold-Nathan Loeb trial in Chicago that had fascinated the nation the year before. His days-long closing arguments delivered without notes won miraculous reprieves for men doomed to hang for their senseless murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Darrow abhorred capital punishment, which he viewed as premeditated murder by the state. He saw it as not only morally wrong but also futile because it did not deter crime, nor did it address what he believed to be the underlying root causes of crime such as poverty, inequality, and human beings being driven by emotions they could not control.  “I am pleading for the future. I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men, when we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man,” he said in his concluding attempt to save the young pair from the gallows.

Darrow argues against the death penalty in the famous Leopold-Loeb murder trial of 1924.

But it was his rejection of the “easy life” of his times that is most notable. After practicing law in his hometown, Darrow moved to Chicago. In five short years he was a general attorney for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. But in 1892, after earning a comfortable living representing the powerful railroad, he yearned to do something important with his life. When the workers of the Pullman Railway Company went on strike in 1894, Darrow resigned his job to defend Eugene V. Debs, the president of the American Railway Union. Debs had been arrested for contempt of court arising from the strike.

John Aloysius Farrell in his biography on Darrow describes the powerful attorney as someone who felt “guilty working for a corporation where his legal skills and his boss’ clout were employed at union busting He longed for “peace of mind.” Darrow wrote to Jane Addams, social reformer of the time and founder of Hull House in Chicago: “It seems to me and for me that I have no right to save myself when the injustice is so great.”

Over the next few years, he defended strikers, labor leaders and anarchists. By the turn of the century he was a celebrity of the “radical left” of his time. He would defend Debs again in an attempt to overturn Debs’ conviction and federal imprisonment arising from an anti-war speech Debs delivered in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.

During Darrow’s lifetime, America made its transformation from rural innocence to the age of industrial capitalism.  Within that timeframe, Darrow stood for the working men and women who suffered from the relentless economic forces of a century ago.  He once said, “With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.”

In a time before radio and television, Darrow would speak in crowded courtrooms with a plain but emotional conviction of the nobility of man, the frailty of mankind and the threat to liberty posed by the handful of wealthy individuals and their legal guns-for-hire. “With the land and possessions of America rapidly passing into the hands of a favored few…with thousands of men and women in idleness and want; with wages constantly tending to a lower level…with the knowledge that the servants of the people elected to correct abuses are bought and sold in legislative halls at the bidding of corporations and individuals; with all these notorious evils sapping the foundations of popular government and destroying personal liberty, some rude awakening must come.”

Darrow was a complex and puzzling individual to those who knew him. On March 13, 1938, in the depths of the Great Depression, Darrow died almost penniless in his Hyde Park, Illinois, apartment. His second wife, in an attempt to sell his library and belongings for much need cash, was stunned to discover in those Depression days just how little the estate commanded.  His ashes were scattered in the lagoon in Jackson Park, on Chicago’s lakefront.

For more on this great American lawyer, check out the following links:

The University of Missouri-Kansas City

The University of Minnesota Law Library

Today, we have the largest income equality that has existed in my adult lifetime. That was clearly stated recently by renowned economist David Kay Johnston who reported the following:

In 2011 the average Adjusted Gross Income of the vast majority fell to $30,437 per taxpayer, its lowest level since 1966 when measured in 2011 dollars. The vast majority averaged a mere $59 more in 2011 than in 1966. For the top 10 percent, by the same measures, average income rose by $116,071 to $254,864, an increase of 84 percent over 1966.

So what do we do about that?  First we work like crazy to change the conversation with friends and families that we, as a country, are broke. We are not broke. We chose to allow those with power to take away our collective and individual rights to change this situation. The second thing: push our legislators to support Ellison’s Inclusive Prosperity Act (The Robin Hood Tax) this Wednesday.

What is the Robin Hood Tax?  I invite you to peruse the following web sites to find out more.

• The Robin Hood Tax
• Progressive Democrats of America
• Oxfam International
• Bill Moyers

In its simplest form, the Robin Hood Tax is a tax on the financial sector that has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year to provide funding for jobs to kick-start the economy and get America back on its feet. It could help save the social safety net in the US and around the world.

Rep. Keith Ellison will re-introduce The Robin Hood Tax April 17.

How simple is that?  So simple that it will take massive work and efforts to alert people to the fact that common sense can once again overtake greed and selfishness. If I’m told I have to recognize that greed has always been part of the human condition, then it is up to us to remind people that there has always been a pushback in the course of human history against greed. Robin Hood had his day in Sherwood Forest. Today, it’s up to us to bring back the spirit of Robin Hood and support the efforts of those who continue to rally around the cry:  We are Not Broke.

What will you do this week to push back against the prevailing and incorrect assumption that this country is broke and we have to punish the elderly, the poor and the marginalized?  One fairly painless action item would be to call your congressional rep and ask them to support Keith Ellison’s Robin Hood Tax bill.

“The overarching benchmark is that we are organizing a community of activists that are willing to do the work and believe we can build a passionate and progressive government.”

PDA was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic Party and to seek to build a party and government controlled by citizens, not corporate elites with policies that serve the broad public interest, not just private interests. PDA’s “inside/outside” strategy is guided by the belief that a lasting majority will require a revitalized Democratic Party built on firm progressive principles.

“We were active in the national arena in 2004,” said PDA Executive Director Tim Carpenter. “Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich were active at that time trying to unite the party around issues such as single payer and reduction of military spending.  We began with the dream that we could elect a progressive president.  Although that didn’t succeed, now nine years later we have put together an organization that is committed to those issues.  We’re working at the grass roots level, by Congressional District, working inside and outside of the Democratic Party.

“What makes PDA unique as an organization is that we believe you have to work both inside to remind the Democratic Party of our progressive ideals as well as outside the party.  Every great social movement whether it was the women’s movement that began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended outside the White House with demonstrations that led to the 19^th Amendment or the Civil Rights movement when Rosa Parks (in 1955) refused to move that resulted in the signing of the Civil Rights bill in 1964 – every social movement has a uniting of the “inside and the outside.”  And that’s what PDA is about – building a larger progressive social movement.”

The focus areas for PDA are no small task.  They include:

• End Corporate Rule
• Clean, Fair Transparent Elections
• Economic and Social Justice
• End War and Occupation, Redirect Funding
• Educate Congress
• Healthcare for All/Single Payer
• Stop Global Warming/Environmental
• Stop Voter Suppression/Democracy Restoration Act

“As I reflect on the last nine years, I think it’s important to realize we’re still here,” Carpenter said. “It’s been years since we were just an idea and now that idea has taken shape. There are activists working around the country on the inside and outside strategy.  I think the measure of PDA and whether or not we’re effective is to look at benchmarks. Whether it’s raising money or generating letters, those are all very important.  I think we will reach all of those.  But the overarching benchmark for PDA as I’ve stated is that we are organizing a community of activists (inside and outside) that are willing to do the work and believe we can build a passionate and progressive government.

“The measurement is not only that we survived but also that we’re growing and building a movement. Whether we call ourselves progressive democrats five years from now or whatever the group of people who are building and growing this community is called will ultimately stay sustained and active and relevant and current. I think that is the most measurable thing.”

Recent PDA activity included a strong push for the Progressive Caucus’ Back To Work Budget, which included letter drops and educational efforts at Congressional offices.  Although the vote ultimately failed, Carpenter says it represents a start.  84 votes for the Back To Work Budget and 33 signers to Rep. Alan Grayson’s letter to President Obama stating there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. “That’s our foundation, Carpenter said. “There’s long way to go, but at the same time, we’re on our way.”

What is it in Carpenters’ DNA that keeps him and the organization focused and optimistic?  An early organizer in one of the most conservative areas of the country (Orange County), Carpenter also worked on campaigns in the late 1960s-early 70s for Jerry Brown, Tom Hayden and George McGovern.  “I struggle like everybody else today, but I also believe it is our responsibility to keep moving and pushing and to stand on those shoulders that brought us to this point of a progressive community.

“At an early age I had serious health issues (degenerative arthritic condition and cancer as a young adult).  I had to make decisions early in my life on what was important and what wasn’t and that altered my viewpoint at a young age.  I think that, coupled with the fact I grew up in a very Irish Catholic family. I went to Catholic grade school; learned from the Jesuits. I took very seriously the social justice gospel and from there began to chart out my course.

“Who are the heroes for me? The obvious ones that stand out like Dr. Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Michael Harrington. But it’s really the folks who do the day-in and day-out work of our communities.  The people who read the blogs and who everyday try to make a difference; the people who stand up against the main stream and hold to a vision that healthcare is a human right and we can reduce military spending. There are thousands and thousands of people who get up everyday and do the work — whether it’s an individual who writes a member of congress or organizes house parties to help educate others. At the end of the day, those are the people who make a real difference in our lives. I often like to think of Margaret Mead’s quote that says, “in the end it’s small groups of dedicated people who bring about change.”

“Sure, we run into naysayers. But at the same time, it’s important and essential to acknowledge the little victories along the way. At the end of the day it’s going to be about the journey. Most of the work we’re doing, we’re not going to see the end results in our lifetime. But it’s important that we reach those markers and celebrate the victories like passing a bill, or getting more co-sponsors to a bill. It’s by pulling together that we have those major victories, whether that’s finally talking about getting our troops out of Afghanistan.  We’re finally out of Iraq. We’re on the horrible 10-year anniversary of the invasion, and it was pretty hopeless during a lot of that build up. But we organized and put pressure on our government to get the troops out. Those are the marker that we acknowledge and celebrate.”

Hopeful signs that Carpenter sees daily in his work with PDA include the passion and energy the “younger generation” has for progressive causes. “It’s there,” he said about the work of the next generation.  “Not in the way we sometimes look at it from the old ways of organizing, but I can say unequivocally in the work I’m doing with PDA and the cities I’m visiting that the youth are engaged and active.  I point to a group called I Matter. They have a group of 10-11 year olds who are organizing their grade schools and high schools for a better planet that they will inherit from us.  We haven’t done a very good job when it comes to climate and global warming and I Matter is at the forefront in really organizing and speaking out to create a community that understands the imperatives and the perils we face right now on climate change.

“We took a group of kids from I Matter to Congress last year and it was one of the most inspirational works that I did…that’s where inspiration for me come from. We have to remember this generation is meeting on Twitter and on Facebook. They don’t like to go to meetings. Think of when we grew up. We would wait all day for a half hour of Walter Cronkite. It’s a much different world that we’re living in and organizing in, but yes, the younger generation is very much engaged.”

In addition to the continued push for the Back To Work Budget, PDA will also be focused on key events in April that include Rep. Keith Ellison’s re-introduction of the Robin Hood tax as well as the awaited decision on the Keystone Pipeline.

“The Environment.  Many are already saying it’s simply too late,” Carpenter said.  The next couple of months will be crucial with the tar sands and the Keystone Pipeline. We need to stop that pipeline and deal with a larger strategy that deals with the climate, carbon tax, green jobs and getting rid of nuclear power.

“Long term we have to hold to our vision that health care is a human right and to reduce the amount for military spending.  We need to move that money out of the Pentagon and into the work at that needs to be done at home.”

Learn More About PDA

One of the best ways to stay abreast of what’s happening on progressive issues is to stay connected to PDA.  And, the best way to learn more about PDA is to visit their web site by clicking here. Like them on Facebook and you’ll get reminders and invitations to all of their topical monthly conference calls. You’ll have the opportunity to connect with people from literally around the country who are concerned about the progressive issues for which PDA fights. Their eNewsletter is another great way to learn and “click” your way to more action.

The following links provide more information on Carpenter and what motivates him:

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/a-clockwork-orange/tim-carpenterback-with-a-venge/

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2012/11/tim_carpenter_fiscal_cliff.php

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-16/news/mn-3685_1_democratic-party

To hear Tim in his own words, check out his recent interview with talk show host Thom Hartman:

You can donate directly to PDA by clicking here or by checking out our special offer.  We are donating portions of every individual copy of Wisdom of Progressive Voices directly to PDA. The memory of Bob LaFollette, Dorothy Day, Rachel Carson and all of the progressives featured in our book owe a thank you to PDA and their continued work.

His genuine concern and love for the environment always comes to mind in April as we as a country honor his memory with celebrations of Earth Day. It is sometimes hard to fathom the idea that 20 million people participated in that first Earth Day in 1970 — all organized and coordinated without the luxury of today’s social media.

Bill Christofferson, Gaylord Nelson biographer, offers us a look back on the Earth Day Founder.

For a look back and remembrance of this wonderful man who said, “The ultimate test of a man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard,” we re-connected with Bill Christofferson, author/biographer of The Man From Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator Gaylord Nelson. The Wilderness Society described the book as:  “A fun book to read-filled with fascinating stories of politics in the twentieth century. We yearn for more political leaders like Gaylord who always voted his conscience and led with integrity and humor.”

We thank Bill for his work with Senator Nelson and his help with our April Progressive Profile.

Q.        What would the Senator say about how we’ve lost focus on the environment? What sparked an interest in the environment for him back in the 1970s that led him to promote an Earth Day that would still be relevant today?  

I’m always reluctant to put words into Gaylord Nelson’s mouth, but I think he would say we’ve become complacent about the environment. As many or more people than ever before consider themselves environmentalists, the polls tell us, but there’s not a sense of urgency about environmental issues. It may be that the environmental movement is a victim of its own successes, in that people think we’ve solved most of the big problems.

What motivated him to launch Earth Day was his desire to make environmental issues a part of the national political agenda, and he certainly accomplished that. Earth Day was a means to an end for him, and it was a stroke of genius in that it tapped broad grassroots concerns and activism that was bubbling up around the country but had not been focused or organized prior to Earth Day. He mobilized millions of people, and the politicians responded.

Q.        Do you remember if he foresaw what is happening today? What did he think would be the key environmental issues that “the next generation” would face?

He thought that sustainability would be the biggest issue of the day – how we can manage our natural resources in such a way that they can support future generations. There are finite amounts of resources on the planet, and there are now 7 billion people sharing them. As the world population continues to grow, so will competition for resources. Gaylord would talk about what it meant that the US population would double – twice as many cars, schools, highways, airports, houses, hospitals, and on and on. That is simply not sustainable unless we change the way we live and manage our resources.

Gaylord Nelson overlooking Wisconsin’s St. Croix River.

“We are all pursuing a self-destructive course of fueling our economies by drawing down our natural capital – by degrading and depleting our resource base – and counting it on the income side of the ledger,” Nelson said in 2000. “This, obviously, is not a sustainable situation over the long term.”

The term “sustainability” that Nelson used isn’t in common usage, but it is unbridled population growth that is at the root of many of the environmental problems and policies now being debated. Do twice as many people require twice as much oil, twice as many autos, twice as many parking lots, for example, or is there another way? He would say there must be another way if we are going to survive with any real quality of life.

Q.        Is there anything you remember that he said or did that could be directly applied to the fracking we are doing today and the cost it has to the environment? Did he have a vision for a “green economy?”

He used to say we need to remember: “The economy is wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around. The real wealth of a nation is its air, water, soil, forests, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats, and biodiversity. Take this resource away, and all that’s left is a wasteland.”  That certainly could apply to fracking, or, for that matter, to the iron ore mine being proposed in northern Wisconsin.

Q.        Can you describe in your own words why environmental issues were so important to him? Did he struggle convincing his contemporaries that environmental issues were important?

He said he became an environmentalist by osmosis, growing up in Clear Lake, a village of 700 in northwestern Wisconsin, where he spent much of his time in the outdoors, learning about nature. It was always an integral part of his being, what made him tick.

When he joined the US Senate in 1963, you could count the Senators who considered themselves conservationists on one hand. By the time Earth Day rolled around in 1970, they all wanted to be thought of as environmentalists. Congress didn’t meet on the first Earth Day because so many members were invited to speak at events back home. Many of them had to come to Nelson’s office for help with material, because they had never given an environmental speech. But they became converts when they saw the millions of people mobilized by Earth Day, and in the next 10 years, the Environmental Decade, 28 major pieces of environmental legislation passed and became law.

Q.        Who today (more than one person or an organization) represents the best of Senator Nelson’s environmental vision?

Gaylord would, I’m sure, be far too diplomatic to single out any individual, or any one organization, and I’m going to follow his example. I think he would say that his environmental vision is represented in the current generation of activists who work and struggle every day to protect our environment from destruction. They are legion, and they are engaged in their own communities as well as at the national level to promote an environmental agenda. Many of them never heard of Gaylord Nelson, but he is their godfather.

Q.        If he were alive today, what would cause him the most sadness about our treatment of the environment?

I think he would be most disappointed about the number of people who refuse to accept science. Gaylord was someone who did careful research, and based his policy proposals and arguments on science. He would find it hard to understand, I think, those who claim there is no relationship between climate change and the fact that there are 7 billion people on the planet, using fossil fuels – or deny that climate change is even taking place. It’s one thing to disagree about what action to take, and he was always open to listening to other points of view. But I think he would have hard time extending that to people who simply deny the facts.

Q.        If he were alive today, where would he spot the rays of hope?

He used to say that today’s grade schoolers ask better questions about the environment than college students did in 1970, because they have been exposed to environmental education in the schools. He was most encouraged by the fact that we now have several generations of people who have been exposed to an environmental ethic, and who have a heightened awareness of their responsibility for environmental stewardship.

The example he would give was a fifth grade girl who told him a story about her mother bringing home a can of tuna that did not have the “dolphin safe” label, showing the tuna had been caught without endangering dolphins. She insisted, she told him, that her mother take it back to the supermarket and exchange it. That is a young girl who has absorbed an environmental ethic.

That was part of the genius of Earth Day – that it took root in the schools, at all levels, and made environmental issues not just part of the national political agenda, but part of our school curriculum as well.

To Find Out More…

We would like to provide links to two other sites that will provide more information on Gaylord Nelson and his work.  They include Gaylord Nelson and Earth Day:  The Making of the Modern Day Environmental Movement and The Nelson Institute For Environmental Issues.

Talk show host Mike Malloy in Minneapolis

Radio talk show host Mike Malloy is a contrast in many ways. A two-time national radio award winner, he has been bounced from numerous stations because of his refusal to back down on his telling of the political reality of today’s United States. If you’re not lucky enough to live in a city with a progressive radio station, chances are you listen to Mike via the Internet or podcasts.

His listeners are some of the most faithful of all “radio” audiences. For many, it was Malloy’s voice and commentary that held them together during what Mike always called them: the “Bush Crime Family” years. It was as if he was Radio Free Europe for many during the darkest days of the Iraq war, the warrantless wiretappings and the FEMA disaster of Hurricane Katrina. His desperate pleas in 2005-06 during the Senate confirmation hearings against John Roberts and Samuel Alito foreshadowed everything from Citizens United to the now anticipated decimation of the Voting Rights Act. His level of frustration would almost cause your radio or computer to vibrate.

Yet this past weekend, a much more philosophical Malloy was the guest of AM950 owner Janet Robert to talk to a sellout audience in Minneapolis. The tone was more subdued, and a message of hope started and ended his talk. Billed as an evening for truth seekers, Malloy delighted the crowd with his reflective yet powerful account of life today.

“An important part of being a truth seeker is understanding that you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Malloy said as to why he remains hopeful. “It’s what keeps us from totally freaking out. I suppose by definition, if we’re liberals, we’re supposed to raise hell. If we don’t who will?

“Sometimes I get tired of being a good liberal. I look around at the results and see what? I think about all the changes in this country over my life and I wonder how did we end up here? How did common sense get left out of the legislative process? Why today can’t we have the infrastructure projects that we need?” he asked of the crowd that witnessed the collapse of the I-35W bridge 4 years ago. “In Atlanta (where Malloy is based) we have Civil War-era sewers and we constantly have roads collapsing because the sewers underneath them are collapsing.”

He recounted his life growing up in Toledo, and his middle class existence. Of families sustained by livable wages, of Labor Day parades that featured UAW and IBEW members, of a public education system that educated the community. “Every kid I knew had a parent who was a member of union and they made a living wage,” Malloy said. “Now, what 7 percent of wage earners are in unions? It just can’t continue like this. And this is where hope can get difficult.

“What has to happen?” Malloy asked. He talked about the need for resistance and explaining to organized capitalism and corporatists that it’s OK if they want their CEOs to make 60 times what we’re making, but not 60,000 times. “How much do they need before they are satisfied?” he asked. All this talk about socialism, he said. “Of course we have socialism. Socialism for corporations. Too big to jail? Build a bigger jail.”

He readily admitted he couldn’t figure out President Barack Obama. Perhaps the most confusing for him was the Democrats’ refusal to bring impeachment proceedings against former President George W. Bush or the President’s refusal to explore criminal charges against the Bush administration for its invasion of Iraq. He quickly pointed to former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson’s comments during the Nuremberg trials, which were held to prosecute Nazi officials after World War II.

“How do we tell our children that we are a nation of laws,” he asked, “when on one hand you have Judge Jackson saying at the Nuremberg trials that the worst war crime of all was to invade a country without provocation and then we do nothing to prosecute those who invaded Iraq? I can’t process that.”

His questions on what happened after September 11^th left the room silent. “When I think of simple truths I have to ask myself, if I believe the official findings of what happened on 9/11 then I have to ask what did my country do to prompt 19 men to come to this country to do what they did on 9/11? Did we do anything to prompt that? And if I ask that question then I have to come up with an answer.

“That’s when I go back to War Is A Racket (War Is A Racket: The Profit Motive Behind War by Major General Smedley Butler), the United Fruit Company (and their role in Guatemala) and the nuns and priests who had bullets put through their head (San Salvador). Who does my government support? I know what I want the answer to be and then I look around, and…

“How can we expect the millennials, the next generation to live their lives with dignity and justice? If we’re not honest with ourselves, how do we raise our children to be honest? How do we save our souls? Look at me, talking about a soul.”

Much of the reflective Malloy comes from his relationship with his 9-year-old daughter Molly. “What are we giving our kids to make them understand justice, honor, truth or the concepts of community, responsibility and trust? Is it hopeless? I believe in hope. Without it, what have we really got? Not much.

“I’m willing to keep on keeping on, “ Malloy said of his nightly talk show. Malloy has also been arrested on multiple occasions for non-violent civil disobedience. “Civil disobedience is a good tool to use. It helps to remind yourself you still matter. Sure, I get frustrated, but not hopeless. If I were asked if I were an optimist, I would say, ‘yes.’ I’m not sure that always comes through on the show, but that’s why I continue on. And if you get that from my program, well, then it’s all worth it. We give ourselves a sense of community; that those of us who think differently on positions and feelings can connect. That’s what I hope happens when you listen to the show.”