the guy by the door …

In response to $1 Million of budget cuts in programs for the homeless, Jim Stewart organized a Speak Out at the Massachusetts Statehouse. The gold dome caps a much larger building. It is easy get lost. Since the cuts were made by Governor Deval Patrick – while at the same time allocating $9 Million for a foot bridge for football fans – Stewart called the Speak Out in front of The Corner Office. Stewart, director of the First Church Shelter in Cambridge, has been there many times before – especially when Cantabrigian Bill Weld occupied the office.

The  ‘providers’ led off. Several spoke. I won’t show them all. Above, Paulette from Gateway Shelter in Somerville is in the center speaking. Immediately to the left is George Capinegro,  a former guest and former employee of First Church Shelter. To the right, Johanna and Joe, staff at First Church. The guy with the fisherman’s cap and glasses is Jim Stewart. There is a homeless person in the picture that I met at St. Francis House. You will never guess and I will never tell.

After the providers, Jim called on us, the homeless. I did not speak. I felt my colleagues were more eloquent. The Aviatrix did not speak. I suspect from past experience with her, she could not.

Aside from Johanna who is a Divinity student at Harvard, I only recognized one other face from Harvard – David Dance from Phillips Brooks House. I have not had a chance to ask him how the student run UniLu Shelter will fare if the budget cuts stick. Next to him is Phil Wright from Pine Street Inn in Boston. I’ve met more Harvard ‘low wage workers’ since becoming homeless than I did during the Mass Hall Sit-In of 2001. There may well have been some that I haven’t met at this rally.

The high point of the morning was the prayer offered by Reverand Molly Baskette from First Congregational Church of Somerville. She was ably assisted by her exuberant three year old ecclesiastical assistant. The State Police Officer guarding the Governor rose to his feet and bowed his head.

We had heard that the Gov was in Worcester.  His Dudes were stationed by the door. They were going to ‘report back.’  But he popped out of the elevator and into his office. A homeless woman from the Anchor Program on Long Island¹ asked, “Can the Governor come out and talk to us.”

“He has important business.”

“He has bridge plans to look at.” Jim Stewart².

A woman on community service sabbatical from Sovereign Bank asked Deval’s Dudes, “How come you guys aren’t taking notes? How are you going to give a faithful report to the Governor?” The thinker in front of her is Reverand Tom Feagley from Bread of Life in Malden.

Deval’s Dudes under questioning. I moved in close to make them feel exposed. Deer in the Headlights Dude, had asked Jim Stewart if he could address the crowd.

“Are you going to tell them the cuts are restored?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t address them.”

Anyone with a conscience would have been moved by the experience. He would have come out and said, “You’re right. I was wrong. We won’t cut funds for the homeless.”  Sadly, that is yet to come.

I hope to have “action items” for you soon. Stay tuned.

¹This program is not readily Googlable. I’ll have to ask Jim Stewart. But at least I’ve ‘advanced’ the American language with a new adjective or am i falsely flattering myself.

²Referring, of course, to the $9 Million footbridge mentioned earlier. If you got it yourself, I apologize. If not, I’m glad I bludgeoned you.

In Summer of  ‘68 I went to Paris. I had missed the Days of Rage, but I was in la place de la Bastille¹ [Eng] on July 14. The CNRS was out in force.  Lacrymogène was in the air.

Yesterday was not a Day of Rage at Harvard, but last night was a Night of Concern.

Healthcare, especially the Stupak Amendment

I’m with Harvard’s own Dr. Steffi Woolhandler [on Democracy Now! a day or two ago.] The current bill is worse than nothing. Call your Senator. [More in a bit.]

Global Warming

The Leadership Campaign is a Project of Massachusetts Power Shift. Their goals are:

• Nothing less than 100% clean electricity
• Nothing more than 350 ppm carbon dioxide.

This latter goal will certainly require a national policy stronger than the Cap and Trade that Mass Power Shift was espousing when they met at the Onetarian church across from Charles Sumner. Cap and Trade, as David Harvey points out, rewards past polluters. I will make the argument in capitalist terms with all the externality/internality jargon. More importantly it will be slooooow. It is basically a delaying tactic by the power industry, which has representatives within Mass Powershift. The Leadership Campaign must lead Powershift away from being a captive of Big Power. I will explain, but …
Gentle reader, I have lot to say more to say about both issues. Please come back, tomorrow. I need to spend some time dealing with my own homelessness.

¹My command of French barely gets beyond, “Il mio conto per favore.”^A I thought I would link the French Wikipages for those who are more able. For those who are tediously monolingual like me, I will link the English pages with [Eng].

^AYes, I do jest. Hearing Andrea Bocelli sing “Con te partirò” [Eng] is such an expansive experience that I wondered how much more was in the lyrics. The translations leave me with the vague notion that I know what the song is ‘about’. If you understand the lingo, you might try to explain it to me. But you may find me challenged in my knowledge of love, Love, lLove, or some such thing.ⁱ

ⁱi’m a bit of nominalist, remember?

To make meaning of our losses, we diminish the losses of others. This makes future losses more likely.  If you believe that war is a Law of Nature¹, our children’s future ceases to exist.

It was a week before the legal Veteran’s Day. It was, in fact, during the new abridged incarnation of a proud Cambridge tradition – The Count. The last hand count in 1995 took  four days to hand count the 19183  Proportional Representation ballots.  Since then, it is usually done the same day as the balloting. This time, because of the first truly significant write-in campaign in Cambridge history,  it took two days.

The Veteran’s gathering centered on World War II – “The Big One” as Dobie Gillis’ father used to say.  Other wars were mentioned but discussion kept coming back to WWII. It was the Best of Wars. It was the Worst of Wars.  It was the Morally Unquestionable War. They were the worst of monsters. We were the noblest of heroes. Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki? Perhaps regrettable, but justifiable.  Really?

Meet A Veteran for Peace: Tonight @ the Brattle Theater

I met David Fillingham at the School of Government formerly known as John F. Kennedy. He was not invited when General Petreus was. Nor for that matter on any other day. He dropped in on Halloween. But he was invited to the Brattle Theater. You are too. Here’s your invite:

Friends,

I have been asked to do a Q&A for a showing of The Good Soldier at the
Brattle Theatre in Harvard Sq on Veterans Day Nov 11 Weds at 7:30 PM.
Go to www.thegoodsoldier.com for a trailer.

It is being billed as a national day of conversation,(20+ States) and
is being promoted by Bill Moyers on PBS. Please come if you are
available and interested.

–
Peace and Peach Pie,
David Fillingham

dfillingham at earthlink dot com

—————

I have to guard the library, but if you go, please tell David I sent you – that ’saving face’ thing.

¹Danny Greenberger, a physicist of the General Relativity flavor at CCNY, believes that there aren’t really any Laws of Physics. He has two universes that illustrate the point. Iwill elaborate them at some point and add to it Sidney Coleman’s observation about progress in field theory. I am more serious about it than Sidney and simultaneously more tentative and more general about it than Danny. Then there is the question to what extent a Theory of Human Affairs can be said to be analogous to The Laws of Physics.  To appear.

*Smedley Butler, at the time of his death, the most decorated U.S. Marine in history, wrote “War is a Racket”.  The Boston chapter of Veterans for Peace took his name.

Rumors abound, but most are untrue.

There has not been a significant write-in campaign in a very long time and there has not been one since the computer system was purchased to “streamline” the tabulation of the Proportional Representation voting system that Cambridge alone of all U.S. cities uses. Voters express a list of preferences for City Council and School Committee. The software has to keep track of the preference list for each voter and transfer votes to the second choice if the first choice is elected and so on. This used to all be done by hand. It was quite a social event lasting four or more days. The computer changed all that. Until now. The ‘late campaign manager’ who missed the nomination paper deadline for Marj Decker, has unknowingly forced a partial return to the hand count system. Except that in this case, the Election Commission has to look at all the “Auxiliary Ballots” including write-ins that have no ambiguity at all.

The Election Commission released unofficial results last night. Normally, when there are 50 or 100 Auxiliary Ballots the Unofficial Results give a pretty good idea of what’s going on. But with over 3590 Auxiliary Ballots that is no longer true. Quota, the number of votes required to elect a City Councilor will be something under 1606. It would be possible for two people to be electd on Auxiliary Ballots alone. But it didn’t happen.

The Election Commission released the computer printout of the count of all the machine readable ballots including tranfers and a determination of elected vs. defeated. Above it, in small print, they placed suitable disclaimers. But, many people didn’t read them. They read the big print in the table including the words “Elected” and “Defeated’ which even 18 hours later are still not meaningful. But since you have been suitably warned, I can let you look at what the Election Commission posted.

There are remarks made within the “Cordon Zone” that get overheard and misinterpreted. Most of the write-ins are for Marj Decker. A single scanner was reprogrammed to count for Decker, ballots with her name in write-in position one.

At 4:30 P, Executive Director Marsha Weinerman announced that the count would go into Wednesday, but with 1000 of 3590 auxiliary ballots counted and the kinks worked out of the system, she is optimist that it won’t go into Thursday.

The polls are closed now. The ballot collecting machines are all at the Senior. So too are the “Auxiliary Ballot Boxes.”

My ballot which had two write-ins was rejected by the machine. It went into the Aux Box. In1999, there were so few write-ins, the Election Commission counted them on the spot. They ran the PR computer program. The results were announced at 10:00 P. This time there are too many. The Election Commission is going to start counting at 9:00 AM. Nothing will be known tonight.

Goodnight!

12:58P Give me a few minutes.

1:04P I’m thinking.

4:10P I had to go to a cosmology seminar to regain my composure – watching galaxy clusters collide. It’s peaceful in some ways. They mostly pass through each other, but the gas gets striped out of them. Black holes are very violent. They eat matter spiralling in to them and spit x-rays and radio waves out. Fortunately none of them are in our immediate neighborhood – the solar system. There’s a really big one at the center of the Milky Way, but it won’t eat us anytime soon. We have angular momentum. Nothing dissipates angular momentum in a serious way except gravitational radiation.¹

I don’t know if I can fully explain my title before the polls close. For now, let just indicate my choices for City Council:

1. Philip Fenstermacher

I will write myself in. No candidate has put forward a platform that seems to me truly progressive in terms of the cacophony of crises we face. I drew papers to get on the ballot, but got sick and had to go to the hospital. I was somewhat victimized by the false rumors about how a sticker campaign works, but if I had been serious I would have checked with the Election Commission. I have no campaign manager and no money. My platform most likely would have caused Glenn Koocher to brand me as unelectable – at best I don’t think Cambridge has ever elected a homeless person. It would be an honor to be the first. It is unlikely. I will get at least one vote and surely less than 50 which, by the rules of proportional representation, means I personally will not pass to the second round as a candidate. If by some miracle, I make it into later rounds, I will be cut from the bottom. If you want a protest gesture that won’t cost you anything, sticker me in.

2. Lawrence Adkins

An eloquent plain speaking African-American man from Riverside. If elected, I think he would probably revive the spirit of Saundra Graham. But he won’t be. He got 15% of quota on the first round in ‘97. He’ll survive into the second round. My vote will transfer to him. But he doesn’t have much money and his ‘97 performance was far behind the incumbents. It’s doubtful he’ll be seated. So.

3. Minka van Beuzkom

A woman from Central Square who has been active in the area especially in the areas of public health and environment. I don’t know if she ever followed on her threat to bring some of the rats that are infesting parts of Cambridge into the Sullivan Chamber, but I like the spirit. She pulled of a Toomey with her nomination papers. She gathered a full 100 signatures over 4th of July weekend – the sign of an dedicated organized core of support. The bad news is that she has 1/3 the money of Davis and Decker. The good news is she has almost as much money as Seidel. She has a good chance – not a sure thing.

4. Marj Decker has been the most stridently antiwar counselor, but she hasn’t solved the problem that has plagued the peace movement for as long as there has been one. How do you answer these two questions at the same time.

I. Who really benefits from war?
II. What did my daughter die for?

Nobody else has. I have ideas, but …

Marj is good on the potpourri of progressive issues. I do wish though that she wouldn’t talk to me as if she didn’t put her pants on one leg at a time.

Anyway, despite the gaff with her election papers, she’s an incumbant with a strong base and more money than anybody else! The only real question mark is, will people not want to write her in? I’m not counting her out. Despite any rumors to the contrary, a sticker candidate is treated the same as any other. You can vote them at any preference. If you like Marj to any degree, sticker her in!

5:48P It’s getting late so I must get sketchy. Besides if my vote hasn’t stuck by this point, I can’t find someone to give it to who both needs it and has a chance of being elected. Anyway.

5. Silvia Glick

6. Tom Stohlman

7. Kathy Podgers

———

¹You may occasionally come across the phrase ‘gravity waves’. This is the name that physicists of the last century assigned to waves propagating on the surface of water. Gravity provides the restoring force.

I was in Roxbury visiting Project HipHop. Deputy Director D’Mon Bills took me to coffee at nearby Haley House. I kind of deserted my host to get a snap of Boston Mayor Menino. Unfortunately, the lovely Dottie Wells, his steadfast publicist, had her back to me. She claimed she remembered me from the Firefighters rally outside the State of the City at the Strand. She’s a publicist.

That’s all very nice, but I didn’t see them at the Rally and March for Jobs and A Real Economic Recovery.

Whereas:

and the guy who’s always with the people:

Coming soon. Breaking news first.

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

-An alleged¹ Ancient Chinese Proverb cited by Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture 2007.

We need to go far, quickly.

-Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize Lecture 2007.

We need to go farther, quicker than anybody thought.

-The guy by the door 2009 in response to 350.

A day of action, which will last for three days, begins tomorrow. Here in Cambridge, MIT students will gather in the Killian Court² with laptops form the 350 symbol. 12:00 Noon – 12:20 PM.

Students of the Amigos School 100 Putnam Ave. will be taking pledges from adults to walk, bike or take public transportation. The goal is a total of 350 miles.

¹I don’t know Al’s source for this Ancient Chinese Proverb. I will pose the question to Harvard’s own Di Yin Lu. If she tells me there is such an ACP, I’ll believe her. I am already indebted to her for making me aware of the Public Knowledge Project. I try to follow the Enclosure Movement on the Internet and responses to it, but I did not hear of PKP from the Berkman Center.

²Killian Court is in the shadow of the Great Dome on the River side of the Infinite Corridor.

Multiple camera crews were are in Harvard Square shooting for “The Town”. It is directed by and stars ben Affleck. I was told Ben was around, but I did not recognize him.¹ I think it more likely that what I saw was second unit stuff.

The script is a screen adaptation of a novel by Chuck Hogan, “Prince of Thieves.”

¹In addition to seeing him in the Littauer Center [North Yard edition] when he spoke in support of the Living Wage Campaign, I passed about a foot from him when he was shooting “Gone Baby Gone” in Uphams Corner^A in 2006. I didn’t stop to talk, I had to catch the bus.

^AThanks to bloggers and commentors at Universal Hub for straightening out the confusion of the New York Times. Cantaloni’s is not in South Boston. It is in Uphams Corner, Dorchester. As for the spelling of the bar’s name, there is no sign. It’s called whatever a particular long time resident tells you it is.

The Cambridge churches have been ahead of the City government for some time now. I caught the 350 bell ringing last year. Now:

First Church Welcomed Bill at 11:00 AM [Mp3 of the sermon]

And Memorial Church is ahead of official¹ Harvard:

Memorial Church Welcomed at Bill 2:00 PM

¹My way of saying ‘administration’ without being too pejorative. And the Late Larry wanted to move it out of the Yard.

²Oh My God! I thought Memorial Church was some flavor of Protestant. You know. Martin Luther, ‘priesthood of all believers’ and like that. But this, which Reverand Peter refers to as “10 feet above contradiction”, brings to mind time honored phrases like “papist idolatry.” Well at least they had the Onetarian guy from First Parish with his guitar. The First Church [UCC] guy was there too, but he don’t sing. There was another UCC guy from the Mass conference, but he didn’t sing either. Despite the recent schism between the Firsts, they got along amicably. This abrupt climate change thing must be big.

Columbus discovered America – tcwmits¹

Discovered America? How can you discover something that’s already in use? See that BMW over there? Let’s discover it.                                   —-Dick Gregory

What if “Columbus Day” was given the more accurate name “Celebrate Genocide Day”?
—-The Professor who dares to ask what if²

PWDAWI, makes several citations to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

Democracy Now! today [after headlines] {large raster BitTorrent download} is an interview with Canadian Cree singer/songwriter Buffy St-Marie. Included is a performance of ‘Universal Soldier’. In Buffy’s view, for a Native American to ‘make it’ requires a lucky accident. She spends her money on education from the Native American point of view.

¹The Common White Man In The Street.

²I don’t know where she teaches. I would say definitely not Harvard, but that would be snarky. I’ll just say definitely not in Harvard economics or government. Jack Womack has been emeritized by Harvard history, but there are still some folks around who question.
That said, I still reserve the right to question whether Harvard’s pair of world historical jacks question enough.

I have failed you.

-Richard Clarke 2001
-the guy by the door 2009

I forget to warn you that HONKFEST was coming. What is Honkfest¹? It is the Festival of Activist Street Bands. such as the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band:

Devoted followers of tgbtd will remember them from The State of the Union Rally in Davis Square.

Also in the line up is the Bread and Puppet Circus Band. They are an alternate incarnation of a group that I first experienced in college at the height of the Vietnam war - the Bread and Puppet Theater. They used to publish and propagate The Cheap Art Manifesto. I will have to ask them why it’s not on their own website.

Update: Open Media Boston has the after-action photo/video report.

¹Someone suggested to me that Honkfest is a conference at Harvard to which neither Professor Gates nor Officer Crowley were invited. Not so, in the current instance at least.

The Norwegian Nobel  Committee¹ has announced the 2009 prize winner US President Barack Obama.

“We would like to enhance, to support what he is trying to do.”

Noami Klein² was interviewed on Democracy Now! this morning and ran a fairly good list of why this award is a bad idea. Mostly, she points out that despite what he has said, Obama has not done much for peace.  The  web rebroadcast is on a loop every hour on :09.  A large raster bittorrent download should be available by 11:00 AM.

British-Pakistani historian, journalist and activist Tariq Ali was also interviewed on DN! [They tried to reach journalist Jeremy Scahill³, but had technical difficulties.] In his talk at Harvard, Tariq expressed his doubt that US military activity in Pakistan is in the US long term interest. In today’s interview he points out, among other things, that the war in Iraq-Afghanistan goes on apace with an increase in troops in Afghanistan. Tariq pointed out some of the questionable awards in the past.

¹Note that the ‘Nobel Prizes’ are awarded in memory of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel and presented by the King of Sweden. My favorite anomaly is the inclusion of the Bank of Sweden Prize, not funded from the Nobel estate, with the Nobel prizes. This does not make Amartya Sen^A the spawn of satan, but it tarnishes his halo a bit. Robert Merton and Myron Sholes who won “for a new method to determine the value of derivatives” [mortgage backed securities anyone?] , on the other hand, clearly are the spawn of satan. We don’t need to make a fuss about the Late Larry Summers’^B hero Milton Friedman, but one has to wonder how someone who gets people fired for wanting to regulate underbacked highly liquid securities can be regarded as a monetarist.

²Naomi, offered her critique of Milton Friedman and his disciple Donald Rumsfeld, in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Basically, Friedman who favored ‘non-interventionist government’ nonetheless thought that the only way to get there is by engineering ’shock and awe’.

³Jeremy is the chronicler of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.”

^ASen has a quality that the Late^B Larry Summers will never be accused of. He is disarmingly charming.

^BFor those who have, for whatever reason, not been following tgbtd, is there life after Harvard?

Democracy Now! traces it’s heritage to the Pacifica Foundaation which is an alternative to mainstream radio. In 2001 it morphed into a radio and TV broadcast. With the rise of streaming video DN! added it to its portfolio of distribution modes. Very recently, DN! has added the BitTorrent file sharing protocol to it’s portfolio. Because of the higher efrfective bandwidth of BitTorrent, the DN! torrent has a raster that is comparable to broadcast television. The stream that tracks the live broadcast at 8:00 AM Eastern and repeats shortly thereafter is much smaller. But you do have to wait for them to put the torrent together usually by 11:00 AM. Also, if the main site goes down, as happened recently, most of the clients/servers in the BitTorrent swarm stay online so that the protocol can still work. And the torrents live on a separate server so you can get the torrent here.

Next, DN! and Twitter.

I don’t remember which social network thing alerted me to this, but the open tab in my browser is:

October 1st is the one-year anniversary of the Wall Street bail out.  The government gave hundred$ of billion$ of dollar$ to save the bank$ and in$urance companies, but where are the jobs?

Thursday, October 1, 2009

4:00 PM Kickoff at the State House

4:30 PM March through Downtown and the Financial District

4:41.39871 Rally at Verizon

5:30 PM Rally at the Hyatt (One Avenue de Lafayette)

Sponsors: (list in formation); Mass AFL-CIO; Greater Boston Labor Council; Mass. Jobs with Justice; IBEW Local 2222; IBEW Local 2313; IBEW Local 2321; IBEW Local 2322; IBEW Local 2323; IBEW Local 2324; IBEW Local 2325; CWA Local 1400; CWA District One; AFA-CWA Council 27; Teamsters Local 122; Operating Engineers Local 877; Utility Workers Local 369; UE Northeast Region; UFCW Local 1445; SEIU Local 509; SEIU Local 1199; Laborers Local 22; HERE Local 26; AFT-Massachusetts; Roofers Local 33; Plumbers Local 12; Sprinkler Fitters Local 550; Painters District Council 35; Boston Carmen’s Union; Professional Fire Fighters of Mass; Elevator Constructors Local 4; SEIU/NAGE 5000; APWU of Mass, Pipefitters Local 537; Mass. Teachers Association; MOSES; Boston Teachers Union, SEIU Local 615, IBEW Local 103; Teamsters Local 25; Mass ACORN; Community Labor United; North Shore Labor Council; Merrimack Valley CLC; Norfolk County Labor Council; Plymouth-Bristol Labor Council; Central MA AFL-CIO; Hampshire-Franklin CLC; Greater Southeastern Mass. CLC; Pioneer Valley CLC; Chelsea Collaborative; Irish Immigration Center; Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending; Boston DSA; Mass Interfaith Cmte for Worker Justice; Lynn Health Task Force; Nat. Jobs for All Coalition; Nat. Lawyers’ Guild; AFSC; Mass Transgender Political Coalition; Centro Presente; Mass COSH; IWW; Union of Minority Neighborhoods; Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries; South East Asian Women’s Resource Group; City Life/Vida Urbana; Jewish Labor Committee; GALLAN; SEIU Local 888; WILD; Brazilian Immigrant Center; UAW MA State CAP Council; AEEF-CWA Local 1300, UFE, BWA, CPA, Metrowest Immigrant Center, La Commindad, UAW State CAP, Boston Building Trades, Mass Building Trades, APWU 100

… and they’re not gonna take it anymore.¹

They’re mad at the insurance companies, the Congress, and Obama. Rightfully so. They are by no means alone.

Much more, but now I must blog today’s rally for economic justice.

¹Sound familiar? I don’t know who was the first to say it, but it became a fixture of American popular culture with the movie “A Thousand Clowns”.

He laid the mathematical foundation for modern computer science.

A lot was known about German positions prior to the Allied Landing in Normandy June 1944. The Allies had Ultra intelligence. Folks at Bletchley Park broke the German Enigma code.

Alan Turing had a lot to do with the success of that effort. But he was a homosexual. The British Government arrested him and chemically castrated him for it. British computer scientist John Graham-Cumming thinks it’s time for the British Government to apologize. His petition has been noticed by the BBC and CNN. Cameron Buckner thinks the world should be heard.

I am enthusiastic about this idea, but for one thing. You should not have to be a genius to be treated with dignity.

For a celebration:

Suffragists First

The origin of the Schlesinger Library dates to 1943, when Maude Wood Park, an early congressional lobbyist and suffrage activist, made an initial gift of books, papers, and journals documenting the women’s suffrage movement. The library¹s collections have expanded beyond suffrage and now include a wide range of materials documenting the history of women in America. Today, the library contains more than 3,000 discrete collections and nearly 90,000 volumes.

Maude Wood Park [Radcliffe 1898] was among other things, the first President of the League of Women Voters. Everybody on the internet believes that she was one of only two women in a class of 72 that were in favor of the vote for women. Nobody on the internet knows how we know this. I know who to ask.

It was the end of  2nd day of the sit-in of Massachusetts Hall in Spring of 2001. Close to 50 members of the Progressive Student Labor Movement had been inside demanding a Living Wage for Harvard Workers. I had been there anytime I wasn’t sleeping or guarding the library. I was talking to Joanne Preston, when I spotted him. He had come in the Johnston Gate and huffed and puffed past Harvard Hall with a small entourage. – Ted Kennedy. He had gotten past Mass Hall when he saw the students hanging out of the windows. Without missing a step he swiveled an obtuse¹ angle and headed straight for the windows. His campaign instincts as sharp as ever, he used both hands to greet the students inside. He worked his way along to the front. He marched up to the front door flanked on either side by a uniformed officer of HUPD. He grabbed the handle and had the door open a foot or so when the officer behind stopped it with is hand. The Senator turned to that Officer and said something. I wasn’t close enough to hear. The Senator turned to the other Officer and said something. There were  two or three more cycles. I don’t know what was said, but I imagine at some point The Senator said, “What do you mean I can’t go in there, I’m Ted Kennedy.” Even so, he was not allowed in to see the students.

I did not remember what came next until I looked at The Crimson:

He spoke briefly to the crowd, drawing cheers when he announced his support of the sit-in.

“I believe we’re going to be successful,” he said as he pinned a living wage button on his jacket.

From inside the building, a PSLM member yelled out the window-asking Kennedy whether he would call University President Neil L. Rudenstine to ask for a living wage.

“I’ll call him, absolutely,” Kennedy said.

I’m sure I remember hearing the voice from inside and I’m sure that Teddy responded without hesitation. I’d like to say I remember whose voice it was, but I can’t. But the student I knew who had the instinct to do something like that was Aaron.

Later, local officials and members of the cook’s union would be allowed in to feed the students.

The sit-in did not achieve all of its goals, but did achieve some. The contract with SEIU was later renogiated raising wages for custodial workers.  PSLM got a moratorium on outsourcing which was then and still is the single most powerful weapon the administration has in its continuing 35+ year campaign to bust the Harvard unions.  That is one demand that the students have a unique ability to address. They are immune to the sanctions of labor law. At the same time, student power is transitory. Their personnel is constantly changing.  When pushed into a concession, administrators will move to “watchful waiting.”

The end of the sit-in was a little awkward.  PSLM and supporters declared victory from the steps of Mass Hall, while Joe Wrinn declared victory for the administration somewhere else. It was a truly Harvard moment – both sides proclaiming a moral victory. But Havard labor was observably helped by the efforts of PSLM. Subsequent students would spend a lot of time minimizing the accomplishment in favor of what they hoped to accomplish, but never did.  Ted Kennedy was no revolutionary, I for one was glad he came. Mary Jo and the intrinsic instability of capitalism² not withstanding, I was glad he came.

¹What obtuse used to mean before it came to mean stupid, but you can see how the meaning developed.

²More evident now that at any time in the history of capitalism. I’ve cited Wall Street types so far so you won’t think this is the sole possession of wild-eyed radicals.  But Robert Brenner has been saying this since 2002. If you missed his talk at the Workshop on the Political Economy of Modern Capitalism you can still find the source material under December 8.

From the July 31 Democracy Now!:

Report: Bailed-Out Banks Spent $32B in Bonuses in 2008

A new government report shows the nine largest US banks handed out more than $32 billion in bonuses last year while posting more than $81 billion in losses and receiving billions in taxpayer aid. According to the New York Attorney General’s office, nearly 4,800 Wall Street executives and employees were awarded bonuses of at least $1 million. More than 900 of those worked for Bank of America and Citigroup, two of the largest bailout recipients.

This remark from the website of NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo which posted the report was certainly a proper thing for him to do:

THE REPORT WAS PREVIOUSLY TRANSMITTED TO HOUSE OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN EDOLPHUS TOWNS (D-NY)

Unfortunately, recent revelations about loans Rep. Towns got from mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp, raise questions about its efficacy. But then, leaving the fox to watch the hen house is a Washington tradition.

Standby for a genuinely astonding press release, supplanting this:

My leg became infected which required 4 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics. I then took oral antibiotics for 9 days. The rash did go down considerably, but new blotches appeared outside the originally infected area – all over my body infact. It seems I’m allergic to Bactrim. So I’m on immunosuppressants to get rid of the rash I got from the Bactrim. I have not been able to do much beyond minmal survival. I truly hate to disappoint my throng¹ of supporters especially those who are officers within the harvard administration.

*If you saw this post before, you have not lost your grip. It did say ‘Infant Mortality’.

¹Most people would say “throngs”, but my sense of self-importance, though large, is nonetheless finite.

But at least he struggled to apologize. The phrase “war crimes” crossed his lips.

I answer a question with a question. The Cambridge Chronicle asks, “Who Wants to Run for City Council?” I didn’t have my media consultant and make-up artist with me. I’ve worked on four other candidates campaigns. Three of them won. Only one of them do I regret. It was no one of the ones the won. I probably need to talk to the one that lost, but it will not be an easy conversation.

If I had been on top of my game, I would have hung out and caught the interview with Minka van Beuzekom. Most everybody is some sort of environmentalist nowadays. But the effectiveness of different approaches depends on political economy more than climate science. And even the wonderful folks at The International Forum on Globalization have given only passing notice of the fact that when America finally decides to go green, labor will do most of the work.

When I first met Steven Chu at his talk at MIT, he mentioned that, in dealing with the abrupt climate change crisis, there is a lot of room for conservation using existing technology. He then proceeded to ignore that wisdom, and talk about avenues for research. I chided him about this. He was then the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He was basically taking care of business.

This is important because conservation is something that can be done in the near term. The danger of a research dependent program is that might has the implication that the rest of us should wait for the experts. The experts may have answers for the long term, but we need to make it possible for there to be a long term. When Steven Chu appeared at Harvard he said a lot about research but he did mention that building energy use can be reduced 80%. That’s the way somebody who’s just gotten an honorary doctorate suggests there is more Harvard could do than research.

The HEET idea is one of a large number of things that are worth doing. It is definitely acting locally on a global issue and it is good economics. [Hopefully it will become more apparent that these are the same thing.] But it has a definite focus on a selected portion of Cambridge buildings .i.e. individual homes. We need to do all of Cambridge’s buildings, city, commercial, university. Lesley College will be very responsive, if they haven’t already. Harvard Administration will quote Ban Ki Moon, “global warming is the defining issue of our age.” But they will point to their tepid commission report,

Harvard University has committed to a GHG reduction goal of a 30 percent reduction from Fiscal Year 2006 levels by 2016, including growth.

Is this about the ‘defining issue of the age’ or a fad that might blow over in a decade?

From former Harvard Crimson President Bill McGibbon.

A primer for those not up on Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transexual matters. Here in Boston, a weeklong celebration of Pride culminated on June 13. In Providence, a weeklong celebration of Pride culminated on June 20. In New York, a weeklong celebration of Pride culminates today. Why? It all goes back to a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village – the Stonewall Inn – in the wee hours of the morning on June 28, 1969.

DemocracyNow! spent a large part of the hour on Friday on it.  |  Wikipedia has a very long article about it.

Update: June 28, 2009 Fort Worth, TX; Rainbow Lounge

“It felt so very Stonewall, but without the standing up for ourselves.”     -Robert H.

It’s been on the wires. Police claim that it was a routine Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission inspection but here are eyewitness accounts from LBGT  publication the Dallas Voice. Chad Gibson,  hospitalized for bleeding in his brain, has stabilized but will remain in the hospital. Further updates will appear in the Weblog of the Dallas Voice, Instant Tea.