Marking Human Rights Day in Amherst

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,...

As I noted in a recent post, the Massachusetts legislature honored the Amherst Human Rights Commission with a special citation on the occasion of our first official Black History Month ceremony last year.

The charge of the Commission is “to ensure that no power goes unchecked, and that all citizens are afforded equal protection under the law,” specifically: "to insure [sic] that no person, public or private, shall be denied any rights guaranteed pursuant to local, state, and/or federal law on the basis of race or color, gender, physical or mental ability, religion, socio-economic status, ethnic or national origin, affectional or sexual preference, lifestyle, or age."

An earlier version of the statement spoke, rather more ambitiously, of "promot[ing] economic and social justice for all citizens through means of mediation, education, and enforcement of local, state, federal, and international human rights laws”--above all, as embodied in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Although the Declaration finds no formal resonance in the official documents, it nonetheless embodies the spirit that moves the Commission. Accordingly, it has become our custom for the Select Board each December to issue a proclamation for the celebration of International Human Rights Day, on the anniversary of the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By tradition, the Human Rights Commission then marks the occasion with a candlelight vigil and reading of the Declaration on the Town Common in the evening (often followed by a thematic presentation on a subsequent day).

Members of the Amherst Human Rights Commission and supporters who celebrated the Declaration last December included  Department of Human Resources/Rights Director Deborah Radway, Human Rights Commission Chair Gregory Bascom, Bonnie McCracken, Frank Gatti, Eleanor Manire Gatti, and Robert Pam

***

"Many of the assumptions about who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are wrong. The less known story of the men and women who wrote this foundational, emancipatory and anti-colonial document must be told in today's world."

Even those familiar with the Declaration probably do not know the story behind it. Some years back, Gita Sahgal, founder of the Centre for Secular Space, and the former Head of the Gender Unit at Amnesty International, took on this educational challenge.

These are challenging times, she observed. On the one hand, modern philosophers reject the whole concept of demonstrable or natural rights as a throwback to an earlier, naïve age (Alasdair MacIntyre: “tantamount to belief in witches and unicorns”), while on the other, some strains of leftism and postmodernism reduce such supposed “rights” to “the political philosophy of cosmopolitanism” that “‘constitutionalise[s]‘ the normative sources of Empire.” (I’m feeling guilty already.) As Sahgal drily observes, those fighting the Bush administration’s practice of torture and the continued existence of the Guantanamo detention facility “would be surprised to see themselves as empire builders,” while the authors of the Declaration, for their part, would have found "absurd" “The idea that different peoples were endowed with separate rights,” as exemplified by the attempt to create a specific Declaration of Human Rights in Islam.

Citing the work of Susan Waltz, she explains that the origins and character of this fundamental document are both more varied and more radical than even its admirers realize. For example, it is commonly attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt because she chaired the drafting committee, yet she contributed little to the concept or the content. (The idea in fact originated with the President of Panama.) The notion that “western” powers were responsible for the sections on civil and political rights, and the Soviet Union, for those on social and economic ones, is also a gross oversimplification. The desire for emancipation of all, emphasizing that rights applied to everyone everywhere, emerged as a major concern. Significant additions were made by newly de-colonized states regarding, slavery, discrimination, the rights of women, and the right to national self determination.

A host of countries, not least the smaller or emerging ones, saw to it that the document addressed social rights as well as the rights of colonized and other non-self-governing territories. An Indian activist fought for language referring to rights of ”human beings” rather than men, lest it be construed as discriminatory against women. Several Muslim delegates supported the clauses on freedom of religious choice. The final product was truly a collective one

Fifty nations voted in favor of the Declaration. None dared oppose it, but (big surprise), Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the Soviet Union abstained. Still explains a lot (plus ça change).

* * *

The Amherst Human Rights vigil on the occasion of the document's anniversary is at once a sobering (not to say: depressing) and an inspiring occasion: sobering because, in this town of nearly 38,000 residents--and some 27,000 students--where (as the expression goes) "only the 'h' is silent," I don't believe I have ever seen more than a dozen citizens from among our self-proclaimed liberals, progressives, radicals, and revolutionaries ever put on a down coat and show up. To be sure it's cold and dark, and yet . . . it is an important symbolic commitment to a vital cause. Again, it can be a lot to ask for a symbolic 30-minute gesture on a frigid December night. (I freely admit that I myself am at times the laziest person in the world.) Still, . . . . you get the point.

I hope that residents, and above all, my fellow members of Town government--employed, elected, and appointed--will in future consider taking part in what for me is one of the most moving political experiences of the year. When we hold the ceremony, we take turns reading from the Declaration, basically one clause/per person at a time. I have to confess that I often have to suppress a shudder when my turn comes, no matter which paragraph is at issue. The preface is a stirring document:

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

How can a chill not run down one's spine when one contrasts the noble goals and innocent hopes of 1948 with--taking all progress into account--the atrocities of the present day?

Scenes from past vigils

2011

On the evening of December 9, one of the first that felt truly cold in what has been a comparatively mild season, a small group gradually assembled under the guidance of tireless Chair Reynolds Winslow.

Everyone received a candle and a copy of the Declaration, in the form of an illustrated “passport,” produced by Amnesty International.

at right: Bonnie McCracken

As we stood in the cold, many of us attempting to hold both a candle and text in gloved hands, a car with a couple of blonde college-age women in it drove by, and the driver leaned out the window and helpfully shouted, “Hey, what the fuck are you doing?!”

That could have been a metaphor for the problem: ignorance and scorn. We knew exactly what we were doing, yet they had no clue. In a way, it’s understandable: at the end of the college semester, if students venture out into the Friday night cold, it is for physical rather than moral pleasures. And what of the rest of the town? In a community that prides itself on its “activism” and can readily generate a crowd with signs and candles for any “cause,” whether epochal or trivial, it was disappointing to see that we could with difficulty muster only about a dozen participants.

the vigil: Amherst Human Rights/Resources Director Eunice Torres, foreground

As we began to read from the Declaration, the sirens of police and fire vehicles, far more loudly, yet much less offensively, also interrupted the event.

The intense dedication of its participants stood in inverse proportion to the size of the gathering. The nominal membership of the Commission is nine, though at the moment only six seats are filled: three of them, notably, by high school students. Human Rights Director Eunice Torres was there representing Town staff, and I was present on behalf of the Select Board.

A few interested residents rounded out the group. Some were just supportive. Others, including Commission member Mohammed Ibrahim Elgadi, were from our Sudanese community, and brought with them a deep commitment to human rights arising from their own suffering. Mr. Ibrahim, who was tortured for his activism, is the founder and chair of Group Against Torture in Sudan (GATS). Sudan was in fact the focus of last year's program. 

An elderly woman from Egypt, wearing a headscarf and speaking in Arabic through a translator, said that she was proud of the changes that her compatriots had accomplished in the past year, and hoped that their example would bring democratic change to the rest of the Africa in the next one. It seemed a fitting way to close.

On Saturday, December 10, the Commission, as is its custom, made a presentation on human rights work to the community, hosted a potluck luncheon, and distributed posters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This year the presentation was devoted to human rights and relief work in Haiti.

2012

Deborah Radway (Director, Amherst Dept. of Human Resources/Human Rights), Judy Brooks

Judy Brooks and Human Rights Commission Chair Reynolds Winslow read from the Preface

2013

As the preceding photos show, holding the vigil on the corner of the Common at the four-way intersection of Town Hall had the advantage of visibility but the disadvantage of an unprepossessing setting and traffic noise that interrupted the reading. Beginning in 2013, the Commission moved the ceremony a few yards to the southeast, beneath the "Merry Maple" tree and closer to Town Hall.

2014

Human Rights Commission Chair Gregory Bascom

Resources

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (from the UN)
• 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (from the UN)
• Gita Sahgai,”Who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?” 50.50 Inclusive Democracy, 9 December 2011 

On Martin Luther King, Monuments, & Drum Majors (and: Heinrich Heine)

I wasn’t able to attend the town’s annual scholarship breakfast in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Saturday, but I was thinking about him a lot this weekend, as I always do on this occasion.

Fate has not been kind to Martin Luther King’s birthday. First, the creation of a national holiday on that date met with persistent and perverse resistance from a wide variety of reactionaries (some of whom now try to swim in the mainstream). But with most of those battles far in the past, who would have thought that his monument in Washington (once it was finally authorized) would prove controversial? And that this controversy would come to a head on the eve of the next celebration of that holiday?

Fate may have been even less kind to the monument than the birthday. At least the latter reflected the ideological struggle over the ideas at the heart of the man and his legacy. The problems surrounding the monument are the result of pure dumb luck, or, as the case may be, just a whole lot of dumb.

First, as a result of the summer earthquake, the dedication was postponed from August until October. And, as soon as the monument was revealed to the public, criticism poured in. For me, the first problem was aesthetic: It was not that the image of Rev. King emerging from the rock was too gray, stern or forbidding, as some critics said. (That’s just philistinism.) Rather: the whole thing just seemed too cautious and tame. First, it just isn’t very well done. Second, and more important: Is there really a point to a conventional, representational portrait sculpture in an age in which the most powerful (and eventually popular) monuments: the Vietnam Memorial, the new 9-11 memorial site, and the Berlin Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe draw upon a more modern language of abstraction? The King monument, its very real appeals notwithstanding, could fit perfectly well in a neo-Stalinist sculpture garden or political cemetery.  (Philosopher Cornel West went even further, though in a very different direction, declaring that King would have wanted a “revolution,” not a monument.)

To be fair, however, the monument does make more sense if one understands and sees it in context. Although still photos tend to depict only the controversial portrait sculpture itself, it is in fact part of a much larger complex, truly “monumental” in proportion and with a logic and even narrative or movement of its own.

 As the official website describes it:

At the entry portal, two stones are parted and a single stone wedge is pushed forward toward the horizon; the missing piece of what was once a single boulder. The smooth insides of the portal contrast the rough outer surfaces of the boulder. Beyond this portal, the stone appears to have been thrust into the plaza, wrested from the boulder and pushed forward – it bears signs of a great monolithic struggle.
On the visible side of the stone, the theme of hope is presented, with the text from King's famed 1963 speech cut sharply into the stone: "Out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." On the other side are inscribed these words: "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness”, a statement suggested by Dr. King himself when describing how he would like to be remembered.

The boulder is the Mountain of Despair, through which every visitor will enter, moving through the struggle as Dr. King did during his life, and then be released into the open freedom of the plaza. The solitary stone is the Stone of Hope, from which Dr. King’s image emerges, gazing over the Tidal Basin toward the horizon, seeing a future society of justice and equality for which he encouraged all citizens to strive

It turns out that the greatest controversy focuses on that “drum major” quotation. I should clarify: there are in fact many quotations in the memorial. In order to reach the portal, visitors pass along a whole wall of quotations (“Inscription Wall”), derived from Rev. King’s entire career: from the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955 to the last sermon he delivered in 1968, just days before his death. As the designers further explain: (1) the quotations are not in chronological order, so that readers may begin wherever they choose, rather than being forced to proceed in linear fashion. (2) anticipating the most obvious question: they omit the “I have a dream” speech because it is well known (to the point of trivialization), but also because the whole monument—being placed on the mall where that speech was delivered—in a sense commemorates it and its message.

The “drum major” quotation is perhaps not an ideal choice, but the real problem is that this is not even a statement that Rev. King actually made in so many words.

The explanation is about the lamest thing one can imagine. As outraged critics soon figured out, “suggested” is a very vague and subjective term and takes a hell of a lot of liberties with the facts. Poet Maya Angelou did not mince any words: the quotation made him sound like an “arrogant twit.” 

The Washington Post’s Rachel Manteuffel explained the issue first and more clearly than anyone by doing what anyone with a brain should have done. First she applied her critical reasoning to the text itself. To begin with, it made King look stupid and verbally clumsy. Both the subject and the tone stood in jarring contrast to his famous biblically inspired sermons and speeches: “To me, silly hats and King just did not compute.” Worse still, it made him look shallow and self-centered: “akin to memorializing Mahatma Gandhi with the quote, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’” She was puzzled and taken aback.

Second, then, she went to the source. The quote came from a sermon entitled, “The Drum Major Instinct,” in which he criticized the natural but immature and selfish desire--on the part of individuals, groups, and entire nations-- “to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade.” (As in many other cases, the image was not original; he borrowed it from a liberal white minister.) It was early in 1968, but (though he did not know it) late in his life, and he spoke of how he would like to be remembered: as someone who helped others, who fought for justice and against war. So:

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.

As Manteuffel put it,

An “if” clause is an extraordinarily bad thing to leave out of a quote. If I had to be a type of cheese, being Swiss is best.

What makes this tragic is that King had the ability to say precisely what he meant, with enormous impact.

The culprit? Not, as she notes, the scholars consulting on the project, who employed the full quotation. She had no answer at the time, and simply called for correction: “I say, let’s undo the mistake. Let’s get the chisels back out.”

The architects at first stonewalled (so to speak), refusing to make changes.

It turned out that the architects and designers had shortened the quotation on their own initiative, simply because the whole text would not easily fit. (This raises a host of issues regarding accuracy, authority, aesthetics, and public history and memory, which I merely mention and would not presume to address here.)

The complaints refused to subside and, predictably, rose again as the holiday approached. On Friday, for example, the Boston Herald demanded: “Carve MLK’s words in stone—accurately.”  Out of their mouth into God’s ear, as the saying goes. Sure enough, early in the evening, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar demanded that the Park Service come up with a fix within thirty days. The lead architect replied that the full text still would not fit, but that a compromise abridgement was possible. (Again, one can only wonder: what in the world were they thinking?)

And so, the embarrassing episode will at last come to a close.

I have to say: First, I thought even the full quotation not a good choice: It is not among King’s greatest remarks (others of which likewise are not absolutely original). Above all, though, unlike many others, it does not stand well on its own and really loses a great deal without the context of the sermon.

In the second place, though, and more positively, I fully understood Rev. King’s use of the drum major image because it reminded me of something from my own field of study and one of my favorite authors, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856).

At first sight, the two men could not appear more dissimilar: the one, a modern Black Protestant minister and civil rights leader from the American south, the other, a nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet and journalist known for speaking frankly—and cynically—about sex, religion, and politics (the three subjects one was famously told to avoid in polite conversation).

And yet there are some surprising connections or parallels.

Both, growing up in eras of discrimination, fought with their pens for the emancipation of their own people, which they moreover saw as inextricably linked with the emancipation of all people and nations. Both were masters of their respective languages and drew naturally and freely upon the imagery of the Bible that underlay the educated vernacular of the times. Both were controversial in their day, rejected by chauvinists and racists, but eventually lionized by the majority of the population, who perhaps valued their achievement but underestimated their radicalism. (Heine has the unusual distinction of having managed to become an icon for both the nineteenth-century liberal German middle class and Marxist East Germany.) In both cases, attempts to memorialize their careers in the public sphere proved controversial: for Rev. King, making his birthday into a national holiday; for Heine, attempts to name spaces as diverse as the Düsseldorf University and a street in Tel-Aviv in his honor.

And the drum motif?

Heine, as a Jew born in the German Rhineland, grew up under the equivalent of segregation, experienced a brief period of emancipation under French Rule during the Napoleonic era, and saw the return of discrimination with the restoration of monarchy: similar to, though of course much milder than, the transition from slavery to Reconstruction and Jim Crow. (Indeed, most Jews in Central Europe received full civil rights only between 1867 and 1871, in other words, at roughly the same time as African-Americans.) One of his minor prose masterpieces (today known mainly to specialists) is Ideas—Book Le Grand. Like other of his early, highly subjective, and unclassifiable works, it ranges freely over a host of topics, from autobiography and food, to romantic love and suicide, and revolution and censorship. The central figure, after whom the work is named, is a French drummer—“who looked a devil and yet had the good heart of an angel”—quartered in the Heine household during the period of Napoleonic rule. The drummer did not create the Revolution, but he embodies it, he is the bearer of its message.

As Heine portrays him, Le Grand is a simple man and knows only a handful of words in German, and yet he speaks through his drum more clearly and eloquently than all the politicians and subsequent generations of professors. For example, he explains the French word for “stupidity” by drumming an old German military march. He explains the complicated concept of “equality” by drumming the revolutionary tune, “Ça ira”: things will go better when we hang the aristocrats from the lampposts. The narrator later acquires the habit of unconsciously tapping his feet to revolutionary tunes, signaling his dissent during boring conservative university lectures; he reaps the appropriate rewards.

The relevant section of the slim book closes when the narrator, years later, identifies Le Grand as one of the miserable French soldiers returning from captivity in Russia, long after the Revolution has been defeated and Napoleon has died in exile. The two recognize each other. The drummer plays the old tunes, conjuring up images of a vanished revolutionary past, only now sorrowfully and mournfully, and then dies, collapsing upon his drum. Heine, the former boy, now a man, knows what to do: the drum “was not to serve any enemy of freedom for their servile roll call; I had understood the last beseeching glance of Le Grand very well and immediately drew the rapier from my cane and pierced the drum.”

It is an interesting variation on the drummer theme. Again, at first, contrast seems to prevail over similarity. Whereas Rev. King referred to the problematic role of the showy and perhaps self-promoting drum major in a parade, Heine chose to speak of the humble drummer in an actual military unit. And yet they are, certainly in this context, closely related. Both are, de facto, the visible and audible embodiment of the cause. Both, by marching at the head of the troops, become natural targets for the enemy.

In the short poem, “Doctrine,” Heine echoed the themes of Le Grand when he portrayed himself as the drummer—pointedly using the French term—on behalf of the new radical Hegelian philosophy. At the same time, he here ironizes rather than romanticizes that role, calling attention (like King) to an element of self-satisfaction and self-aggrandizement. Heine rarely makes it simple for the perceptive reader.

There are exceptions, though. He on several occasions directly addressed the plight of African-Americans and slavery, and here all hint of ambiguity or frivolity is gone. In the late poem, “The Slave Ship," he depicted the cynical cruelty of the Middle Passage. Even earlier, and long before it was fashionable, he had spoken out against slavery and remarked bitterly upon the hypocrisy of the United States, which he called “that monstrous prison of freedom where [ . . . ] all men are equal—equal dolts . . . with the exception, naturally, of a few million, who have black or brown skins and are treated like dogs!”

However, I always find I am equally moved by a minor incident in one of his earliest published works, the “Letters From Berlin” (1822). There, in a seemingly trivial piece of reportage, he describes the excitement of the masked ball at which members of all social groups interact on the basis of anonymity and thus equality. In his enthusiasm, he happens to express himself in fashionable French, which earns him the predictable rebuke of a young chauvinist. He replies:

O German youth, how I find you and your words sinful and foolish in such moments where my entire soul encompasses the entire world with love, where I joyously wish to embrace the Russians and the Turks, and where I wish to collapse, crying, upon the fraternal breast of the enchained African! I love Germany and the Germans; but I love no less the inhabitants of the other portions of the world, whose numbers are forty times as great as those of the Germans. Love gives the human being his value. Praise God! I am therefore worth forty times as much as those who cannot raise themselves out of the swamp of national egoism and love only Germany and the Germans.

King was a Protestant minister, and that vocation defined his career and identity. Heine was a poet and an essayist who said a good many sarcastic things about Christianity, Judaism, credulousness, and religion in general. He converted to Protestantism out of opportunism and always reproached himself for it, but at the end of his life, as he seemed to become more religious, claimed that he had never “returned” to Judaism because he had never in fact left it. Like King, he found both personal and social meaning in the religious tradition.

If there were a world to come in which both men ended up sharing the same space, I could imagine the two of them having a very engaging conversation about the state of the world on this holiday: the one perhaps with a bit more charity, the other perhaps with a slightly malicious wit, but both with an equal and unwavering commitment to justice and the power of the word to bring it about.

* * *

Sources:

Most of the translations come from these two volumes of Heine's writings, edited by one of my former teachers, Jost Hermand, and one of his former graduate students: Robert Holub, currently Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst:

The folllowing are found in Heinrich Heine, Poetry and Prose, ed. Jost Hermand and Robert Holub, The German Library, 32 (NY: Continuum, 1982):

• Ideas—Book Le Grand, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland and adapted by Robert C. Holub and Martha Humphreys, pp. 174-228 (relevant section: 190-204)
• the poem, "Doctrine," translated by Felix Pollak, pp. 44-45
• the poem, "The Slave Ship," translated by Aaron Kramer, pp. 84-93

The following is from Heinrich Heine, The Romantic School and Other Essays, The German Library, 33 (NY: Continuum, 1985):

•  the excerpt regarding American slavery and hypocrisy is found in Ludwig Börne: A Memorial (Second Book), translated by Frederic Ewen and Robert C. Holub, pp. 261-83; here, 263.

 Heine goes on to say, "Actual slavery, which had been abolished in most of the North American states, does not revolt me as much as the brutality with which the free blacks and the mulattoes are treated," which he goes on to describe

Tthe translation from "Letters from Berlin" is my own.

Marking Martin Luther King Day, 2012

Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. Amherst Regional Middle School Library

Massachusetts and the nation today marked the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

In Boston, the annual celebration noted Reverend King's ties to the area, where he studied theology, and focused on the holiday as a day of service. Here in Amherst, the annual breakfast at the Middle School, now in its 28th year, honored local civil rights activist Mary Pittman Wyatt, who created the event and passed away last fall.

In the New York Times, a guest column by Oxford's Stephen Tuck recalls the international dimensions of King's movement and legacy. Paul Krugman notes that, although we have in many admirable ways overcome the old racial divides, we have not yet addressed the persistent income inequality, at least part of which is correlated with race:

Yet if King could see America now, I believe that he would be disappointed, and feel that his work was nowhere near done. He dreamed of a nation in which his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But what we actually became is a nation that judges people not by the color of their skin — or at least not as much as in the past — but by the size of their paychecks. And in America, more than in most other wealthy nations, the size of your paycheck is strongly correlated with the size of your father’s paycheck.

Goodbye Jim Crow, hello class system.

Clearly, we have much to celebrate, but marking the day as one of service, scholarship, and reflection—rather than mere lazing and shopping, to which level the holidays dedicated to those earlier liberators Washington and Lincoln have sunk—is a good way to remind ourselves that there is still much work to do.

The Martin Luther King stamp (artist: Jerry Pinkney) issued by the US Postal Service for Black History Month (Scott catalogue # 1771), issued in Atlanta on January 13, 1979, on the occasion of King's fiftieth birthday.This also corresponded to the legal code of the day, according to which only deceased individuals could be depicted on postal stamps, and not until ten years (subsequently relaxed to five) had elapsed since the time of death, the only exception being for presidents (one year).

The government recently and foolishly waived this utterly sensible proviso (1, 2, 3), thus eliminating a bedrock democratic principle in order to prostitute itself in the quixotic quest for greater revenues when it would have made greater sense to seek a more sustainable business model. (1, 2, 3)

Typically, attempts to reform and increase profitability of enterprises entail elimination of jobs, for which reason we would do well to remind ourselves that, historically, the public sector has been a key path into the middle class for African-Americans: not least, the Postal Service, in which they account for 25 percent of the workforce.

This past fall, the Postal Service issued a special souvenir cover to mark the dedication of the King Memorial on the National Mall. The cover bears a cachet depicting his colossal portrait sculpture and the new Barbara Jordan stamp.

The Arizona Immigration Law: what the Amherst Select Board actually said and did

Now that a judge has granted the federal government’s request for an injunction to stop key portions of the new Arizona immigration law from going into effect last week, it may be time to take a calm look back at what happened in Amherst, which got some people riled up. As it happened, I was the one who ended up presenting the background on the issue at the Select Board meeting on June 7, so I should be able to provide a fairly straightforward overview.

In a nutshell: the Amherst Select Board received two citizen requests, asking the town to take various actions in protest against what they described as the discriminatory measures of the new Arizona state Immigration law. We agreed to endorse a stop to economic dealings with the state, although rejecting the clauses calling for any action above and beyond this.

There is no scientific sampling of opinion. The video interviews that the Springfield Republican posted were generally nuanced and thoughtful.


The talkbacks and other responses in the Daily Hampshire Gazette were in many cases very harsh. Those in the  Republican were both more numerous and overwhelmingly hostile and even nasty, though that may be both because they come from outside the local area and because access to the site (unlike that of the Gazette) is free and does not require a subscription. (This is where the science comes in.)

At any rate, the main charges were:

1) typical Amherst idiocy!
2) bet you stupid people didn’t even read the law!
3) typical Amherst idiocy!

Some representative ones:

And I will make it a point to NOT buy, NOT drive through, NOT recommend any purchase, NOR visit or support your anti-U.S.A. mentality.
UP YOURS.

...wingnuts to the right of me, moonbats to the left, here I am stuck in the middle with who?
This is insane.
Don't these panderers realize what Arizona is going through? ...What do you expect from a place that tries to ban flying the flag.
I can see why Boston, Springfield, and Holyoke are pandering to their Hispanic populations (which this law doesn't even effect), but lily-white Amherst? What's the matter Amherst, Don't want to showed up by the big boys? Hey I'm sure Arizona is really going to miss you pinheads
I don't have to boycott Amherst, nothing there interests me.

You know, I was going to be my usual sarcastic self but I'm so disgusted I literally want to puke. Self righteous, self important, elitist, divisive, American tradition and value loathing hypocrites who are willing to slander and hurt fellow Americans for the temerity of trying to protect their communities against the consequences of mass illegal immigration.

You have to consider the source here...I mean Amherst...? They are a bunch of backwards left over hippies from the sixties. No suprise here, just a bunch of quacks.

I plan to boycott Amherst and the colleges that my 3 were looking at... as if AZ needed business from Amherst! They should be boycotting the illegals here in America, not those trying to stop it, what a @@&$#@ up town!

I feel for the few hard working regular residents of Amherst who have to deal with those self righteous, holier-than-thou clowns on a daily basis. Worse part is that if they vote the moonbats out, they'll only be replaced by other moonbats

Just another meaningless political gesture by guilt-ridden neurotic white people.

Hey! That's what Amherst is all about!
Amherst never fails to demonstrate how stupid the residents really are.

a true embarrassment...Standard uber-liberals that didn't read the law, research the issue or try to empathize.

I don't bother going there anymore because it's just old hippies sniffing their own farts.

These are a scary, no RABID bunch of people, no doubt about that.
hahahahaha reminds me of a Southpark Episode...

If these Bozo's in Amherst would read the Arizona Law, they would discover that Arizona is simply following the (already passed) law of the USA. Sheesh.. I'll have to make it a point not to do any business in Amherst and much more support for Arizona!

Clearly the Select panel approves of the drugs, violence and crime. Throw in a few kidnappings a murders for good measure. According to Amherst these activities are just fine.

Today I will be making my LAST trip to Amherst for the forseable future. The ONLY reason I will be going there is to tell my friends at Adventure Outfitters and the Soup-er-bowl that they will be lossing my business until Amherst's elected officials come down off their high horses.

Why would anything this bunch of idiots does surprise anyone? Remember, this is the place where cop killers and terrorists are put on a pedestal. But if you smoke outdoors they want to lock you up.

F Amherst.....plain and simple.

Ahhh, Amherst, the bastion of liberal fascism here in the North East. How the hell can anybody live in a town where you can't fly the flag except on holidays and that allows the High school to put on the Vagina Monologs and not West Side Story. Skewed liberal policies. Boycott Amherst. Or better yet, send all of Arizona's illegals there.

Many of the critics who said we had not read the law evidently came from towns outside Amherst and had therefore read only the brief account in the newspaper and not seen the meeting on local-access cable television. You can watch the recording and judge for yourself (I invite you to do so), but here, at least, it will be simpler if I just tell you.

The charge that we did not know or read the law is simply false. It rests on two assumptions: that we are lazy and stupid, and that we wouldn’t understand what we read anyway. Now, to assume that a critic has not studied the idea or text that he criticizes is, sadly, often not an unreasonable assumption in political life in general (we can all think of examples), but in this case, it would be wrong. I made a point of circulating the full text of the law as well as a sample of commentary, for and against (see below, at the end of this piece) to members of the Board prior to the meeting. In fact, one can see us referring to the document in the course of the discussion. The corollary assumption is that, if we did read it, we must not have understood it. In the minds of these critics, the measure was simply enforcing existing federal law, so if we opposed it, obviously, we were a pack of loony left America-haters.

the text of SB 1070 at the Select Board

I began by trying to relieve some of the tension with a touch of humor and historical perspective by pointing out that, by some standards, the proverbial Colonial forefathers who came to these shores from Europe centuries ago were also “illegal immigrants,” who were nonetheless allowed to stay.

I observed, as a point of departure: it is self-evident that every nation has the right to determine standards of citizenship and residency, and consequently, to control its borders. That is part of the definition of sovereignty. According to that principle, then, there are by definition "legal" and "illegal" immigrants. No one can argue with that, though that says nothing about what specific sorts of laws we should create in order to regulate immigration.   And for that matter, I added, I was glad to live in a country that people were dying to get into rather than out of.

Turning to the law itself (SB 1070), I noted that it was long—running to some 16 dense pages—and complex, but that the key disagreements could nonetheless be boiled down to a few essential points.

Proponents of the law argued that it was filling a gap left by the central government, and thus merely enforcing existing federal law. The most controversial portions involved the clauses allowing law enforcement officers, "where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States" to make "a reasonable attempt. . . to determine the immigration status of the person."  It sounds harmless enough.  Proponents of the law point to the repeated use of the term, "reasonable," and insist that the measure cannot be unfair because discrimination—including racial profling—is illegal in Arizona and the rest of the nation. Although one argument against the law is that it violates the so-called “supremacy clause” by usurping the rights of the federal government (and it was on these most neutral grounds that the court granted the recent injunction), it was nonetheless the prospect of discrimination that most exercised opponents. They worry that it would in practice be very hard to prevent the slide into profiling: after all, who—a person of what ethnicity or appearance—is most likely to be asked to prove citizenship? The issue is thus not so much that illegals might be caught and punished, and rather, that American citizens or legal aliens who just happen to look foreign might be humiliated by being forced to prove themselves legitimate when Anglo-Americans are subjected to no such test. A subsidiary concern voiced by civil liberties groups was that illegal aliens might be scared not only to report crimes against themselves, but also to report or serve as witnesses involving crimes against others. In other words, the law seemed to risk creating as many problems as it hoped to solve. (Although I did not mention this in my explanation, it is also notable that a number of law enforcement officials—the Chief of Police of Phoenix, among the first—opposed the law as creating an unenforceable goal and impossible burden.)

Polls showed that, although there is considerable national popular support for heightened enforcement of immigration laws, it is precisely over the aforementioned dilemmas that the consensus begins to break down. To be sure, some opponents indulged in inflammatory rhetoric, calling the law racist or even “Nazi.”  That was stupid and inappropriate.  Responsible opponents rejected this language and such extreme analogies, simply arguing that the law was unnecessary and threatened to divide rather than unite the country. They do not deny that there is a problem, but they see the solution in comprehensive national reform of immigration policy, not ad hoc regional measures.

The Select Board deliberated thoughtfully on the measure for far longer than the 25 minutes allotted on the agenda. I should add that this is, to the best of my knowledge, one of the more cautious and restrained Select Boards in recent Amherst history (and much of the public seems to agree; 1, 2, 3). We are well aware of jurisdictional boundaries and the proper limits of our collective powers and voices. Most of us are on record as, in one way or another, evincing considerable skepticism toward actions that register a symbolic but otherwise ineffectual protest against one policy or another that lies far beyond the scope of normal local government. This is what Select Board member Alisa Brewer was referring to when she was quoted as being opposed to “resolutions.”

In the end, we therefore declined to endorse any of the requested actions that went beyond our local control, e.g. urging that the Major League All-Star Game not be held in Arizona. much less, endorsing “the repeal of NAFTA and the decriminalization of certain drugs” in hopes of “making illegal immigration. . . [from Latin America] less necessary and attractive.” (As the discussion unfolded, the petitioner himself therefore withdrew his request for the latter.) We moreover declined to endorse Select Board member Diana Stein’s suggestion that we adopt the more flamboyant language of a California Democratic group that denounced the law and/or its supporters as racist and xenophobic. As I argued, decent people could disagree about the merits of the legislation, and as I did not claim to be able to see into the hearts of opponents and had no desire to accuse anyone of racism, I preferred to restrict our statement to the narrower topic of the law and its possible consequences.

The Select Board unanimously endorsed the slimmed-down resolution. I believe that we thought long and hard and perhaps agonized over how to vote in this case, given our general reluctance in such matters. That we nonetheless voted as one is therefore notable. It should not, however, be seen as a reflection of “just Amherst” or anything of the sort. The call for locales to cease business dealings with Arizona was part of a mainstream nationwide movement of modest protest, not unlike others of recent decades. Many major professional organizations, for example, declined to hold conventions in states that had not endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment, and many also boycotted Arizona when it rejected the holiday commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of you will have noted how the Phoenix Suns donned jerseys reading, “Los Suns.” In this case, city councils across the country had already debated and endorsed boycotts—among them San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Boulder, Columbus, Hartford, Boston.

It was at once irritating and amusing to see readers talk of boycotting Amherst as a result of our decision to boycott Arizona. It is of course never pleasant to see strangers attack one’s town or one’s own motives, especially when the charges are baseless and the language vicious. Still, there was a humorous side. Those who threatened to boycott Amherst evidently did not understand that this was part of a national movement, endorsed by perfectly sane people in "normal" communities. Boston Mayor Tom Menino (who, last I checked, was no flaming radical) was a determined supporter of the boycott:

As the City Council passed a resolution urging that Boston cut business ties with Arizona, Menino said it was important to send “a message’’ that the city disagrees with that state’s response to illegal immigration.

“It’s a message saying America is a land of opportunity,’’ he said. “Now there’s one little state out there saying, we don’t want that land of opportunity. We want to be isolationists.’’

Menino added, “To say you’re not welcome in your state to work, that’s wrong. This country was built on immigrants. My grandfather, so many other folks, came to America looking for that hope of a better future.’’

So, my response to that was: if you want to boycott us for our action—fine, but if you’re consistent, you’ll also have to boycott Boston and Hartford. So that means: no more flying in and out of Logan and Bradley airports. No more Boston Red Sox, Celtics, or Bruins games. No more Sam Adams beer.

The point is not to engage in tit-for-tat exchanges, and rather, to demonstrate that our action, though not endorsed by all residents, had a solid and responsible rationale and was hardly lunatic or extreme.

A few weeks later, the Daily Hampshire Gazette and Amherst Bulletin observed:

In recent days, our sister paper, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, published a series of letters that criticize the Select Board for voting to boycott goods and services from Arizona because of a law it enacted. One writer urged "fair-minded Americans" to boycott Amherst itself -- and even named a "very good" Amherst business that will no longer receive his trade.

Anger over the town's stand on Arizona law SB 1070 brings this issue home in a new way. What issue is it? A complicated one, to be sure, that includes many sore places on the body politic.

After reviewing the pros and cons, the editorial concluded:

Supporters of the law say Americans have every right to protect the country from unlawful residents, some of whom we know to be responsible for violence on the border that has claimed the lives of law-enforcement officers. This perspective plays hourly on TV and radio programs.

Some of the letters we've received echo the tone of broadcasts that accuse people like those on the Select Board - "moonbats," one local writer called them - of taking leave of their senses.

It is hard to stomach the fact, though, that the law all but sanctions racial or ethnic profiling. By design, officers will be requesting papers from people with brown skin, not white.

Those who have pushed back, including not just Amherst but members of the Boston City Council, cite a desire to speak out against an erosion of civil rights. They are calling Arizona out for resorting to one of America's least flattering reflexes: a nativist contempt for immigrants.

The resolution Amherst adopted June 7 directs the town manager to make sure no town money is spent on products or services that originate in Arizona. It urges residents to act similarly. These kinds of boycotts are, of course, symbolic. Amherst took a principled stand against a law its leaders believe degrades human rights. Yes, the place it is happening is 2,600 miles away. No, that's not a compelling reason to ignore it.

It was the unanimous view of the Select Board that there is merit in adding the town's name to the list of American communities unhappy with the Arizona law. If the people of Amherst don't want their town's top board to tackle questions like this, they can order up changes at the next town election.

The power of the voting booth is as clear a feature of the political process as the movement that gave rise to the Arizona law. Unlike others, we will not fault Amherst for living in our times - and wanting to engage with them.

As I said at the Select Board meeting, the issue is complex: decent people can disagree about it. I myself have friends on both sides of the issue, and we still speak to one another. Some of us may even share common hopes and fears but disagree on how best to address them. In the end, we all have to live together in the same country.

 * * *

Documents consulted by the Select Board prior to the meeting

original packet

additional documents and opinion pieces that I distributed:

• the full text of the Arizona Law (SB 1070)

• Kris W. Kobach, "Why Arizona Drew a Line," NY Times, 28 April
[defense of the measure—its legality and fairness—by a man who helped to draft it]
• Jonah Goldberg, "Arizona's Ugly But Necessary Immigration Law:  There are many government functions that are unappealing to one extent or another; that is not in itself an argument against them," National Review Online, 28 April
• PEW Research Center:  "Public Supports Arizona Immigration Law: Democrats Divided, But Support Provisions"
• La Raza:  Boycott Intolerance:  "What's Wrong With the Law?"
• American Civil Liberties Union, "Arizona Immigration Law Threatens Civil Rights and Public Safety, Says ACLU"
• Anti-Defamation League:  "ADL Laments Arizona Governer Brewer's Decision to Sign SB 1070 into Law" and "Arizona Law Endangers America's Immigrant Heritage"

* * *

Local press coverage

• Scott Merzbach, "Area campaign gears up vs. Arizona immigration law," Daily Hampshire Gazette, 7 June
• Diane Lederman, "Amherst Arizona boycott resolution approved by Select Board," The Republican, 7 June
•  Scott Merzbach, "Amherst OKs Arizona Boycott," Daily Hampshire Gazette, 8 June [abridged as:]
• Scott Merzbach, "Amherst Boycotts Arizona," Amherst Bulletin, 11 June
• "Amherst's Arizona boycott:  Reactions to the Select Board's resolution [video]," The Republican Newsroom, 11 June

4 April: Creation of NATO (1949); Assassination of Martin Luther KIng (1968)

Two anniversaries today, which, separately and together, embody the challenges of the baby boom, postwar era: the birth of NATO and the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

NATO never fought the war that it was intended either to win or to prevent. Rev. King did not, as he said in his final speech, live to enter the "promised land." Forty years after his death, America elected its first African-American president.

Martin Luther King Day: History channel comes through (more or less)

Martin Luther King Day. So, I turned on the History channel as I often do on historical anniversaries, with a mixture of pessimism and masochism, knowing that I am likely to be disappointed, but that, on the bright side, either way I'll at least have something to blog about.

The expectation of disappointment did not disappoint. Still, wedged in there among the eight (count 'em !) episodes of "Pawn Stars" was one solid show appropriate to the occasion: a 2008 documentary by Tom Brokaw on the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., featuring historic footage and interviews with family members, associates, and today's political figures. Although the ratio of program topics was badly skewed, the History channel in a sense came through again—and again, it was by rebroadcasting an older or more traditional sort of program (are we detecting a pattern here?).

Among the noteworthy points that one could discern or extrapolate from the broadcast:

Many of us today mistakenly classify King as a "moderate," perhaps because we tend to focus on his advocacy of non-violence versus the more violent words and actions of Black Power advocates. In fact, King was and remained a radical (in the best sense) advocate of social justice, and not on the front of race relations alone. History proved his approach to be the more effective one not because it was intrinsically superior (though that it may have been), but above all, because it was more appropriate to the concrete political conditions.

King's biblical rhetoric, principled advocacy of non-violence, and current (not altogether salutary) status as a secular saint likewise tend to blind us to the calculating skill with which he and his associates developed effective communication strategies and exploited political symbolism and media opportunities to the fullest. For example, it was (so to speak) a godsend that his arrest in the course of the Birmingham protests came on Good Friday. The timing allowed him, particularly in the Letter From Birmingham Jail, to assume a mantle of Christ-like rectitude and power. It was a document in which he also steadfastly affirmed his radicalism in the face of calls for moderation— by explicitly associating himself with a tradition of protest stretching from the Bible to the American Revolution and Abraham Lincoln. He was likewise fully prepared to take advantage of police violence, even though that meant subjecting his followers as well as himself to physical harm. It was not for nothing that women and children figured prominently in protests. Demonstrations were carefully planned and choreographed to ensure that there was a 90-second segment of action suited for inclusion in the evening news programs (that was back in the day when 90 seconds seemed like a short time; between 1968 and 1988, the length of a typical political soundbite shrank from more than 40 to fewer than 10 seconds).

To acknowledge this is not to diminish King. On the contrary, it shows that he was not just an idealist, but a shrewd and pragmatic politician, a quality that should make him more rather than less admirable. Idealism without political skill is useless. Political skill without ideals is dangerous. What is ironic and tragic is that his strategies are today so frequently misapplied or misappropriated by both incompetents and cynics.

"With every passing year we have a greater understanding of the magnitude of Dr. King's achievements and the historic place he occupies in the pantheon of American heroes," said Brokaw. "As a young reporter in the South I was witness to his courage and his oratorical genius in the face of often violent resistance to the idea that every American should have equal rights. Revisiting that time and his place in it has been a deeply rewarding experience."

In summary, still a powerful commemoration of a powerful figure, with many lessons that we still have failed fully to learn.