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Shot in a Mother’s Day second-line parade in Seventh Ward

One of nineteen people injured by gunfire from three shooters in a Mother’s Day parade on Sunday was Gambit correspondent Deborah Cotton. Also injured were at least two small children. Three other people suffered more serious wounds, though no fatalities have been reported yet. The incident occurred in the Seventh Ward near North Claiborne and Elysian Fields. (Click here for NOLA.com map/graphic.)

Ms. Cotton, a Los Angeles native who moved to New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina (2005), writes about and videotapes second line culture, Mardi Gras Indians, brass bands, and social aid and pleasure clubs for Gambit under the pen name “Big Red” Cotton. She recently established the web site New Orleans Good Good to promote all that is “good good” about her adopted city.

Cotton spoke in an interview in May 2012 about the toll that street (gun) violence has taken on New Orleans (video above).

“I believe that it can be prevented. We are just not being smart and strategic about how to address this in a systematic way. . . . Every six months someone you know, a friend of someone or a family member of someone you know is murdered. After a while it begins to really tear at you internally. I feel that we’re at the point where we cannot not fix this anymore.

“. . . the overarching problem is the lack of education and resources and employment opportunities for young people, especially young black men, and just the history of oppression and political corruption that has taken resources and opportunities meant for some of the most vulnerable, the most at-risk people in our community and diverted those resources and opportunities to self-serving folks in leadership who are supposed to be doling out those resources [to those in need], and so we’re seeing the results of that here.”

Deborah Cotton was taken to Interim LSU Hospital for surgery and was said to be in guarded but stable condition as of Monday night. Here is her last tweet before going to the parade:

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Gambit is organizing a benefit; details will be announced soon. Gambit advises readers: “If you have any information about the shooting, call Crimestoppers. You don’t have to give your identity and you may still be eligible for a cash reward. As of tonight, Crimestoppers is offering a $10,000 aggregate reward for information. Call 504-822-1111.”

Click here for a map by Alejandro de los Rios showing where the shootings happened in relation to the second line parade route, and a map of other assaults in New Orleans on Sunday.

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Bonne fête à La Nouvelle-Orléans! Un joyeux anniversaire!

Now entering its 296th year, the city of New Orleans was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, on May 7, 1718.

The map above shows the city as it appeared about 1721, when the settlement of La Nouvelle-Orléans, on the high ground along the edge of a bend in the Mississippi River, was laid out as 14 blocks, with a drainage ditch around each block.

The first map below depicts the city and environs as it appeared in 1798, five years before the Louisiana Purchase (click here to enlarge). The second map below shows the city in 1763, the year France ceded the settlement to Spain (only to take it back in 1801, and then turn around and sell it to the United States in 1803). The “city,” of course, was then what is today known as the French Quarter. Click here for a timeline of the city’s history.

Better yet, read Richard Campanella’s excellent Bienville’s Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans (2008). See also Lawrence N. Powell’s The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans (2012) and Craig E. Colten’s An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature (2006). Many more sources about New Orleans are listed on our Literature page.

Here’s to 295 more years—though we worry about how much of the city will remain above water in the year 2308.

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—Paul Krugman, “Things to Come” (New York Times, 3/18/03)

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Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, says on the May 1 Rachel Maddow Show that the same “characters” who brought us the Iraq War, including senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, are now trying to push the U.S. into military involvement in Syria, and that this is a backdoor to the war with Iran that the neo-cons have been wanting for a long time.

Rachel shows how the new George W. Bush presidential library airbrushes history and ignores a multitude of inconvenient truths, then asks Col. Wilkerson, “When you’re looking at the debates about Syria, the debates about Iran . . . do you feel that there is a real concrete effect of propagating a whitewashed history of what we went through with the Iraq War? Does that affect the debates we’re having now in issues like Iran and Syria?”

I think as Yogi Berra once said, it’s like déjà vu all over again. I see us walking down the same road with the same characters singing in the choir, the same people off the same sheet of music with a few changes trying to get us into war with Iran. The new momentum with respect to Syria is not just because of the brutal civil war there, it’s also because of people like Lindsey Graham and John McCain from my party and Bob Menendez from the Democratic party would like to use Syria as a back door to get us in a war with Iran. It’s another catastrophe brewing, and if the American people don’t wake up and start saying something about it, they’ll find themselves in another trillion-dollar, ten-year war that’s going to produce results not unlike Iraq today. 

Let me say, Iraq is a mess today. It is an absolute mess. You’ve got the Saudis funding the Sunnis and a resurgence of the civil war. You have Maliki in the back pocket of Iran, so what we have, as George Bush doesn’t tell you in his library, is an ally of Iran in Iraq now. You have the Kurds about to establish their own state in the north, and Iraqis who know anything about their country predicting it will break up in the next four to five years. So, that’s what George Bush did for Iraq.

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Senators McCain and Graham have been pressing loudly for over a year for the U.S. to arm the Syrian rebels. There is considerable doubt and skepticism as to who exactly these Syrian “rebels” or “freedom fighters” are. Really, are they all Syrian, and what will become of whatever weaponry the U.S. might give them? (Israel is concerned about this question, too.) Would aid to the rebels be paid for by fiscal conservatives at a time of enforced national austerity? The civil war in Syria is mind-bogglingly complex, with innumerable actors, backers, invisible and subterranean connections and interests at play, both strategically and commercially. Senators McCain and Graham have not, as far as we’ve been able to ascertain, troubled themselves to educate the public or reporters on these questions. Reporters, please keep pressing them for answers.

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Recommended Reading:

ThinkProgress: “What You Need to Know About the Syrian Civil War”

Steve Clemons at The Washington Note: “Syrian Conflict Not Just a Battle Against Assad”

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Is This What We Voted for in 2008, 2012?

We will have more to say in the coming days about the president’s 2014 budget—there’s so much to, uh, appreciate—but here’s a start. The graphics above and below, from the National Priorities Project, based upon the Office of Management and Budget, show the proportion of discretionary spending (about one-third of the total, allocated through Congress’s appropriations process), of total spending, and the sources of revenue, such as individual income tax, corporate income tax, and so on. (Click here for a glossary of federal budget terms.)

The federal budget deficit, driven up primarily by the Bush tax cuts and a decade of wars, has actually been going down, though Fox News and “fiscal conservatives” don’t want you to know that. The New York Times reports that the projected deficit for the current fiscal year, after (FY13), “after four years of post-recession deficits exceeding $1 trillion,” is is $973 billion. President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget released April 2013 projects $744 billion deficit for FY14. Some of the budget’s money-saving proposals are worthwhile, but some are definitely not.

“Chained C.P.I.” Is a Bad Idea

One of the centerpieces of Obama’s budget that has been denounced by liberals, as indeed it should be, is his proposal to change the formula used to compute Social Security cost-of-living increases. This idea, originally proposed by the (sometimes liberal) Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, has been taken up by Obama so he can show fiscal conservatives that he is, as a Times editorial puts it, “willing to antagonize his supporters to get a budget compromise, putting Republicans on the spot to do the same.” As if. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has dismissed the White House’s budget as unserious. It is hard to see how congressional Republicans—particularly the hardliners in the House—are ever going to budge on raising taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. It is also hard to see how anyone in the president’s position could work with an opposition party so far to the right and so insistent on denying him even a speck of victory. Mr. Obama has many talents and virtues, but negotiation has never been one of them. (See “What a Deal,” 8/1/11). We wish the president and his staff would study and learn the methods of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who wasn’t called “master of the Senate” for nothing.

As The New York Times explains the chained C.P.I. idea:

Under the president’s budget, the government would shift in 2015 from the standard Consumer Price Index—used to compute cost-of-living increases for Social Security and other benefits and to set income-tax brackets—to what is called a “chained C.P.I.” The new formulation would slow the increase in benefits and raise income tax revenues by putting some taxpayers into higher brackets sooner, for total savings of $230 billion over 10 years.

While many economists say the new formula is more accurate, opponents say it does not adequately reflect the out-of-pocket health care expenses that burden older Americans. All Social Security beneficiaries would be affected, but Mr. Obama proposes that at age 76 they would get gradual benefit increases to offset the depletion of their private assets or pensions.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont writes in a letter to the Times:

The chained C.P.I. would take benefits away from more than three million disabled veterans and their families. A veteran who began receiving V.A. disability benefits at 30 would have benefits reduced by $1,425 at 45 and by $3,231 at 65, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

You can read more about why the chained C.P.I. would be bad for seniors, orphans, women, veterans, and other vulnerable citizens here and here.

A good idea in the budget, however, is to raise the cap on the wages subject to the payroll tax to pay for Social Security. In 2012, the payroll taxable limit for Social Security was $110,100. Labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan has written, “We could lift the cap on high earners, the 6 percent of workers who make over $106,800 a year. If earnings above the cap were subject to the payroll tax with no increase in benefits to high earners, there would be no deficit in the Social Security trust fund in 2037, as projected.”

Another good idea proposed in the Obama budget would make couples with incomes above about $170,000 have to pay about 5 percent more for Medicare premiums. That sounds fair enough. And, the Times points out, “The carried-interest tax break used by wealthy hedge fund operators would rise to ordinary-income levels, overall tax breaks for couples making more than $250,000 would be reduced, and a ‘Buffett Rule’ that would ensure that millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.”

Mattea Kramer at the National Priorities Project, in “Five Things to Know About President Obama’s 2014 Budget,” observes that “the president is proposing a total deficit reduction package heavily tilted toward reducing spending, with a 2.5-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to new tax revenue,” and points out that while the wealthy will see fewer tax deductions, “The president does not propose any new taxes on corporations.” This at a time of incredible corporate profit increases. ThinkProgress reports:

U.S. corporations’ after-tax profits have grown by 171 percent under Obama, more than under any president since World War II, and are now at their highest level relative to the size of the economy since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

More about Obama’s FY14 budget in the days to come.

Suffice it to say that this is not quite what we had in mind while campaigning door to door and working the phones to get out the vote in the fall of 2012, or working for “change we can believe in” in 2008.

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After long workin’ in the fertile fields of Elysium, a fruitful harvest. The novel ELYSIAN FIELDS, published this month by Mid-City Books, will be officially launched in the city that gave it birth with a party at Mimi’s in the Marigny on Friday, April 5, from 6:00 to 8:00, and a reading and signing by Mark LaFlaur at the Garden District Book Shop on Sunday, April 7, from 2:00 to 4:00. See the Facebook Event page here.

Since our last posting, early reviews have been encouraging. Publishers Weekly gave Elysian Fields a starred review (“engrossing”), and Antigravity magazine calls it “a stunning debut.” Excerpts below. Read more reviews and comments here.

“Life in the Weems family of 1999 New Orleans is anything but Elysian in this engrossing Southern Gothic snapshot. As Simpson ponders whether to kill his brother Bartholomew, he reflects upon their upbringing with mother Melba. At age 36, Simpson works in a copy shop, but fantasizes of escaping to San Francisco and being a famous poet. The obstacle is Bartholomew—as a second grader, he spent a year in a psychiatric ward—who is presented vividly as possibly autistic and ‘laced with idiot savantism.’ LaFlaur deftly alternates between character perspectives, delving into perceptions and motivations. . . . Simpson’s perception of haunted New Orleans hammers home LaFlaur’s implication that life consists mostly of dealing with your ghosts. . . . [R]eaders will find the author’s portrayal of New Orleans convincing and his characters fascinating and fully developed.”   —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A stunning debut . . . A look at the interplay of the figures in this working-class clan on Invalides Street has shades of Tennessee Williams, Faulkner and John Kennedy Toole impressed in its pages, yet [Elysian Fields] transcends those influences to become an original vision all its own. . . . LaFlaur gently and expertly pulls readers along with his characters, never flinching in the face of their foibles, giving us reasons to care what happens to them . . .”  —Antigravity magazine (Your New Orleans Alternative to Culture), March 2013

The public is invited to these free events, but you might want to get to Garden District Book Shop early, as seats will fill up.

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Thanks to Sam Jasper and Mark Folse for their help in lining up the party at Mimi’s. Sam and Mark coedited A Howling in the Wires, a powerful, highly recommended anthology of writings by New Orleans bloggers just after Hurricane Katrina—when posting on the InterWeb machine was often the only way to communicate with the outside world, or even across town—published by Gallatin and Toulouse Press (2010). An excerpt from the book, written by our friend and Ashley Award–winning blogger Dedra “G-Bitch” Johnson, can be seen here. (She’ll be at the launch party, too!) Warm thanks to all New Orleans bloggers and others for spreading the word.

Dear Readers of Levees Not War:

We want to apologize to those of you who have checked in lately and wondered about the infrequency of new posts—and to those who may have had trouble accessing the site. The technical, server problems have been remedied. And, on a happier note, the founder of this blog, Mark LaFlaur, has been very busy preparing his New Orleans–based novel ELYSIAN FIELDS for publication, due in early March from Mid-City Books. Here’s a brief description:

New Orleans, 1999. Simpson Weems is a 36-year-old aspiring poet whose life has been on hold—to the breaking point. All he needs to fulfill his potential is to move to San Francisco, but he’s torn between his long-held dream of being a great artist and obligations to his aged, ailing mother and his emotionally volatile brother, the all-demanding Bartholomew. Will someone in his family have to die before he can get to California? And how might that be arranged?

Written “on location” in New Orleans and set shortly before Hurricane Katrina, Elysian Fields combines menace, the comic strangeness of Flannery O’Connor, and hints of magical realism to convey vivid, original characters and a Crescent City that is both recognizable and more odd than visitors usually see.

Please go to marklaflaur.com or the Facebook fan page to learn more about the book—and, in about a month, we hope you’ll order it, either in paperback or for your e-reader. Soon the first chapter will be available at Amazon.com for free downloading or reading online.

Praise for Elysian Fields

Best-selling author Christine Wiltz writes:

“In this compelling and mesmerizing debut novel, Mark LaFlaur has taken on New Orleans in a big way. Elysian Fields is real literature coming out of a real place. A great addition to the already substantial body of New Orleans writing, it’s a story of such originality that the familiar top layer of the city is peeled away. The local color here is handled just right—the depiction of the city’s neighborhoods and peculiarities is right on—but it’s the deeply individualized characters who anchor the story so solidly.”

—Christine Wiltz, bestselling author of The Last Madam and Glass House

And novelist Moira Crone says:

“Fans of A Confederacy of Dunces and The Moviegoer will find much to admire in this well-written, funny, and melancholy—and thoroughly New Orleans—novel. Evocative, poignant, complex and well paced, Elysian Fields is full of delights.”

—Moira Crone, winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award, Fellowship of Southern Writers, and author of The Not Yet

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Only a few mentions of ELYSIAN FIELDS will appear here—after all, Levees Not War is a blog about infrastructure, environment, war and peace, and progressive politics—but we hope you’ll excuse an author’s using one widely known platform to launch another New Orleans–dedicated project.

And we wish everyone a happy, happy Mardi Gras (Feb. 12, if you didn’t know).

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Please “watch this space” for more . . .

Book cover photograph by Derek Bridges; street tile design by Evelyn Menge.

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We see the efforts needed to reduce the slaughter of innocents (of all ages) as comprising three elements: gun control; expanded psychological services; and pressure on Hollywood and video game makers to dial down the ultraviolence.

Not only do the citizens of the United States have an obligation to call at least one elected official to press for reform of gun laws—the more restrictions the better, in our view—but we also have to push representatives to allocate much more generous funding for counseling and psychological services in schools, especially to troubled teenagers, as well as to veterans.

American gun owners possess one-third of all the guns on the planet.

Dave Cullen, author of a book on the Columbine, Colorado, school killing spree of 1999, appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show Friday night and outlined three psychological profiles that cover most of the shooters in mass killings such as Friday’s in Connecticut. Two studies by the FBI and by the Secret Service with the U.S. Department of Education find that there is no single profile; rather, three basic types are (1) individuals so insane they don’t realize what they are doing, as in the Virginia Tech shooting; (2) psychopaths who are rational but lack empathy; and (3) the most common of the profiles, the clinically depressed, including some 6 percent of adolescents. Gun control is not enough: psychological counseling must play a larger part. Conservatives, elected or otherwise, who rail against “Obamacare” are not helping the children—not being pro-life, if you like—because among the provisions of Affordable Care Act are programs to expand psychological counseling services.

And Hollywood! Go to any local cinema, and if not the film you’re going to see, then in the previews you’ll see enough gunfire and explosions to simulate the “shock and awe” of the opening days of the Iraq War. These “big guns” are primarily aimed at men, of course. We don’t see the attraction, but many males of the species—most of whom have never served in the military or gone to war—seem to derive an almost sexual thrill from the gunfire and explosions. Hollywood executives, producers, agents, actors—dial it down. If citizen activists want to give liberal, activist actors such as Brad Pitt or George Clooney a good, life-affirming cause to champion, one that is closer to home and where they’ll likely have considerable influence, press them to reject films that glorify shooting, torture, and general mayhem. The Aurora, Colorado, massacre (July 20, 2012) on the opening night of The Dark Knight Rises appeared to us depressingly unsurprising, given the violence enacted in that entertainment. Twelve killed, 58 injured.

Studies disagree on whether the graphic ultraviolence in video games causes their “players” to go ballistic and kill people, but we’re convinced that these “games” (Resident Evil; Left 4 Dead; Grand Theft Auto, ad nauseam) at least contribute to a culture of glorifying violence and, at the very least, not exactly encouraging reconciliation and diplomacy.

Once again proving herself one of the true adults in Congress, California senator Dianne Feinstein has announced on Meet the Press that she will introduce a bill (with a counterpart in the House) to ban assault weapons. Senator Feinstein has some experience with the damage guns can do: In 1978, when she was president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, she was the first to discover the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, and it was Ms. Feinstein who made the first public announcement of the killings. Please phone your support by calling Senator Feinstein’s office (202-224-3841), the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (202-224-3542; e-mail <senator_reid@reid.senate.gov>), and the White House (202-456-1111 ). Click here for more on positive signs for Feinstein’s bill.

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Think of the children most precious to you—your own daughter, a nephew, a neighbor’s or church friend’s cute twins—and then imagine Wayne LaPierre, CEO, executive vice president and chief political strategist of the National Rifle Association, or conservative members of Congress telling you that their lives are worth less than Americans’ second Amendment liberties. NRA president David A. Keene wrote after President Obama’s reelection, “We have to be prepared to fight him on each front, rally friendly elected officials, persuade those in the middle and let all of them know that gun owners will not stand idly by as our constitutional rights are stripped from us.” What would you tell them? Package that indignation and aim it constructively at your mayor, the president, and members of Congress who will listen and act.

There is a long and outrageous history of Republican opposition to any gun control measures, even after massacres. Unfortunately, Democrats have not been much more helpful, at least not in substantial, concentrated numbers. “Pro-life” conservatives love to say “protect life,” “protect the innocents,” but their concern often seems limited to one issue only, which makes us suspect their true intentions. Rep. Barney Frank used to say that for Republicans, life begins at conception and ends at birth. Now is a chance for Republicans to prove him wrong, if they can, if they will.

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Further Reading

A Guide to Mass Shootings in America (Mother Jones)

A 30-year timeline of mass shootings, with photos of the killers (Mother Jones)

A Morally Serious Videogame about Guns and Violence (Political Animal @ Washington Monthly)

Facts Behind the Tragedies (Political Animal @ Washington Monthly)

New York Times coverage of the Newtown, Connecticut, massacre

Nicholas Kristof (NYT): Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?

Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy (Mother Jones)

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you and your friends and family have much to be thankful for this year, and that you’re able to spend the day with people you love. We wish you a festive gathering over a Thanksgiving dinner with good food and drink, and happy memories of the day.

Among the things we’re grateful for is the massive, energetic volunteerism by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds all over the USA to re-elect President Obama (more about this in a post to come) and to elect liberal and progressive Democrats to Congress, including many women. This engagement by young and old shows the power of the people—“citizens united” indeed—over big-dollar corporate influence, and we trust it will result in some good legislation, and defense against bad bills.

Just weeks after Superstorm Sandy battered the East Coast, we are thankful for a president whose administration is responsive to natural disasters (and proactive in preparing, too). We know from all-too-bitter experience that it doesn’t always happen this way. Proving that government can be a force for the public good—and that taxpayers’ dollars can help here at home—FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard and other agencies have been helping New Jersey, New York, and other areas rebuild from Sandy. We are also grateful to the many good-hearted volunteers who have contributed money and supplies and their own muscle to help people whose homes were destroyed or damaged.

Please consider making a donation to the Red Cross today. Click here or phone 1-800-HELPNOW or text “RedCross” to 90999. Even $5 or $10 can help buy food, water, bandages, batteries, blankets, and other necessities. Thank you.

We are also grateful, and relieved, that Israel and Hamas in Gaza have agreed to a cease-fire (thanks to persuasive intervention by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi). We pray it lasts and that peacemakers may prevail (esp. in the proximity of already-burning Syria). For more about this situation and other Middle East affairs we recommend Prof. Juan Cole’s blog Informed Comment.

Showing Thanks to Veterans

Today, and so soon after Veterans Day, we don’t want to forget the millions of active-duty troops and the veterans who have fought in the wars since 2001. We opposed the second war and the prolongation of the first, but nevertheless we believe all the servicemen and women deserve good training, equipment, and excellent health care (physical and psychological) during and after their tours of duty. They deserve lifelong care.

This morning we did what we meant to do on Veterans Day: Donated again to the Iraq Veterans Against the War and to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). These organizations do good work and deserve the support of millions of civilians on whose behalf these veterans have served, risking their lives. If each one of us gives just $25—or even 10 or 20—that money can go a long way to helping veterans in need. Among other things, the groups are pressuring the shamefully tardy Veterans Administration and the U.S. Congress that funds it to move faster on processing veterans’ applications for health care. (See IAVA statement here.) The backlog is approaching 1 million claims, and many vets have to wait a year or more just to hear if they’re going to get help or not. Many members of Congress love to vote for wars; they just never want to pay for them.

See our blogroll, bottom right, under “Anti-War,” for links to IAVA, IVAW, and other organizations that work for veterans and their families. If you can, please make a contribution today.

Thanks.

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Thanks and Homage to President John F. Kennedy

One last thing: We cannot let the convergence of 11/22 and Thanksgiving go by without paying homage to one of our most admired presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was slain on this day 49 years ago in Dallas. We are not referring to the “glamour” of the “Camelot” mythology, but rather to the president’s strong insistence on working for peace, for finding diplomatic solutions to crises whenever possible—the Cuban Missile Crisis is the example par excellence—and his (admittedly cautious) support for civil rights, among other deeds to be thankful for. Did we miss something, or were there not any commemorations, in print or elsewhere, of the successful averting of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), whose 50th anniversary passed this October?

Below are a few words from his great commencement address at American University in June 1963, perhaps his clearest evocation of America’s responsibility and opportunity to set an example toward a more peaceful coexistence with the nations of this fragile planet:

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. . . . 

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles—which can only destroy and never create–is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. 

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war—and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. . . . 

So, let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. . . . 

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See last year’s tribute to President Kennedy here.

For a generous sampling of President Kennedy’s speeches, we recommend the book + CD Let Every Nation Know: John F. Kennedy in His Own Words by Robert Dallek and Terry Golway (2006). Each of 34 speeches is introduced, but transcripts are not provided. For transcripts, see the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, under the tab “JFK.”

We highly recommend James W. Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (2010), with special emphasis on his often behind-the-scenes efforts toward peace.

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[ cross-posted at Daily Kos ]

“The task of perfecting our union moves forward”

“I have never been more hopeful about America. . . . I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting. . . . 

“I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. . . . We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.”

—Barack Obama, Chicago, Nov. 6, 2012

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“[H]ere is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens . . . who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. . . . I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. . . . The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.”

—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address (1937)

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This Is Our Idea of “Morning in America”

Last night Barack Obama became only the second Democratic president since FDR (in 1936) to win a second term with more than 50 percent of the vote in both his elections.

In our humble opinion, a win for the Democrats is a win for the American people. Of course not every American person sees it that way, but when illness or disaster strikes, or food needs inspecting, or voting rights need protecting, it’s best to have a government managed by the party that fought for and established Medicare, Social Security, FEMA, the Voting Rights Act, and so on. The party that believes government can and should be a force for the public good. Not the only solution, but indispensable and more reliable than the profit sector.

And it is a good thing for the 47 percent (indeed, the 99 percent) that the man who said “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives” is not going to be the next president of the United States. We do want to say, however, that Gov. Romney, after waiting nearly an hour and a half before calling the president to concede (Karl Rove live on Fox was not ready to give up on Ohio), gave an admirably gracious and dignified concession speech to his supporters in Boston (see photo below).

From the East Coast to the West, across the Rust Belt and Midwest, and in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico, President Obama held ground he won in 2008. With a weak economy—nearly drowned in Grover Norquist’s bathtub by Republicans intent on strangling Obama’s every initiative—and under relentless attack from hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of negative ads by “dark money” conservative interests, he lost only two states he’d won in 2008: North Carolina and Indiana. The critical battleground states of Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nevada stayed blue. (See maps below). As of this writing the president’s electoral vote margin is about 100 (303 to 206), and his popular vote margin is roughly 3 million: 60.4 million to Romney’s 57.6 million. Florida is still counting.

Professor Warren Goes to Capitol Hill

Besides our elation with the president’s victory, in this year of a “war on women”—or at least appallingly callous attitudes and legislative hostility—we are delighted to welcome new senators Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (Wisc.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.Dak.), and Mazie K. Hirono (Hawaii), and congratulate senators Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) on their reelection. (More about women’s wins here and here.) The Senate races are not all decided, but the Democrats have gained at least one seat, and currently have a 55–45 majority, with Maine’s newly elected independent Angus King likely to caucus with the Dems. With more progressives in his ranks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is talking again about filibuster reform. Yes, please!

One of the best things about Elizabeth Warren’s election to the Senate is that, being so knowledgeable about financial institutions and law, and so committed to reform on behalf of protecting those who are not investment bankers, she will keep the discussion on a more serious and fact-based plane. It is especially sweet that the incumbent she defeated 54% to 46%, Scott Brown, was the senator most lavishly funded by Wall Street contributors. One of the MSNBC people last night (Chris Matthews?) said that Warren is the most intellectually substantive person elected to the U.S. Senate since the late Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). Not only that, but she’ll put a lot of energy and momentum into Wall Street and consumer protection reform, which has really only begun. Now Jon Stewart will really want to make out with her.

Significant Achievements to Reinforce and Build Upon

“If Barack Obama does get a second term, given the achievements of these past four years, he will likely be enshrined as being one of the most consequential presidents in modern American history. If he does not get a second term, he will be seen as a one-term president whose political failures and not achieving a second term will ultimately overshadow what he got done in terms of policy. . . .

“This is about one of the most consequential presidents ever and how it will be remembered and whether the achievements of that presidency will be held or whether they will be clawed back.”

—Rachel Maddow, Nov. 5, 2012 (Election Eve)

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There is so much to be said about the re-election of Barack Obama. We have had our differences with certain policy decisions, but overall we are mightily relieved that this progressive president’s hard-won achievements—with big help from Democrats, and only Democrats, in Congress—will not be dismantled, but reinforced. It is good for our country that the Affordable Care Act will not be repealed. It is good that the next appointments to the Supreme Court will be well qualified and fair-minded, like his first two appointments, who do not put corporate interests first. It is good for our national security that this focused chief executive—and not a man who knows and cares little about foreign affairs—will remain commander in chief.

The list of President Obama and the Democratic Congress’s achievements in his first two years (before the House went to Republican majority in the 2010 midterm elections) is remarkable, and largely forgotten—this is partly his own administration’s fault—but the admirable legacy can be sustained and the public memory refreshed despite the countervailing blowhard winds of Fox News and the machinery of denial and distortion.

In addition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the $787 billion stimulus package), the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Obama’s first-term achievements include:

The rescue and revival of the American automobile industry • Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act • withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq • college student loan reform • Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (2009) • Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (2009), tripling the size of AmeriCorps • ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell • Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (2009) • Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 • new fuel-efficiency standards that should double gas mileage by 2025 • won Senate approval of a strategic arms deal with Russia to slash warheads and increase transparency of mutual inspections . . .

The list goes on. And in the first two years, Democrats actually reduced the deficit, though you’d never know it to listen to the Noise Machine (or the Dems, except in campaign mode). The U.S. deficit shrank 9% in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010, the fastest one-year deficit reduction since 1984. The Affordable Care Act, too, was designed to reduce health care costs and the federal deficit over time. (Ezra Klein explains.) With all the right-wing noise about “exploding debt” caused by “tax-and-spend Democrats,” you’d never know that George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton.

As Rachel Maddow has pointed out in a blog post elaborating on her comments the night before the election, if Obama had not won a second term, his election and promises of “hope” and “change” might have been dismissed as a fluke, and very likely his achievements would be repealed, Etch A Sketched out of public memory (not her words), incinerated in the memory hole, paved over with concrete. He would be dismissed as a one-term failure—remember Romney’s incessant comparisons with Jimmy Carter? Except for his being remembered as “the first black president” (one is too many, they would say), he would be no more spoken of than the admirable and super-productive president Lyndon Johnson is now (a real shame).

Had Obama come up short, the immediate threats to key public policies would have been significant, but the more sweeping consequence would have been the lasting damage to a progressive vision of governance. 

It’s easy to imagine the recriminations this morning had the election gone the other way. The president’s 2008 victory would come to be seen as a faddish fluke, but more importantly, everything Obama fought for in his first term would be evidence of failure. For the foreseeable future, presidents would be told not to be ambitious, not to use government as a tool to make a material difference in the lives of working families, and not to rely on Keynesian economics to grow the economy through investments . . . or they too will end up as a one-term disappointment.

—Rachel Maddow, “Yes He Did” (11/7/12)

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A Decisive Victory of Wide and Lasting Demographic Scope

More on Obama’s achievement in this election. Besides holding on to all but two of the states he won in 2008, when he trounced John McCain 53% to 46% of the popular vote, and with 365  electoral votes to McCain’s 173, he also won the following support among women and minorities, who together actually constitute a majority of the U.S. population. Granted, the following groups are not white men so they don’t count as much to the Beltway Pundits—and if they live in cities, can they be the “real America”?—but consider what John Cassidy of The New Yorker reports:

For the fifth time in the past six Presidential elections, the Democrats have won the popular vote. For the second time in succession, Americans have elected a black man, the same black man, as President. . . . [The election] was a triumph of moderation over extremism, tolerance over intolerance, and the polyglot future over the monochrome past. 

In the nineteen-to-twenty-nine age group, Obama won sixty per cent of the vote. He got ninety-three per cent of the black vote, seventy per cent of the hispanic vote, and seventy-five per cent of the Asian vote. Fifty-six per cent of women voted for him, as did sixty-three per cent of unmarried people, two-thirds of secular voters, and about four-fifths of gays and lesbians. 

Romney carried fifty-nine per cent of white voters (male and female); a majority of all Americans aged forty-five or over; and fifty-seven per cent of married people. In ideological terms, Obama forged a liberal-moderate course to victory. Despite his post-Convention lurch to the center, Romney couldn’t win over enough self-identified moderates. In that group, Obama took fifty-seven per cent of the vote.

For more demographic details, see New York Times exit poll results here, and Daily Kos’s “The kids will destroy the GOP”:

Obama won the 18–29-year-old vote 60-37. He lost the 65 and older vote 56-44. Guess who will be around longer? And for Republicans hoping that young voters would stay home, the opposite happened—in 2008, the 18-29-year-old vote was 18 percent of the total. It was 19 percent this year. . . .

Asians voted for Obama by a 73-26 margin. Latinos did so by a 71-27 margin. And African Americans did so by a 93-6 margin. Democrats may have only won 39 percent of the White vote, but that’s all we need these days.

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Near the conclusion of his Second Inaugural Address, Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.”

*  The words in bold in the FDR quotation at top are etched in stone on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.

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Scenes from Election Day 2012

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[ cross-posted at Daily Kos ]

In our last installment of Fun with Volunteering, we told about taking a bus ride to Philadelphia. Last night and this morning, on the eve and the early hours of Election Day, we went to Obama for America–New York headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan to man the phones to get out the vote in the crucial swing state of Ohio. (Getting to OFA HQ via LIRR this morning, one week after Hurricane Sandy was its own act of, shall we say, determined commitment to the cause.)

•  Daily Kos reports that Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, i.e. Cleveland, is “poised to surpass 2008 turnout.”

•  Other states’ OFA Get-Out-the-Vote hotlines here

The spacious rooms were well attended by eager volunteers young, old, in between, and even canine. Many callers were volunteering for the first time, and we hope they’ll be back for other campaigns and for legislative initiatives between now and 2014. The Affordable Care Act, for example, likely would never have squeaked through the House and Senate if not for month after month of determined, repeated phone banking to urge voters to press their members of Congress to back health care reform. The same is true of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill.

Earlier in this election year there was talk of an “enthusiasm gap,” or a diminished sense of passion among Obama’s supporters, and that was probably true compared to the excitement of 2008, but as Election Day has come closer the gap has evaporated and the enthusiasm has grown. We volunteered for both campaigns, 2008 and 2012, going door to door and working phone banks, and the numbers may have diminished a bit from four years ago—what incumbent president’s wouldn’t?—but we can attest that in numbers of volunteers, their seriousness and dedication to democracy and making the United States a better country for all, and demographic variety, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have a very strong and energetic base of volunteers indeed. “Fired up, ready to go.”

Sorry to Pester, Ohio, But We Really Need You

Many of the calls last night went unanswered. Not surprising: They must be tired of hearing from us, and avoiding robocalls. Still we’re cheerful and optimistic when a live person answers. Hello, I’m a volunteer for Obama for America, just checking to see whether you’ve managed to vote yet, or if you’re planning to vote tomorrow? And may I ask if President Obama can count on your support? Wonderful, thank you. Most people on our list said Yes, I’ll be voting, and yes, for President Obama. Some preferred not to say whom they’re voting for. That’s fine. Thanks for your time. Good luck.

A volunteer organizer named Brent was on the phone with a man in Ohio who did not, could not believe that Brent was really an unpaid volunteer for Obama-Biden. No assurance would persuade him otherwise. This man also would not believe that in late 2008 and early 2009 the Obama administration had helped save the auto industry from bankruptcy and thereby preserved 1 in 8 jobs in Ohio, some 800,000 jobs. (In late 2008, when no private, commercial banks would loan money to General Motors and Chrysler when they were about to go bankrupt, the incoming Obama administration arranged a government-backed rescue; it was not technically a “bailout” because the money was repaid, with interest. In November 2008, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

As we listened to this conversation in near disbelief, a volunteer at our table said that one-third of registered Republican voters in Ohio believe that Mitt Romney deserves more credit than the president for the killing of Osama bin Laden. Can this possibly be true? Maybe not one-third, but according to Public Policy Polling 1 in 6 Ohio Republicans (15%) believe this.

Most other calls were closer to what we recognize as reality. Many Ohio voters we spoke with had not had terribly long waits in line, though they were in smaller towns; we did not get through to many voters in the Big Three cities of Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Columbus. We felt kind of bad for the poor beleaguered Ohioans, pestered for months by incessant TV commercials and robocalls and cheerful volunteer callers like ourselves. We wish the good people of Ohio peace and quiet, but first we wish them an incontestable Democratic majority on the presidential and congressional levels.

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Pets, too, can help get out the vote.

All you need is a mobile phone and a few hours to call your fellow citizens in swing states.

Top photo: Swedish-American volunteers for Obama cheer and brighten the atmosphere.

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