Commentary

"I won't play for the S.O.B.," was what Ernie Davis said when he found out he was drafted by the Washington Redskins football team in the early 1960s. Davis is the subject of a new Hollywood film called The Express, a film that takes an interesting look at how much racism affected Black athletes in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Davis played college football at Syracuse University, in part, because he was recruited by another great running back named Jim Brown. Brown's character is featured in the film and is pegged as somewhat of an agitator, but the film never honestly represents how much the struggle for equality motivated Brown or other Black athletes throughout their careers.

At the same time, The Express does a good job of representing the difficulties that Black athletes faced when playing sports in any part of the country. Ernie Davis was one of three black players on the Syracuse teams of 1959-1961 and became the first Black player to win the Heisman Trophy in 1961. The film primarily deals with the 1959 season when Syracuse won the national championship and depicts the racial hatred that was directed towards the team. When the team visited West Virginia to play a game they were met by an angry crowd that threw food and glass soda bottles at them. Even more disturbing was when Davis was tackled, the opposing team would jump on him and punch him while on the ground. This all happened while the referees watched and did nothing to stop such a brutal display. This type of treatment met the team no matter where they traveled, but the worst experience depicted in the film was when Syracuse traveled to Texas to play for the national championship.

Syracuse was ranked number one in the country and played Texas for the national title. When the team arrived to the hotel they had booked for the players, Davis and his fellow black teammates were prevented from entering. They had to sleep in the bellhop quarters in the basement. During the game, the Texas players would also abuse Davis after being tackled and at times would hit him after the play was over. Davis and Syracuse went on to win and Davis was named the MVP of the game. However, since the MVP award ceremony was scheduled at a local country club, a club that prohibited Blacks from entering, the team decided to have the ceremony at a local bar.

While the film does depict some of the racist tactics used against Black people during the Civil Rights era, it fails to provide a clear context for the racist assaults and never really comes to terms with institutional racism. The end of the film leaves one with the feeling that Ernie Davis was able to overcome racial prejudice, so we should be happy and just move on. And this is the failure of the film and so much of the current discussion about racism, because it doesn't address the larger problem of institutional racism that would more accurately be called White Supremacy. White Supremacy is the belief that White, Euro-Americans are a superior race and is so much a part of our thinking and institutions that we are often not even aware of it.

For example, why is it that in the US there is a double standard for drug offenses that affect White drug offenders differently than Black or Latino drug offenders? White drug offenders are more likely to use or sell cocaine, since it is a more expensive drug, while Blacks and Latinos are arrested more often for the less expensive drug, crack. They are both illegal drugs, but the sentencing for crack use is much worse in the US than it is for cocaine. According to The Sentencing Project the average sentence for powder cocaine in the US is 14 months in jail, while the average for crack cocaine is 65 months. It seems that the main reason for such a disparity in the sentencing patterns for these drug offenses is that the judicial system practices policies that are inherently racist by favoring White drug offenders of minority offenders.

A more recent and local example of how White Supremacy is hidden in the decisions of institutions was reflected in September of this year when The Grand Rapids Press chose to distribute an anti-Islam DVD to all its subscribers in their Sunday edition of the paper. A group with far right connections, called the Clarion Fund, paid The Grand Rapids Press to distribute the DVD that tried to depict those who practice Islam as fanatical terrorists. When confronted by the Muslim community about this decision, the editor of the Press, Mike Lloyd, said that since the DVD states up front that not all Muslim are terrorists that demonstrated to him that the DVD was "balanced." Such a response only reflects Mike Lloyd's privilege as a White male working at an institution that is the beneficiary of and promotes White Supremacy. That the editor of the only major daily newspaper in Grand Rapids thinks that one statement in a DVD negates the realities that those who practice Islam faces shows how privileged he is. The fact is that both the US government policy and major media representation of Islam has for decades, but more vehemently since 9/11, has depicted Muslims as fanatical terrorists. This negative depiction has translated into discrimination and violent hate crimes against American Muslims. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported last year a rise in both workplace discrimination and air transportation profiling of Muslims. In addition, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee also documented an increase of anti-Arab discrimination between 2003-2007 in a recent report. Now it must be said that not all Muslims are Arab and not all Arabs are Muslims, but the reality is that many White Americans do not understand those distinctions.

Maybe one other way to talk about racism and White Supremacy in this country is the racial dynamics at play during the presidential race. There has definitely been plenty of negative racial comments that have been directed at Barack Obama and even some of the recent polling has reflected that for up to 25% of the population they have admitted that they would have a hard time voting for a Black person for President. This means that 75% of those polled are in favor of voting for a Black President, but polling can be quite deceiving. Remember what the polls were showing on how Michigan would vote for Proposal 2 in 2006? Most polling showed that about 60% of those voting in Michigan would vote against the proposal to eliminate affirmative action in the state. Well, we all know that this proposal passed because many people were not willing to say publicly that they were against affirmative action, but could vote privately for Proposal 2. Both Granholm and DeVos campaigned against Proposal 2 and since Granholm won, you might have concluded that Proposal 2 would have been defeated. The fact is that more people voted in favor of eliminating affirmative action in Michigan, which would have included some of those who voted for a White female for governor.

I was at a forum that GVSU held in early October entitled "Does Race Matter?" The discussion was framed in the context of the 2008 Presidential race, yet what several of the panelists said was that the real problem wasn't this vague notion of racism, it was White Supremacy. Four of the five panelists said that of course, race is relevant in this years' election cycle, but the discussion around race has mostly been about the character of Barack Obama and not institutional racism in the United States. Look at how the news media presented the comments of Rev. Wright, Obama's former pastor who did nothing more than point out the White Supremacist history of this country. The news media called him anti-American and Obama had to distance himself from Rev. Wright, because he understands that White Americans don't want to be challenged on the history of White Supremacy in this country, especially if he wants to be elected. Other media commentators have pointed out that Obama is different from Rev. Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson because he does not, in the words of George Will, "have an investment in a traditional and, I believe, utterly exhausted narrative about race relations in the US." In other words, Barack doesn't seem too Black because he doesn't make it a point to constantly remind the public of the harsh realties of racism in America.

In some ways, Barack Obama is appealing to White, liberal voters because he does not come across as having a grudge against White people. Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford said the following recently about this dynamic:

"Barack Obama does not carry our burden, in addition to other burdens. He in fact promises to lift white people as a whole's burden, the burden of having to listen to these very specific and historical black complaints, to deal with the legacies of slavery. That is his promise to them."

Having pointed this out, what I think would be a mistake for those of us who care about racial justice in this country is to assume that if Barack Obama is elected the next president of the United States that racial justice will be central to his administration. I am of the belief that it is not going to be central to his administration, since I think that the US government has never been interested in racial equality. The only reason that there are any rights for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Arab or Native Americans in this country is because those populations have fought to gain those rights. They were never a gift from above. There have been White allies to these movements for racial justice and equality and that, I believe, is our task.... to be allies in this struggle and not be content with just voting for a Black president.

In the words of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglas,

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."

My question to all of us is, what will you do for racial justice after the elections?

Jeff Smith is a regular contributor to www.mediamouse.org. He can be reached at jsmith [ - @ - ] mediamouse.org.

By Robert Jensen and Pat Youngblood

We have nothing against voting. We plan to vote in the upcoming election. Some of our best friends are voters.

But we also believe that we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that the most important political moment in our lives comes in the voting booth. Instead, people should take politics seriously, which means asking considerably more of ourselves than the typical fixation with electoral politics.

First, we won't be coy about this election. Each of us voted for Obama in the Texas primary and will vote for him in November. We are leftists who are consistently disgusted by the center-right political positions of the leadership of the Democratic Party, and we have no illusions that Obama is secretly more progressive than his statements in public and choice of advisers indicate. But there is slightly more than a dime's worth of policy differences between Obama and McCain, and those differences are important in this election. The reckless quality of the McCain campaign and its policy proposals are scary, as is the cult of ignorance that has grown up around Palin.

Just as important, the people of this white-supremacist nation have a chance to vote for an African-American candidate. Four decades after the end of formal apartheid in the United States, in the context of ongoing overt and covert racism that is normalized in many sectors of society, there's a possibility that a black person might be elected president. Even though Obama doesn't claim the radical roots of the anti-apartheid struggles of recent U.S. history, the symbolic value of this election is not a trivial consideration. This isn't tokenism, but a sign of real progress, albeit limited.

But even though we make that argument, we will vote knowing that the outcome of the election is not all that important, for a simple reason: The multiple crises facing this country, and the world, cannot be adequately addressed within the conventional political, economic, or social systems. This is reflected in the fact that neither candidate is even acknowledging the crises. The conventional political wisdom -- Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative -- is deeply rooted in the denial of the severity of these crises and hostility to acknowledging the need for radical change. Such a politics of delusion won't generate solutions but instead will lead us to the end of the road, the edge of the cliff, the brick wall -- pick your preferred metaphor, but when the chickens of denial come home to roost, it's never pretty.

These crises are not difficult to identify; the evidence is all around us.

Economics: We aren't facing a temporary downturn caused by this particular burst bubble but instead are moving into a new phase in the permanent decline of a system that has never met the human needs of most people and never will. It is long past the time to recognize the urgent need to start imagining and building an economics based on production and distribution for real human needs, rejecting the corrosive greed that underlies not only the obscene profits hoarded by the few but also the orgiastic consumption pursued by the many. We can't know whether McCain or Obama recognizes these things, but it's clear that both candidates -- along with their parties and the interests they represent -- are not interested in facing these realities.

Empire: The way in which First-World nations have pursued global empires over the past 500 years to grab for themselves a disproportionate share of the world's wealth has never been morally justifiable. The recent phase of U.S. domination in that project is particularly offensive, given U.S. political leaders' cynical rhetoric about democracy. But whatever one's evaluation of the ideology behind the U.S. attempt to run the world through violence and coercion, the project is falling apart. The invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq are not just moral failures but pragmatic disasters. While McCain and Obama have slightly different strategies for dealing with these disasters, neither is willing to face the depravity of the imperial endeavor and neither argues for abandoning the imperial project.

Ecology: It's no longer helpful to speak about "environmental issues," as if we face discrete problems that have clear solutions. Without major changes to the way humans live, we face the collapse of the ecosystem's ability to sustain human life as we know it. Every basic indicator of the health of the ecosystem is cause for concern -- inadequate and dwindling supplies of clean water, chemical contamination in every part of the life cycle, continuing topsoil loss, toxic waste build-up, species loss and reduced biodiversity, and climate change. Unless one adopts an irrational technological fundamentalism -- the faith-based assumption that new gadgets will magically rescue us -- this means we have to downsize and scale back our lives dramatically, learning to live with less. Yet conventional politicians continue to promise to deliver a lifestyle that constitutes a form of collective planetary suicide.

So, we live in a predatory corporate capitalist economy in a world structured by the profound injustice produced by an imperial system that is steadily drawing down the ecological capital of the planet. The domination/subordination dynamic at the heart of this world is rooted in the ideologies of male domination and white domination. This belief in the inevitability of hierarchy grows out of thousands of years of patriarchy, reinforced by hundreds of years of white supremacy. Any meaningful progressive politics also must address not just the worst behaviors that come out of these systems -- the overt sexism and racism that continue to plague society -- but also the underlying worldview that normalizes inequality. Yes, Obama is black, and McCain selected a female running mate, but neither candidate ever speaks of patriarchy and white supremacy.

There are two common responses to the analysis offered here. The first is to condemn it as crazy, which is the response of the majority of Americans. The second, from people who don't find such claims crazy and share the basic analysis, is that we have to be realistic and tone down our arguments, precisely because most Americans won't take seriously anyone who speaks so radically.

But if being realistic has something to do with facing reality, then arguments for radical change are the most realistic. When problems are the predictable consequence of existing systems and no solutions are plausible within them, then arguing for continued capitulation to those systems isn't realistic. It's literally insane.

We live in a country that is, in fact, growing increasingly insane. Fashioning a strategy for political organizing in such a country, and shaping rhetoric to advance that organizing, is indeed difficult. But it must start with a realistic description of the problems we face, a realistic evaluation of the nature of the systems that gave rise to those problems, and a realistic assessment of the degree of change necessary to imagine solutions.

Taking politics seriously in the United States today means recognizing the limits of electoral politics. Voting matters, but it's not the most important act in our political lives. Traditional grassroots political organizing to advance progressive policies on issues is more important. And even more crucial today is the long-term project of preparing for the dramatically different world that is on the horizon -- a world in which an already unconscionable inequality will have expanded; a world with less energy to deal with the ecological collapse; a world in which existing institutions likely will prove useless in helping us restructure our lives; a world in which we will need to reclaim and develop basic skills for sustaining ourselves and our communities.

These challenges are daunting but also exciting, presenting us with tasks for which the energy and creativity of every one of us will be needed. Can we find a way to talk about that excitement which could encourage others to explore these ideas? Can we develop projects to put those ideas into action, even if only on a small scale? When we have tried to articulate this worldview in plain language in recent political lectures and discussions, we have found that a growing number of people not only will listen but are hungry for such honesty.

We don't pretend that number is large right now -- certainly not a majority, and not anywhere near the number needed for a mass movement -- but one wouldn't expect that in this affluent society in which many people are still insulated from the worst consequences of these systems. But that's changing. As more and more people, from many sectors of society, face these realities, they join the search for a community in which to confront this together. Our political work should focus on connecting with people on common ground, articulating a realistically radical analysis, and working from there to construct a just and sustainable society.

So, we will vote on Nov. 4, without hesitation. But more importantly, on Nov. 5 we will be realistic and continue talking about the radical change necessary to build a different world.

Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Pat Youngblood, a social studies teacher at McCallum High School in Austin, are members of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, www.thirdcoastactivist.org. Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and Youngblood can be reached at pat@thirdcoastactivist.org.

Every day, the Grand Rapids Press lands on my front step and I wince as I scan the headlines, steel myself to read the letters on the editorial page, and grit my teeth over the incessant selection of the conservative, cute, and upbeat over pressing issues that are glossed over or ignored entirely. Sometimes my reaction to the Press is more visceral. That was the case when, after reading online about a racist DVD that was being distributed for free in local newspapers, that very item turned up in the Sunday supplements of my own paper. I was so upset I nearly threw up.

On that day, and on so many other days, I go through the same cycle of thought. "Should I cancel my subscription? Should I attempt to get all of my friends to boycott this awful newspaper? Or is it my duty to keep plowing through this day after day, reading the editorials disguised as news stories and the hate-mongering letters and the chirpy 'local interest' stories?" I never come up with an adequate answer for myself. I write letters, as I did about the DVD, which rarely get published (if they published all the letters I write, there would be one at least every week). I find myself looking more and more for alternate source of the news, but I continue to get the Press.

My anger/despair relationship with the Press sometimes seems to me to be emblematic of my life in general. I have found myself swimming against the current my entire life, never finding a place that felt entirely mine. I spent my childhood and adolescence as an outsider in my own social class, growing up in one of the wealthiest areas of the state and feeling like I probably had been dropped down the wrong chimney by the stork. As a child, I was constantly giving away my possessions to anyone who looked like they might need a scarf, a stuffed animal, or a pair of mittens more than I did, knowing that behind me was an endless sea of replacement items that never seemed to diminish. Each time I left the house, my nanny would do an inventory of what I was wearing and carrying, and she was lucky to get me back home again with half of what I'd left with. One time she led me through a museum for about a half-hour before she noticed that I was barefoot, having given my shoes away to a little girl while I waited in the entry hall.

By the time I was in high school, my parents were seriously worried. In the summers, when my peers were water-skiing and taking tennis lessons, I was boarding buses and scraping paint off of inner-city houses, or teaching crafts (at which I was hilariously bad) to kids in a daycare program downtown. I was constantly missing important events like the yacht club regatta or the Friday night dances at the country club, and enduring many lectures as a result. One time my mother gravely explained to me that if I continued to refuse to take golf lessons, some day I would not be ready when the wife of my husband's boss wanted me to play golf with her, and his promotion might hang in the balance. I sat listening to her as if she was sending a transmission from Mars, because she and I were on such different planets by that time that we could barely hear each other.

Most of the students I went to high school with channeled their parents' beliefs and social style without examination, and although I had grown up with them, I was constantly astonished by their behavior. One time, a distinguished scholar came to our school to talk to us about the history of school busing and the continuation of civil rights struggles in Michigan education. After he finished speaking, the president of the National Honor Society raised his hand and told the speaker that if he had any notions of bringing "his people" to our community, he would be sorry he'd ever been born. That same student asked me out the next week, and I told him I'd rather eat ground glass. At the end of my senior year, I was selected for two senior "awards": Best Smile and Worst Debutante. (Yes, I went to a school where "Best Debutante" was a highly prized honor.) My mother was not amused.

I longed for the escape of college, but by the time I was sixteen my father had died and my mother was unfortunately in charge of the money, including my education fund. She decided that, in order to save me from myself, the drastic step of sending me to the most conservative college she could find was necessary. I ended up going to Hope College. This was only moving her square peg from one round hole to another, but my mother didn't realize it at the time. My life among the WASPs ended and my life among the evangelicals began.

My mother had had no encounters in her life with Calvinism, and neither had I, so I was completely unprepared for what happened next. On one of my first days on campus, I was sitting under a pine tree and a young man sat down next to me and asked me where I'd come from and what church I attended. I told him a little about my background, including the fact that I'd been baptized both a Catholic and an Episcopalian. He asked, "So are you a Christian or a Catholic?"

"Catholics are Christians," I answered, puzzled.

"No, they're not," he said calmly.

"Catholics were the original Christians," I said, wondering if he'd ever studied any church history.

"Catholics worship idols," he said. "They are not Christians. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Well," I answered, "I was basically raised as an Episcopalian, but taught Catholic prayer and tenets. And I'm interested in Catholic liberation theology. But Anglicans are really more part of a Catholic, rather than Protestant, church tradition anyway."

"Then you're not a Christian," he said sadly. "You don't know Jesus."

I raised my eyebrows. "Are you sure you do?" I asked.

It was going to be a long four years.

In addition to navigating the labyrinth of right-wing theology in my many required religion courses, I started a number of wars on other fronts during my college years. I helped organize dining-hall protests when it turned out the college food service was not buying supplies in accordance to farm worker union boycotts. When a group of students discovered that the food service was also using student board payments to subsidize large banquets for college donors, my roommate and I went off board for a year in protest. Since there were no cooking facilities in our dorm, we ate a lot of salads and made grilled-cheese sandwiches with our irons, and got really tired of both. Despite a double-major workload, I managed to get onto an advisory board for what were called "campus life issues," the only real voice that students had in some quite repressive college policies.

My biggest battle, though, as an official fish out of water on campus was over a policy Hope was instituting to hire only "Christian" professors. (Whether they were Christian or not was apparently determined in something of the same manner that I was vetted during my first week on campus). The president of the college at the time tended to insulate himself from students, but I started marching up to his home, ringing the doorbell, and demanding to talk to him about what I considered to be a discriminatory practice. These were long, hard discussions over a period of several years that boiled down to one basic issue--that it was apparently dangerous to have, say, a Buddhist teaching a class on Buddhism when you could hire a Calvinist to offer the Christian perspective instead, a premise with which I vehemently disagreed. This ongoing fight with the president, though private, gained attention on campus. During the opening ceremony for school my senior year, the president said from the pulpit, "I've been talking to some students this week," and several pews' worth of students turned around to stare at me. A friend of mine leaned over and said, "My God, Kate, have you been to see him already? You've only been back for three days!"

But at the end of four years, it seemed to me that, no matter how hard I had fought, nothing had been accomplished. It was a hard lesson, it hurt deeply, and I blamed myself as much as the place I had attempted to change. The food service continued to buy Campbell's soup and scab grapes; the Campus Life Board continued to out-vote its student members, the "all-Christian faculty" goal was locked into policy and practice. The smooth, conservative waters closed back over the college, unruffled, and it was time for me to swim forward to graduate school.

It was during my time in college that I got my first look at the Grand Rapids Press. I had ignored it during my first two years in West Michigan, but when I was a junior I started dating a man from Grand Rapids. We would go out for breakfast on Sunday mornings with newspapers we bought on the walk to the restaurant: the New York Times for me and the Grand Rapids Press for him. One morning, I asked him if I could look through his paper and leafed through several sections. "This...this is like a cartoon newspaper!" I said.

"It is not," he said. "What do you mean by that?"

What did I mean, exactly? I struggled to articulate it. "There's nothing in here," I said finally.

"It's twice as big as your newspaper!" he said defensively.

"It is enormous," I agreed, looking at the sections bloated with baldly edited wire-service stories and weird, comic-book-like illustrations. Although I didn't want to dis my lover's hometown to his face, I felt silently thankful that I would never end up living in a place that had such a ridiculous newspaper.

I was headed, I thought, to either New York or Boston for graduate school, but then I gave a poetry reading in Chicago. It was attended by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who taught in Montana. Later that summer, he called me and asked if I would come and study with him. Montana sounded like an adventure, light years away from both my tennis-and-blazer hometown and my religious-right college. So I voluntarily headed out to yet another place where I really, really did not fit in.

Montana, imbued with its cowboy culture and its virgin-whore view of women, was an uncomfortable place, although not as bad as college. There was not really any overt bigotry mainly because there were almost no minorities--in this way it resembled a whole-state version of my hometown. Religion, apart from some Latter-Day Saints wandering around from door to door, seemed nonexistent. The student body was overwhelmingly White and came largely from ranching towns. I found their views unpredictable, but the most interesting dynamic was a general disinterest in anything not Montanan. Everyone I met could talk knowledgeably about coal taxes, strip mining, and water rights, but appeared to have no interest in foreign policy, foreign wars, or civil rights. One time I started to talk with a fellow student about the Sandinistas, and he said, "Worrying about that won't get the fences mended."

After graduate school, I got a job for a year teaching reading and running an elementary-school library in a tiny ranching town near the Canadian border. There I could see what that student had meant. The everyday demands of ranching, of struggling to make ends meet in a hostile environment, of facing everything from deadly blizzards to crop losses to the inability to pay for feed and equipment, tended to blot out outside-world concerns. When my special license from the state ran out, I did not renew it. I headed back to a place where I had contacts for a job--ironically, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In Grand Rapids, I wasted a lot of time. I worked in a couple of writing jobs for corporations, and found corporate life lucrative but dismal. The largest corporation I worked for was a publisher. It was a job that suited my writing and editing skills but the demands of working 70-hour weeks left little time for any kind of activism. Plus, what I viewed as my failures in college haunted me now that I was back among the radical right again--what was the point of throwing myself against that wall again? And then there was the Grand Rapids Press. I read the letters to the editor declaring that patriots never questioned the President, that God hated gays, that people who supported Roe v. Wade were going to hell, and I would feel demoralized and spent. Sometimes I cancelled my subscription, but I always ended up re-subscribing, because it seemed somehow like part of my job to keep an eye on what was going on, even though I felt I could do little to effect any change and had given up trying. I was keeping my head down.

But eventually I reached a point where change was an absolute necessity. I quit my job, got together the money to go back to school for a paralegal degree, and found work at a civil rights law firm.

The first year, I felt like I could barely catch my breath. I knew that I had been living in a place where people were being persecuted, but until I was inside a place where those people were coming for help, I had no idea of the depth and breadth of the problem. The number of potential cases was overwhelming. The cases we were able to take were heartbreaking. The bravery of the people looking for justice put me to shame. I learned so much from them, and acceptance was one of the most important lessons I learned. One of the best moments of my life came when I was sitting with a client who had been through an exhausting and demeaning deposition by the defense. She broke down and cried. I got her some water. She said, "You know, you're not like a White person. You don't look at me the way that White people do." The fact that she was able, in the midst of the virulent racism she was facing in her case, to see something beyond it brought tears to my eyes.

Along with various Bar Association publications, the Grand Rapids Press was placed in our break room every day. One day, I put it down on the table in disgust and said, "This is a horrible newspaper."

One of the attorneys said, "Yes, it is. Unfortunately, it's the only paper we have."

"I hate reading it," I said.

She smiled. "Try reading what isn't there," she said. "It's illuminating."

I tried to take this Zen-like advice to heart. It improved my relationship with the paper, or maybe it just felt that way because I had found an outlet besides resignation. I had an almost boundless energy for my work, and after a year, the firm took me off regular paralegal duties and had me doing case analysis and the drafting of briefs and other documents. The money was terrible, because civil rights is not a high-paying area of law, but I supplemented my wages with freelance writing and scraped together a living. I was still living in the same place, but finally I was doing something of value, was making at least a small dent of change in people's lives, and I was working with a group of people who saw the world the way that I did.

And then I started to die.

It was a surprise, to say the least, to find out that 35 to 40 years of my life expectancy was going to be lopped off. This time, I became the fish on the dock, gasping for air, diagnosed with a lung condition so rare that only about 350 people in North America have it. The doctors told me I had about eight weeks or so to live.

That was a year and a half ago. Dying slowly is an interesting process, a lot more interesting than I would have thought before I started it. Thinking seems to be my only job these days, as I sort through my various choices in life, looking at connections I didn't see before. In some ways, I wish I had spent my entire life knowing that I was dying slowly, so I would have acted faster and more decisively at each point in my life. Would I have not allowed my early activism efforts to discourage me so completely? Would I have chosen meaning in work earlier? Would I have spoken more loudly, taken more risks, fought harder? Would I have lived in a place friendlier to my political and social views? Why did I spend my entire life in places where I felt I didn't belong? And should it really have been my goal to feel like I belonged, to be comfortable? Wasn't that really the biggest time-waster of all?

One of the things I've been thinking about lately in connection with these questions is the year I spent teaching in Montana, and the Hutterite children who I taught there.

The year that I taught in Montana, the state required that Hutterite children who lived near public schools attend them for the first time. The Hutterites are similar to the Amish, except that they live on communal farms and have no personal property. The state sent an educator to our school before classes began to talk to us about Hutterite beliefs and the problems that the state expected when these children arrived for their first days away from their communities. "They will probably be ostracized by the local children," the educator said. "You'll have to deal with many awkward moments."

There were, in fact, awkward moments. On the first day of school, I gave each child who came into the library a bookmark I had made. The first Hutterite child who received one looked at it, and then handed it back politely, because of course he wasn't allowed to own it. Hutterite children are also taught never to make eye contact with their elders, so whenever I would speak, they would put their hands behind their backs and lower their heads. This made me feel like I was yelling at them instead of, for example, explaining why they might like to read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

One day, the little Hutterite girl from the first grade walked into the library during recess and vomited on the floor, and I discovered she was running a high fever. The nurse was absent that day, and I ended up carrying the child to the cottage hospital a few blocks away. The next day when I came into work, the school secretary said, "The Hutterite councilmen put a gift for you in the library." There, lying in state on my desk, was a freshly strangled goose--beak, feathers, feet and all. Talk about awkward.

But it turned out that there were no awkward moments with the Hutterite children and the kids from the ranching community. Because they had been raised in a communal setting, the Hutterites were geniuses at getting along with their peers. During the first days in school, they would stand at the sidelines on the playground, not grouping together but staying near their classmates; not intruding on anyone's play but simply watching and being themselves. They always waited to be invited to play, and they never played favorites--they would sit with anyone who wanted companionship, join the team of any child who asked, and always be the first to intervene and make peace when a fight broke out. In this cowboy world, the Hutterites were fish out of water indeed: they did not fight, which was a primary way of solving problems; they did not dress in jeans but in their 19th century clothes; they spoke halting English with heavy German accents. But they never altered themselves to fit in. They just waited for whatever acceptance came their way, and if it didn't come, they were untroubled.

I wonder how things would have been different if I had thought to model myself on their example. I don't feel myself to be a peaceful person; I have always been more of a fighter by instinct. But would I have been more effective and less troubled by my inability to fit in if I had used them as my guide?

And what would they have done with a dilemma like the Grand Rapids Press? Ignored it, banned it from their lives, or embraced it as something foreign but not to be feared? The newspaper still comes to my house every day, and every day I still dread it. Sometimes, like on the day that the "Obsession" DVD arrived, I think, "OK, this is it. I don't have to keep reading this crap. I don't have to keep writing letters to the editor. Everyone will understand if I just let go." But I find I can't close my eyes to the place where I'm living, the place where I'm going to die, not even now.

These days, I seem to be adrift on a sea of questions, and the newspaper and the news it does and does not bring is only one of them. But I hope to be swimming with the current, instead of against it, soon, and maybe I'll find more answers then.

Kate Wheeler

As of this writing, the US is just 50 days from deciding who the next president of the country will be. Now that the two major party conventions are over the madness of the remaining 8 weeks of the election season is upon us.

No surprise that it is called an election season, kind of like the Christmas shopping season, where people rush frantically from one store to another to find the best deals. Right now, the two major party candidates and their handlers are rushing to present either the best ads that promote their ticket or they are busy running ads trying to trash the character of their opponent.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Obama campaign broke their own record for money raised in a month. The Obama camp in February of this year had broken the record by raising $50 million, but the data shows that this was surpassed in August when the campaign for change raised $66 million. McCain was reported to have raise $47 million that same month. Any reasonable person might ask what do the candidates do with all this money?

It should be no surprise that the bulk of that money is used to by ad space/time in news media. Since the early 1980s, the two major political parties have gone this route to try to convince the public through 30 second ads that their candidate is the best choice. In late August, I visited the three Grand Rapids-based TV stations (channels 8, 13 & 17) to look at their political files and see how much money the stations made from political ads. Between the two major political parties, over $1.6 million dollars was spent for just a six-week period on political ads. And, was has been the content of some of these ads?

Most of the ads have not focused on what the candidates will do or where they stand on issues, rather the ads have tended to be criticisms of the other side. For example, an ad that the McCain camp ran in July and August in this media market claimed that "Obama voted against funding to support our troops." According to www.factcheck.org, a fabulous non-partisan source that critiques all paid ads, the McCain ad is mostly false. Senator Obama only voted once against US military appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but all those other votes he cast were in favor of Pentagon spending for those wars. McCain's people wanted to present Obama as anti-US troops, by voting once against military funding. The irony is that Obama has almost unanimously voted to fund the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This type of advertising hopes to create conservative and liberal framework for how the public should view the candidates, when in fact the candidates are very similar on major issues like military spending.

But, the media spectacle isn't just limited to political ads. The news media themselves contribute to the absurdity of the electoral season by how they report on issues. I have been tracking the local news since the end of the Republican Convention in St. Paul. Here is a sampling of articles that have appeared in the Grand Rapids Press since then. On Sept. 7, there was a story asking whether Gov. Palin can be a mom and a Vice President at the same time and then another story that same day on whether the Colbert Report helped the Dems more than the GOP. On Sept. 10, there was a story exploring whether or not Senator Obama called Gov. Palin a pig with lipstick and a Sept. 11 story about the Democrats accusing the GOP of lies. Then there was a Sept. 15 story about McCain making a "pit stop" to campaign at a NASCAR event. However, my favorite in that week of Press articles was the front page story of Sept. 15 talking about whether or not candidates are using eyeglasses as a fashion statement. I'm not making this up. The story comes with photos of Gov. Palin and former Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos sporting their trendy eyeglasses. Glad to see that the media is going out of its way to provide the public with important information before going to the polls on November 4.

This what I mean by the media spectacle. Lots of flash and no substance. The media wants us to stay tuned for the latest news breaking story on the candidates but doesn't want us to bother with issues. Noam Chomsky says, that the people are "spectators who are not supposed to bother their heads with issues."

Take for example the federal government's decision to buy Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. This was a $300 billion dollar bailout that will be paid for by, you guessed it, the public. The news media was pretty silent on where the candidates stood on this matter. And since the fall of these two financial institutions, other financial companies have been bought out to prevent them from collapsing. The brokerage firm Merrill Lynch was bought out by Bank of America, but what the major media didn't report was which politicians gained from the sale. According to www.opensecrets.org, "Two of the richest members of Congress owned the most stock in the company. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) reported holding between $500,001 and $1 million on his most recent personal financial disclosure, covering 2007, and Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) owned between $250,003 and $601,000 in stock." These two politicians and many others made money from the sale.

The website goes on to report that since 1990 Merrill Lynch had donated $14.7 million to federal candidates, with the top three recipients of money during that time being John McCain ($394,300), Hillary Clinton ($290,650) and Barack Obama ($229,100). The same is true for Lehmen Brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - all previously big contributors to political campaigns and now the direct beneficiaries of the government bailouts.

But, maybe Chomsky is right. Maybe this kind of stuff just hurts our heads too much. I don't care if huge financial institutions are being bailed out by taxpayer money while working people can't make a living. I want to know about the character of candidates, the clothes they wear and what their favorite movies are. With that kind of reporting, I will feel like the candidates can truly relate to what is important to me. I think the elections should just adopt an American Idol model. They can sing and dance and answer a few questions from a panel of expert judges and then we can really have a democratic vote.

Jeff Smith is with the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy, which has been monitoring local news since 1998. jsmith [ - @ - ] mediamouse.org

For years, social theorists have been debating the rapid disappearance of what they call the public arena or public space. It is argued that there is less space in communities where the public can freely express themselves or not be subject to the interests of capital. Translated into street lingo, it means that your free speech rights are going bye bye and any and all flat surfaces are potential space to sell you more shit.

If you have been to the outdoor concerts in downtown Grand Rapids this summer you will have seen how a public space--Rosa Parks Circle--has been transformed into a nearly privatized space. First, the concerts are brought to us by some corporation. Wednesday night Blues on the Mall are brought to us by Budweiser, which means that all night long, if I want to admire the musicians I have to look at a banner brandishing the Bud logo. Second, there are now so many "vendors" at these events that public space to stand, sit or dance has been limited. Third, during and after the show the public is admonished to "come join the band at the BOB." Like that yuppie watering hole needs people to tell them to come into their dress coded meat market for more entertainment. And finally, if you would dare to express yourself in this public space by handing out information about say, voting, you would be asked to leave. Funny how a space that was funded with public money and named after a Civil Rights hero doesn't recognize our public rights.

Not only is the sharing of information and ideas in a public space becoming more and more unacceptable it has culturally been associated with communicable diseases. If you have ever tried to hand out flyers in any urban area, you know what I am talking about. If people see you from a distance and know that you have something you are handing out and they will do one of the following: a) cross the street or walk as far away from you as possible, b) they will not look up so as not to have to make eye contact with you, c) will say "I'm not interested" even before you tell them that you want to give them free cookies, or d) say they will take your information if you take theirs. Their information will most often be a religious pamphlet that gives you the cliff notes version of biblical salvation. If you agree to take their handout then they will engage you in conversation about the existence of God and you will not hand out another flyer all day.

Even if you don't hand out flyers, but want to post them in public spaces you run the risk of harassment from business owners or the cops. Have you noticed in Grand Rapids how city staff are now used to go around town to tear down flyers by grassroots and community groups who have no budgets to communicate their events other than flyering? What the hell is up with that? I mean the city uses my tax money to "decorate" the downtown for the holidays, but I can't put up a stinking flyer? CBS billboards can sell ad space to the US Army telling me to be Army strong, but I can't post a flyer telling students about why they shouldn't join the military? I have been told that stapling flyers to a telephone poll is "unsightly." I guess the billboard for McDonalds tea is a work of art.

The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." So if anyone organizes a march against the US occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan they have a right to do so, correct? Not so fast. As someone who has participated in such activities, we are constantly told by the cops that we need a permit to exercise our Constitutional Rights. And guess what, a permit from the city costs money. So, you have no right to assemble unless you can pay for it and even then you have to follow the government's definition of what it means to assemble.

In recent years, the Ford Museum has made it "policy" that you can no longer hold signs or hand out information to people going in the museum. If you persist in wanting to share information with your fellow Grand Rapidians, the museum security people will call Grand Rapids' finest. Once they come you will be told that if you give people information you will be arrested. They politely tell me that if I want to hold a sign I can do so standing by the river. I once asked if it was any sign or just political signs. I said, "what if my sign said I love kittens, would I be threatened with arrest?" The response was, "I don't want to argue with you." This is the typical response that cops will give you when they know their enforcement is selective and ridiculous. But the point is, this public space, outside a publicly funded museum is not always friendly to the public.

Therefore, the idea of public space is quickly disappearing, but when I say public space, I don't just mean physical space. Public space can also mean cultural space, emotional or even intellectual space. For example, when I went to see the new Batman movie, I paid for my ticket with the knowledge that I would be paying for movie previews and the film itself. However, for several minutes I was subjected to a series of commercial advertisements that was not included on the ticket nor the digital marquee. An ad for Pond's skin cream started off the commercial frenzy. Pond's was using the film Mama Mia as a promotional tool to movie goers to feel bad about their skin. Next, a Sprint ad involved a couple who were obsessed with the Batman and Joker characters. A Honda SUV commercial ensued with the plot beginning with a family that just ran out of gas because they drove a monster truck. The Honda SUV driver gives them a lift and tells them that his vehicle gets a whopping 23 miles per gallons. Glad to see Honda is doing their part to curb global warming. The last commercial was for Mountain Dew and featured a series of silly "public" displays with the tag line of "finding your voice." Sweet, lime green fructose corn syrup can now provide me with the courage to take risks in public. At this point, I was grinding my teeth, but the next message sent me over the edge. The local movie theater then ran a message that read, "we are proud to bring you a commercial free experience." It was bad enough that they made me sit through these awful commercials, but then they want to lie to me on top of it. Holy Bat Poop!

You might be saying, "well Jeff this is a commercial movie theater, of course they are going to run ads before the film." I'm not saying that I was surprised by this fact, what I'm saying is that psychologically we give the private sector too much power to determine what the public can and cannot do. If you don't believe me, then try this the next time you go to the movies. During these commercials if you start to verbally critique them you may get asked to be quiet or the management might come and tell you to leave. Or even better, after the movie, instead of walking out go down to the front and try to facilitate a discussion about what people just viewed. I can guarantee that within minutes you will be asked to leave, since a cineplex is not a public place to share ideas, regardless of any insight you might have into the social pathology of the Joker or your objection to Hellboy drinking Tecate beer.

This hijacking of public space and public discourse by the private sector has even been injected into electoral politics. Last month, I wrote about how private money buys votes during an election, but I didn't mention how private money has also taken over other aspects of the electoral process. When this issue of Recoil is being distributed, both the Democratic and Republican Parties will have just finished their national conventions. What will not be mentioned by most of the corporate media is that the conventions are bought and paid for by corporate America. In June, the Campaign Finance Institute (www.cfinst.org) published a 10-page report on which companies had paid for the conventions. The usual big names were present like AT&T and the Ford Motor Company, but what the study also found was that 25 companies donated to both conventions. As I said last month, big money always hedges their bets so they win no matter what.

So what do we do? How can we reclaim the public? First, we have to identify what public space is and what we have a right to. Second, we need to really use our first amendment rights and not just refer to them as some document. In all my travels to Latin America, people took full advantage of public parks or the central plaza to express themselves with social, political and religious messages. Why in America are hot dog vendors on the street corners and we aren't? Third, we must act boldly when trying to reclaim public space. We must not be timid or intimidated by cops or the private sector that will attempt to silence us. The more we don't courageously reclaim public space, the greater the likelihood that we will lose what little we have left.

To share your ideas on ways to reclaim public space, send me an e-mail or find me on some street corner. jsmith [ -@- ] mediamouse.org

My favorite comedian in the world died recently. George Carlin, the free speech pioneer, died of a heart attack at the age of 71. I liked Carlin from early on, since he not only had the ability to find humor in the mundane, he also wasn't afraid to inject a sharp political analysis into his routines. In fact, a devastating critique of religion, economics, war and the environment became the focus of his stand up comedy, especially in the past 10 years.

In a piece he was doing on white people and Blues music, Carlin says, "White people have no business playing the blues, ever." He then goes on to say, "What White people have to realize is that it is their job to give people the blues, not to play it." Some people might take offense at such an analysis, but as Carlin would say, "Fuck um."

Carlin was particularly critical of our democracy and the electoral process. In a stand up routine he did just before the 2004 election (although it would fit any election year), he made the observation that "this country was bought and paid for a long time ago. Big corporations and rich people own this country and they own the politicians." This sort of a comment might also turn people off, especially those who continue to think that the US operates as a healthy, functioning democracy. So, lets explore that idea a bit, especially since we are just a few months away from the presidential election.

To continue on the same line of thinking that Carlin has left us, on how elections are bought and paid for, here is an excerpt from Title 18, Section 11, Subsection 201 of the US Federal Criminal Code Statute entitled "Bribery of Public Officials." It states:

"Whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official with intent to influence any official, or, being a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act, is guilty of bribery and is subject to 15 years in prison."

Now, I am not a lawyer, but the way I read that statute is that people who try to buy votes or political influence is guilty of bribery. Seems kind of odd since our political system pretty much runs on the influence of money. Maybe the Justice Department is short on personnel who could enforce the "Bribery of Officials" statute, or maybe they are just overwhelmed with where to start.

In the 2004 election, the Bush and Kerry camps raised over half a billion dollars to decide who would be president. That amount of money was surpassed in April of this year in part because of the hotly contested primary race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. If you add up the amount of money raised by all presidential candidates, even those who have dropped out, the amount in mid July has reached one billion. Obama leads the way having already raised $287,397,945.00. This breaks all records for money raised by a presidential candidate and we still have 3 months until Election Day.

At this point some will say, "yeah, but Obama is only getting his money from regular folks, not the big rollers." While it is true that there are people who are making $25 contributions to the Senator from Illinois, most of his money is still coming from wealthy individuals and corporate sectors. In looking at the online source www.opensecrets.org, you will find that the number one contributor to the Obama campaign is Goldman Sachs with over $600,000 in donations so far. Other big contributors include JP Morgan Chase & Co., General Electric, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Time Warner, Microsoft, Google, and the nuclear power company Exelon Group.

So, let's say you give $25 and the financial giant Citigroup gives $371,000, which do you think Obama is likely to pay more attention to when he makes policy decisions? Of course Citigroup has also already given McCain $249,251 as of mid July, since these groups are always want political access no matter who occupies the White House. They always hedge their bets on both of the front-runners, since that is a smart bet in the world of electoral politics. This is generally the norm, with a few exceptions for those groups or individuals that are more ideologically driven.

A good example of how wealthy individuals will give money to both the Democrats and Republicans was recently on display locally. In June, Grand Rapids real estate developer Sam Cummings hosted two big fundraisers. It was announced in early June that Cummings would host a benefit for current City Commissioner Roy Schmidt who is running as a Democrat for the State House seat that will be vacated by Mike Sak. Two weeks later, it was reported that Cummings was hosting a major fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. Cummings understands that in order to protect his interests he will back those who will best represent those interests. He supports a Democrat in a local race, since that seat has been held by a Democrat for more than 20 years, so he places his bets with a sure winner to guarantee his interests will be looked after.

I'm not trying to be cynical here, just honest about how his all works. The idea of one person, one vote is a nice idea, but it is just that, an idea. And don't expect the news media to do much investigation of the role that money plays in electoral politics. First, why would they question a system that they also make tons of money off of? Where do you think the bulk of those millions of dollars the candidates raise ends up? Most of it is spent on paid political ads convincing us how wonderful the candidates are or how awful their opponent is. This means that the broadcasters are pocketing a ton of money, so they have no real incentive to question nor report on how money influences elections. Secondly, why would they want to report on this when they only have time to cover the really important issues in an election.

On July 10, Michelle Obama was in Detroit and the Grand Rapids Press reported on what Governor Granholm had to say at that visit. "Gov. Jennifer Granholm said one of the few differences between herself and first lady-hopeful Michelle Obama is fashion sense. 'I will not show my arms in public.'" And, on July 9, the Press ran a story about a recent poll and found that dog lovers are more likely to vote for McCain. Now that is some goooooood reporting.

So, while you are being carpet bombed with ads and news and conversation about the presidential race, try to keep in mind the role that money plays in politics and take some advice from George Carlin when he says, "I got this moron thing I do....it's called thinking!"

Jeff Smith will continue to be monitoring the elections and election coverage until November 2. Check out the regular analysis on www.mediamouse.org and show a little kindness during this painful process.

In early June, the major news media reported that a proposal in the US Senate to eliminate tax breaks and tax some of the profits from big oil companies was defeated. The Associated Press story that appeared in the Grand Rapids Press cited a few Republicans and Democrats, but energy experts and the public were excluded from the story. This kind of coverage is standard practice by the news media when reporting energy issues.

Another approach to reporting on this issue is for the news media to appear like they are consumer advocates. You have seen it in recent months. How many local TV and radio stations are always telling you which gas stations in town have the lowest prices? Go to their websites and you will find links on the front page telling you where to find the cheapest gas or they will urge you to contact them if you find a "good deal." While this type of journalism may seem like the media companies care about your pocketbook it has nothing to do with journalism. Posting which gas stations have the lowest prices is nothing more than a form of advertising, something the gas companies are not in need of.

Last fall, the president of Shell Oil was in Grand Rapids to give a luncheon talk to members of the World Affairs Council. I went to cover the event for MediaMouse.org and was amazed by the fact that the head of this oil company spent most of the time talking about how Shell is committed to developing alternative fuels. However, when asked to give a percentage of their budget spent on alternative energy the slick oilman said they spend less than 5% of their budget on such matters. The only other news media reporting from the event was a local radio station, yet the local TV stations all ran stories on his visit. Instead of reporting on the event, they each did interviews with the Shell president so they wouldn't have to listen to the 45-minute presentation.

The channel 8 story was by far the worst in terms of not challenging the oil executive. Their interview was for 2 minutes, long by industry standards, and basically consisted of lofting softballs at the Shell President. At one point the reporter asked, "You're in the oil industry, isn't it in your best interest though to protect oil and keep that going as long as possible?" The response was, "I'd rather say, we're in the mobility industry. We like to keep people on the move." Wow! Now that is Orwellian double-speak if I ever heard it. What's more amazing is that the channel 8 reporter didn't even question him. In fact, the whole interview was just a form of stenography, where the reported ran whatever the oil executive said without questioning it.

Much of the news coverage around the current gas/oil prices tends to look like a stock exchange report, where the focus is on the how the prices go up and down, but rarely do they talk about the reasons for this. Part of their hesitation to investigate these issues is that it means work and in the current state of US journalism investigative reporting is not encouraged unless it involves a celebrity scandal. The larger reasons for not pursuing this kind of reporting are that the news media is highly dependent upon the industries that sell oil and are driven by oil. These industries include the big oil companies, distributors, the big automotive companies, and local car dealerships to name a few. These companies all buy ad space/time from media and are therefore less likely to be the subjects of news stories.

Even when the news media reports on policy or regulating the oil industry, the coverage is quite limited as was mentioned at the beginning of this story. Instead of just reporting that the Senate proposal was defeated, why not report on which members of the Senate are recipients of campaign contributions from big oil? If you look at the Center for Responsive Politics database, you will find that in 2008, all major party candidates for president were recipients of campaign contributions from big oil. Both Republicans and Democrats received money, since big oil wants to make sure that whoever gets in has their interests in mind. I think reporting on this kind of influence peddling might be useful information for the public, don't you?

Good journalism might also include some historical context regarding the US government's relationship to big oil. In 1940, President Roosevelt stated in a diplomatic meeting with Britain, "Persian oil is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it's ours." The not so hidden secret is that since World War I the US and Europe have been trying to control the world's oil resources, quite often with force. This has been the case in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Oil resources have played a role in dozens of US interventions, according to historian Bill Blum, author of Rogue State. Iraq is just the most recent example of an intervention that is motivated in part by the control of major oil reserves and we know what the consequences of that intervention have been, particularly for Iraqis.

In addition to looking at US policy and oil interventions, reporters could look at the racist nature of oil exploration. Many of the major oil drilling projects in the world are in Arab countries, on the African continent, or in Latin America. In the case of Latin America and Africa, most of the oil exploration is on indigenous land, such as the Ogoni in Nigeria or the Uwa in Colombia. The continued exploration of oil is one of the main factors in the extermination of indigenous populations, according to Al Gedicks in his book The New Resource Wars.

Then there is the environmental component of oil exploration and the burning of petroleum. We are all now aware of the global warming crisis we face, but how much of that discussion has looked at the role that militarism plays in the contamination of the planet when attempting to control the world's oil resources? Sonia Shah in her book Crude has demonstrated that since WWI those countries with more control of the world's oil have always had better military capability. Why? What do you think the tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, ships, rockets, and submarines run on? The amount of fuel that is expended daily by militaries around the world is generally overlooked in the discussion about global warming and environmental sustainability. When was the last time you even heard and environmental organization condemn war? A chapter of the Sierra Club in Utah tried to speak out against the impending US Invasion of Iraq, but the president of that organization threatened to have their chapter shut down if they persisted.

Clearly, this issue is much more complex than what you are paying at the pump. However, since you do have to pay over $4 for a gallon of gas let me leave you with this thought. The next time a reporter, possibly during the Fourth of July weekend, approaches you to find out how you feel about gas prices tell them that their news agency needs to start reporting on why the prices are so high instead of why you are pissed off about them. If they refuse, then take the microphone out of their hand and stick it where the sun don't shine.

This article is based in part on a workshop I did at the International Peak Oil and Climate Change Conference during the Memorial Day weekend at Calvin College.

Jeff Smith of the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID) presented the following comments at the 2008 Grand Rapids Water Festival held at Riverside Park on June 27.

I was asked to make a few comments based upon an article I wrote for Recoil recently about the issue of Greenwashing. Greenwashing originally was a term that was used to describe a PR tactic by corporations who have tried to present themselves as being environmentally responsible companies. For example, the oil company British Petroleum (BP) changed its name a few years ago to Beyond Petroleum and started to do things like put solar panels on their gas pumps to provide lighting at night. Let's make no mistake about it, these are tactics to not only lull us into thinking they are being environmentally responsible, these are tactics which distract us from having to think about their horrendous environmental and human rights record.

Groups like Corporate Watch have done a great job over the years documenting these kinds of cases and even give out regular awards called the Greenwasher of the Year Award. But since we are here today to learn about and celebrate our relationship to water, let's talk a bit about Greenwashing as it relates to water.

Maude Barlow, who is with the Blue Planet Project and the author of the recent book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, says that humans on average need about 50 liters of water per day for drinking, cooking, and sanitary purposes. Right now, the average person living in Africa uses about 6 liters per day, but the average American uses about 600 liters a day. Barlow calls this a form of water apartheid, where a smaller percentage of the world's population consumes the bulk of the world's fresh water.

And when we talk about our consumption of water, I don't mean what we as individuals use, I mean what our social and economic systems use. For instance, in the production of wood pulp to make paper on average it takes around 120,000 gallons of water to produce 1 ton of paper. In the process of bleaching cotton to make it white it takes 72,000 gallons of water for every ton of cotton. Or think about the production of computers or even just computer chips. Water warrior Vandana Shiva states in her book Water Wars, that for every six-inch silicon wafer used in computers it uses 2,275 gallons of water in the process. On average, a factory operated by a company like Intel will produce about 2,000 computer chips a week. At Intel's plant in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, that means 4,550,000 gallons per week would be used. In order for them to do this they need to bring water in from somewhere else since much of the river and underground aquifers are drying up in the southwest part of the US.

Of course, one of the biggest culprits in diverting water is the bottled water industry. The bottled water industry has been one of the main beneficiaries of the World Trade Organization provision that states that water is a "good" or a "commodity" and therefore can be exported and imported. What this translates to is huge global corporations like Nestle are privatizing water for the sole purpose of re-packaging it and selling it back to us for a profit. And Nestle alone owns 70 different brands of bottled water that they distribute in 130 countries. Again, according to Maude Barlow, for the price that one pays for a bottle of water, you could drink 4,000 liters of tap water.

And to add insult to injury, Nestle promotes itself as a Green company. On their website under the section entitled "Doing Our Part" it says:

"Nestlé Waters worldwide uses just 0.0009 percent per year of the total estimated freshwater withdrawn around the world. This is a small percentage, considering that consumers are choosing bottled spring water more frequently as their choice for calorie-free, convenient refreshment. Consumers also rely upon bottled water if the public water supply becomes unavailable."

So, here is a company that negotiates with local communities to gain access to mostly underground aquifers, water that should be for public use only, and then bottles it and ships it all over the world. Then on top of that, they lobby heavily to prevent legislation that would protect fresh water systems locally and at the international level. They along with other huge companies have hijacked the political process by being involved in unaccountable entitles such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It is really important that we understand that the bottom line for Nestle is to make profits and expand their market and that in my opinion will always be in conflict with truly sustainable water use. Recently, Nestle has begun marketing to kids with their new product line of bottled water called Aquapods. These are small cool shaped bottles of water that are being marketed to kids in DC Comic Books and on Nickelodeon. In response, Kids Only, a leading US manufacturer of children's products has launched its own bottled water brand. They have teamed up with Scooby Doo, Bratz, Superman, and Spiderman so, as it says on their bottles, "kids can get the hydration they need in a fun way...by drinking water that comes in collectible bottles." Just an example of expanded markets, which means that fresh water any where will be targeted for privatization.

So, Greenwashing is a pervasive practice that we must be able to identify and challenge. We cannot let companies or governments who claim to be green off the hook. We have to stop giving these institutions a free pass just because they use this language and come to meetings expressing their concern for the planet. In fact, we need to be extra scrupulous with any institution that claims to be green. This is just good old fashioned critical thinking that we need to apply. Even if institutions make donations to festivals like this we must not assume that they are engaging sustainable green practices.

So, when was the last time you received some spam e-mail from one of the major drug companies telling you that their product will enlarge the size of your penis? I receive so many of these e-mails that I am starting to have a complex. Add to that the e-mails and ads we see from companies for products like Viagra, Lipitor, Zoloft and Vioxx and it is difficult to escape the pressures to use these so-called miracle drugs. Interestingly enough, all of these drugs have nothing to do with prevention, but everything to do with symptoms, mostly medical, or in the case of Viagra a cultural symptom that says men need to get an erection until they are 6 foot under. And what about the names of these drugs? I'd like to sit through a marketing session with these companies to see what process they go through to come up with these names. Does anyone think that using a drug called Zoloft is somehow appealing?

The absurdity of the how the pharmaceutical industry tries to force us to buy these drugs is symptomatic of how bad the health system is in this country. In Michael Moore's most recent documentary Sicko, we were confronted with the ugly realities of a bankrupt health care system in the United States. Many people were brutally familiar with this issue before the film came out since they have little or no access to health care, but the movie presented the information in such a way to look at how the for-profit health system works. The reality is that some 47 million Americans have no health insurance and according to Physicians for a National Health Program, roughly 18,000 people die in the US every year because they have no health insurance.

This issue hit home with me recently when one night I woke up feeling nauseous, the entire room was spinning and then I passed out. When I came to, I was a bit freaked out since I had no idea what was going on. Not knowing what to do, I asked my housemates to take me to the emergency room. So here I am disoriented, ready to throw up, and the first thing they ask me is "do you have insurance?" I say no and then they ask me to fill out some papers, which I can't, because the room is spinning around.

Once I get into the emergency room, I wait for nearly 20 minutes before a doctor sees me. I tell him what happened and he says they are going to run some tests. They check my vital signs, take an x-ray, and do a scan of my brain to see if I have a tumor. Everything comes back negative so the doctor gives me some pills that he says will help with my dizziness. I ask him what is wrong with me and he says he doesn't know. I said what should I do if I pass out again and he tells me to come back.

I go home and within 10 minutes, I throw up several times and then pass out again. So, I did what he recommended, which was to come back to the hospital. Now, keep in mind they just saw me about 45 minutes prior to this and when I show up they process me the same way asking, "do you have insurance?" I said I was just there and they have all my information. They tell me it doesn't matter and I must fill out the paper work again. This time they hook me up to an I.V. and just monitor my vitals. After 90 minutes, I am discharged and given a prescription for more anti-dizzying medication, but still no diagnosis.

Since then, I have seen a Chinese herbalist and spoken with a few friends in the medical field who all told me that I have what is called benign vertigo. In fact, I found out that there are several people I know who have had benign vertigo, which would lead me to believe it must be something the medical community is familiar with. I also found out there is no real treatment for this, but that it eventually will go away.

A few weeks ago, I started receiving bills from the hospital for my emergency room visits. I received five separate bills. The first was from Kent Radiology for the x-ray. The total was $180.00. Next, the doctors each sent me a bill since I saw two different doctors in the span of 2 hours. Their two bills came to a total of $847.00. The last two bills I received were from the hospital, since I was processed two different times. The total for these two bills was $3,167.75. The grand total for these services that resulted in my having no diagnosis was $4,194.75. So, I ask you, what kind of a crazy system do we have where this kind of cost is laid at the feet of people who are at the mercy of the medical establishment?

This crazy medical system not only makes it impossible for people to have affordable health care, they are constantly on the offensive to maintain this kind of a system by spending $4 billion dollars annually on TV ads pushing drugs we don't need. The consumer advocate group Commercial Alert has this to add:

"Prescription drug advertising is not educational. It is inherently misleading because it features emotive imagery and omits crucial information about drugs and their proper use, as well as about side effects and contraindications that can be found on the full FDA-approved label. Drug companies have an inherent and irredeemable financial conflict of interest which drives them to exaggerate the positive and minimize the negative qualities of their own products."

However, those in the for-profit health sector are also constantly trying to influence public policy on the healthcare front. According to the Center for Responsible Politics, the pharmaceutical industry alone has spent over $154 million dollars lobbying Congress since 1990, HMOs another $55 million, and hospitals over $99 million.

Healthcare is certain to be an issue in this year's congressional and presidential races. In looking at Senator McCain's position on healthcare one can find rhetoric that says, "he wants to restore control to the patients themselves." Well, pardon me for asking, but what the hell does that mean? McCain's actually plan calls for a reform of the tax code, which will provide more than an employer-based health care system, making insurance more "portable," and expanding the benefits for Healthy Savings Accounts (HSAs). Still sounds like a for-profit system to me.

On the Democrat side, we hear both Clinton and Obama use the term "universal healthcare" to describe their plans. Sounds really wonderful, but we need to be clear what "universal healthcare" means. Like Senator McCain, Senator Clinton wants a "portable" healthcare system and to "put consumers in the drivers seat." She wants to "provide tax credits for working families to help them cover their costs and to ensure that working families never have to pay more than a limited percentage of their income for health care." Hmmmm, still sounds like a for-profit system.

Then there is Senator Obama. He also wants "portable" health insurance, healthcare benefits similar to the Federal Employee Program, and "an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private healthcare plan." This is still not going to change how the healthcare system operates, since it does nothing to challenge the profit motive.

One big reason why none of the major candidates are not advocating major changes in the health care system, is because they have been recipients of large sums of money from that same system. Again, according to the Center for Responsive Politics the Pharmaceutical Industry has contributed large sums to the front running candidates with Senator Obama receiving $636,327, Senator Clinton receiving $567,581, and Senator McCain receiving $172,750. From the Healthcare services/HMO sector Clinton has received $491,271, Obama $375,621 and McCain $163,350. From the hospital industry, Obama has received $996,361, Clinton $941,881 and McCain has received $237,286. For those who think any of the presidential candidates are going to significantly change the health care system once they occupy the White House, ask yourselves this...are the for-profit health care companies who are giving all this money to the candidates doing so with the hope that whoever is elected will do anything to threaten their profit margin?

Jeff Smith works with the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID) and will be hosting a medical bill burning ceremony some time soon.

Summer is easy in our western Michigan city. The Farmers Market bustles, the garden grows, the kids live outside. Lake Michigan beckons and leisurely dinners at the picnic table are the norm. We go weeks at a time without exposure to the artificial lighting of grocery stores, electronic entertainment or the seduction of chain stores or restaurants. We vow to buy and eat locally and are able to keep our promise.

Family activities come in the form of full moon bike rides, walks to parks, and outdoor festivals. Mother Nature is in full force and we follow her commands. If she graces us with a clear sky, we are out the door as fast as you can say sunscreen. If it rains, we are happy for the plants and for our friends the farmers who work so hard to bring us a cherished tomato, flecked dozen of eggs, or head of crisp lettuce straight from the ground. Something ancient and wise takes over and lives in us all deeply. Television. What television? We are tuned into something different- something much more sustaining.

Despite the crisp air, fabulous apple orchards, and drop dead beautiful colors, autumn gives us our first hint of the challenges to come. It starts with the catalogues- the gobs and gobs of stapled glossy sheets reminding us that the "holidays" are marching towards us and that their new leader is Halloween. A tradition that used to be pretty simple- jack-o-lantern, costume, candy- has morphed into an all out marketing bonanza that includes hundreds of chintzy costumes and stuff straight off the China boat with toxicity contents more frightening than any horror mask could ever be. Even more appalling are the "child" nurse, devil, cheerleader, and kitty cat costumes targeting my five and nine year old daughters all complete with short skirts and- I kid you not- assortment of matching garter bands.

We make our own costumes and throw a low key Halloween party instead. The highlight is a pieced together haunted garage that owes its existence much more to the dedication of a few highly creative mamas (and perhaps more than a few bottles of red wine) than any credit card purchased accessories.

School starts and the girls quickly catch up on what is the latest must-have gizmo or show. They come home from school talking about Hannah Montana concerts, Webkins and I Pods. We rarely indulge these things as evidenced by the creative ways our girls have had to piece together their understandings of items, games and trends that they have had no exposure to. They are far from immune to the influences however. It's right around the fourth or fifth week of school that my beautiful nine-year-old girl comes home, and for the first time, tells me she's fat.

Thanksgiving arrives and the tug-of-war intensifies. Every year the acquisition machine rolls out earlier and earlier trumping longstanding traditions of thanks. One has the sense that the holiday train has jumped the rails and is hurtling out of control with the massive Christmas cars overtaking all the others. This year I had the inkling that if it wasn't for the strange representation (and incredible girth) of those ten foot high inflatable turkeys gracing yards all around our area, one might worry that Thanksgiving was in danger of being shut out all together. How this most pure of holidays came to revere televised football and "Black Friday" sales as much, or more, as time together around the table is beyond me. There's nothing like folding hands in gratitude one day, and then pummeling strangers at 4 am the next, to be the first to get those same hands on the year's most coveted discount appliance.

By the time the true Michigan cold sets in, I am in an all out slugfest. Winter is always the hardest. We all know that the Christmas season was hijacked by marketers some time ago yet every year the extent seems to be more and more mind-boggling. This year we were told that we could buy and receive everything from better relationships with our kids (it's as simple as giving them the right cell phone) to the assurance of monogamy (which conveniently now comes in the form of diamond bracelets and pendants). I daydream of a new version of that POW/MIA flag flying on the back of Harley Davidson's all over our roadways. This one sporting the bearded silhouette of Jesus in the middle.

While we are not church goers per say- I do have the standard that if I'm going to celebrate something you sure as heck better believe I'm going to know why. Despite all my efforts to the contrary- I may be losing this battle with my children. My five-year-old was in tears as she finished unloading her Christmas stocking this year. Her simple hand-knitted stocking made by her great-grandmother and filled with a mixture of fun necessities, unique novelties and special treats paled in comparison to the images she had subconsciously compiled from the few print ads and commercials that had snuck past the recycling bin and the mute button. Those scenes depicting Santa's bounty as overwhelming heaps of every toy and box and bow imaginable had seeped in and consumed her expectations without any of us ever being in the know. The quivering lip and big tear-filled blue eyes of this beloved child (whose every imaginable need we strive to meet) would have been comical if it wasn't so unbelievably sad.

Snowflakes fall and my oldest reads Little House on the Prairie, Where The Red Fern Grows and Naya Nuki. I find myself in tears when she talks of the thoughtful preparations for a community dance, a cherished orange at the bottom of a Christmas stocking, the milking of a cow, and ancient Native American traditions. I know I'm in danger of being called sappy and nostalgic but, truly, where has this kind of reverence gone?

I feel a strange pull to what my kids have coined the "Old Fashioned Town" exhibit at the Public Museum. No matter how many times we have strolled its reproduced cobblestone streets, musty smells and squeaky screen doors-I want to linger in this exhibit the longest. The lure of the tiny specialized shops- the grocer here, the pharmacy across the way, the artful function of the printing press- provides an enchanting comfort. I am intrigued by the bolts of fabric, the intricate beauty of a hair comb or a pocketknife - the purposefulness, simplicity and beauty of it all.

The snow piles up and gray skies dominate. I shop at Target. I try not to bring the girls with me-something in me intuiting that this retailer has a power that just may trump mine. This is a most unsettling feeling for a mother who is really close with her kids. When they are pushing the red cart, I cringe at what I've exposed them to. The mixed messages, the marketing targeting them at just their vulnerabilities, the needless nature of so much of it all, the waste.

We go to a new movie store to look for the fabulous 1970's version of Pippi Longstocking with the English dubbed over the Swedish. We search futilely amid huge televisions blaring R rated film clips overhead. Violent video games are organized by the checkout at a height that anyone over the age of eight would have to bend over to see. The store is teaming with families and young children yet cleavage, crotch shots and gore meet us at every turn. Why is there not any outrage over these things? Are we that immune already? We get the hell out of there as fast as we can- a subscription to Netfix moving quickly to the top of the to do list. I feel so alone.

My husband- a doctoral student- talks about French intellectuals, post-modernism and the fragmentation of society due to the lack of any guiding narrative. I think I may know what he is speaking of. Something in me feels like it is breaking into a gazillion little pieces.

There is a huge television when we walk into our local YMCA. In the split-second it takes to walk past it, my five-year-old sees footage of a house fire- someone screaming for her baby. My husband doesn't notice it. It haunts her dreams for weeks. Televisions are everywhere- cars, gas station pumps, family restaurants, grocery store carts and checkout lanes. I am so angry. So overwhelmed. Something in me is dying. My own fire to combat these things seems to be going out- smothered by the sheer volume of it all.

Playtimes are turning deadly as kids in our community accidentally shoot their best friends with guns. In contrast to their video games- they don't get back up. Local fire chiefs, school teachers and city council members are getting busted for porn- for child porn- for taking pictures up student's skirts. Boyfriends are killing their girlfriends. A mother I know left her two-year-old for an hour and he was shaken to death by the man who was supposed to be caring for him. Husbands are killing their wives- in front of their children. I am in despair.

A front-page article in our main paper profiles local school districts that are signing up for Bus Radio- a for-profit company that will install radios in school buses for free. Of course you then listen exclusively to the Bus Radio channel pumped full of the "child friendly" advertising of their sponsors. The drivers love it- the kids are "so well behaved". Districts love it- "it's free". The article doesn't ever mention the effects on kids or the opinions of their parents. The only contrast to all the glowing reviews is one reference to an organization called "The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood". I immediately sign up.

A few weeks later I am e-mailed a notice of a summit hosted by the campaign. It is titled "The Sexualization of Childhood and Other Commercial Calamities". Every single part of the agenda resonates with me. It is in the spring and in Boston. It is too far and too expensive of a trip but I can't get it off my mind. My husband suggests that we both go and that we drive. My 22-year-old brother hears of the idea and offers to watch the girls. My very elderly grandparents agree to loan their vehicle for the trip. A friend of a friend in Boston offers us a place to stay. Things come together and we sign-up.

Crocuses push through the ground the week we are to leave. The first real promise that spring is on its way. The drive is indeed long but painless. A warm sun melts snow along our entire route. Trace elements of green can be seen among the many shades of brown in the fields and roadways.

On the opening day of the summit and the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder, we hear Director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children's Center and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Alvin Poussaint's, moving account of working with the man and the Civil Rights movement. He likens the current assembly to those that took place in the fifties and sixties and highlights that such gatherings are fundamental to the future of human rights and to the continued generation of change. Child psychologist pioneer and child advocate Dr. Susan Linn, also of Harvard Medical School, tells the audience that she too is reminded of not only the Civil Rights movement but of the individuals who came before the movement- the activists of the 1920's and 1930's- the people who didn't come close to seeing any of the major changes on their behalf but who knew that change was needed.

Something stirs deep within me. The cold paralysis of my seasonal anguish is shifting a bit. Like those flower bulbs planted deep within the ground must at some point detect- light is out there. Start moving towards it.

The day goes on to hold plenary sessions by education professor Dr. Diane Levin, author of the forthcoming book So Sexy, So Soon, and investigative journalist and broadcaster Susan Gregory Thomas, the writer behind the fabulously titled Buy, Buy Baby. Dr. Levin chronicles the history of children's marketing in the United States, a legacy that we owe primarily to the Reagan administration and the deregulation of children's television in the 1980's. This dislodged the avalanche that has been pummeling us ever sense- burying us from birth in the ceaseless barrage of promotion and product that piles up (both literally and figuratively) threatening the ecological survival of our planet and invading the most sacred dimensions of our humanity.

Dr. Levin further illustrates the effects of unregulated children's marketing with gripping examples of gender divisions generated by children's television and toys (Bratz dolls vs. WWF), the increasing evidence of age compression (Tickle Me Elmo Barbie anyone?) and the vital importance of distinguishing sexualization from sexuality. As a mother of daughters and an early childhood educator I want to stand up and cheer. Ms. Thomas is illuminating as well, with a reading from her book about the history and savvy of both branding and marketing Barbie in the fickle and competitive children's retail marketplace.

Sara Grimes of Simon Fraser University provides a crash course in the virtual branding of children's play through internet games and social networks. The evolution goes something like this: children's television shows provide characters and "scripts" for children's play that lead them to the purchase of licensed play toys that then have an internet or media based play component. Commercialization convinces children that product play is superior to their own imaginative play. Online sites consist of very thinly veiled advertising that promotes the purchase of additional products or, as Ms. Grimes refers to them, "advergames". These games often revolve around the virtual purchase of more products perpetuating an endless cycle of consumption.

Dr. Michael Brody, chair of the Television and Media Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry presents on the effects of playing with sex and death in video games. It is both disturbing and fascinating to hear him speak of video games as immersion mediums that visually, physically, and emotionally promote atmospheres of violence and constant fear. Dr. Brody shares that "habits of the mind become structures of the brain"- an observation I have made time and again in classrooms. The behavior and personalities of children as young as two or three-years-old show the very real impact of large daily doses of electronic media stimulation. Dr Brody goes on to demonstrate the "normalization" of violence perpetuated by video games as well as examples as to the objectification of (and violence towards) women, compulsive behavior, and the lack of empathy or altruism that result from extended video game exposure and play. There is a reason video games are used to train U.S. troops prior to going into battle. Players are not conditioned to think or to problem-solve, only to follow a predetermined story without distraction or hesitation.

Workshop sessions throughout the day highlight equally potent and timely topics that serve as top-notch primers for pretty much any angle on the commercialization of children. I struggle with making the choice of which to attend.

The day wraps up with Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College and author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, speaking on hyper-consumerism and our increasing ecological crisis. It is vital to take in the global effects of consumer and disposable societies and Dr. Schor's illustrations and data are especially compelling. Dr. Poussaint closes with a brief talk on toxic marketing to African Americans; an incredibly destructive dimension of consumer targeting based strongly in the exploitation of under privilege and the perpetuation of the message that being black comes with inherent deficits that can be filled through the purchase of certain products and images.

These are far from uplifting topics so why am I feeling so much better? After the decompression provided by a long walk and dinner in a nice Irish Boston pub (not to mention a few sips of my husband's Guinness) I begin to put a finger on it. All of these things I have perceived and chronicled as an educator and a mother. As a wife, daughter and granddaughter. They have names. People are writing about them and researching them. People from all across the country are speaking a language that I have intuited but struggled to articulate. I go to sleep with my head spinning- both exhausted and energized.

On the second day of the conference I have a first time crash course in hard-core pornography- and this was right after breakfast. Presenter Dr. Gail Dines did the difficult yet critical job of demonstrating the crisis that is upon us. This is a tragedy written by the highly addictive nature of the medium, the push for ever more shocking conquests and the very real evidence that this need is generating a serious increase in child pornography.

Porn is everywhere and the internet has created the perfect home for the anonymity and accessibility that feed its proliferation. Dr. Dines shares that the average age that a male sees his first pornographic image is eleven-and-a-half. That is the average mind you, meaning our boys are being exposed to representations of females and sexuality that their development cannot even begin to comprehend. Soft porn is the norm on television programming and even advertising. Most disturbing is the fact that after developing a porn habit, many men find themselves unaffected by the glut of images of women doing anything and everything and have moved on to seeking out "teen" and ultimately child pornography- the last real taboo.

The pornography industry is a shrewd, profit driven organization- always motivated by the bottom line. This means that they are willing to push the envelope as far as they possibly can to continue to find a customer base. Increasingly this means the exploitation of incredibly young looking "teens" in child-like settings, clothing, behavior and language. Proliferation of the kind of thinking and behavior that this perpetuates is unconscionable; yet, it is becoming more and more the norm. I am grateful for the call to arms provided by Dr. Dines, Wheelock College professor, author and activist. In her speed-fire twenty-five minute presentation I saw more than enough evidence to believe that the sanctity of childhood is indeed in serious peril.

Author Joe Kelly, President and Co-Founder of the nonprofit organization Dads & Daughters, follows with a timely presentation of the impact of pseudo-sexualization on boys. This is a dimension that comes up often when I speak with other mothers about the sexualization of children. Parents of boys often shrug their shoulders with a version of the "thank god I've got boys" statement but Mr. Kelly points out that boys and men are actually the less visible (but no less affected) victims of a hyper-sexualized culture. Pseudo-sexuality is a false, oversimplified and constructed portrayal of sexuality that leaves out all of the complexity and beauty of human relationships. The constant inoculation of pseudo-sexuality furthers spiritual illiteracy and emotional illiteracy, which unchecked, leads to emotional death in boys and men. This is a shadow dimension to the crises presenting themselves to parents and caregivers and leaves many young boys floundering, hurting and disabled as they struggle on their journey to be healthy men, partners and fathers.

I am six months pregnant and with another conference attendee joke as to whether I dare let the baby come out. I admit to her that there are times that I wish I could return all of my children to the safety and holiness of the womb. She smiles knowingly but reassures me by briefly sharing how impressed she is by her twenty-something son- by the lack of materialism in his life and the healthful pursuits that he is engaged in. I am reminded of my brother and know that as parents there is a way to cut through all of this but I also recognize that the volume of competing messages is getting stronger everyday. Confronting and challenging the commercialization and sexualization of our children takes constant vigilance, conversation and presence.

Two more plenary sessions are included in the morning, the first focused on The Failure of Self-Regulation from Big Alcohol to Big Food by public health lawyer Michele Simon from the Marin Institute and the second, Transforming the U.S. Media: Commercial Free at Last presented by Berkeley psychologist, Dr. Allen Kanner. Both presentations are tangible, substantive and helpful. To create a healthier landscape for our children we have to know what works and what doesn't. Ms. Simon's experiences in the world of food and alcohol leave her with plenty of ammo to destroy the myth of "self-regulation" that she defines as voluntary, vague, unenforceable, undemocratic, and biased often providing a big distraction from authentic policymaking and debate. Dr. Kanner introduces and then breaks down the fantasy of the advertising and marketing "meta-image" of the whole world coming together around corporate products. Meta-marketing narrows any sense of the future by it's main message that we can buy our way to happiness. The goal of a materialistic monoculture lacks any of the richness or value of everyday life. Dr. Kanner offers Sao Paulo, Brazil as a beacon of hope. Sao Paulo is a commercial free city that has placed public well-being over private profit, aesthetics over ugliness, and cleanliness over trash. It is indeed an inspiring example.

After another fascinating workshop breakout we return for the final plenary sessions of the day. Dr. Tim Kasser of Knox College makes the hypothesis that the well-being of children is lower in nations with more marketing to children. Using UNICEF's 2007 report on the well-being of children, he shows that among wealthy nations, those with more marketing indeed have higher instances of child ill-being. Amplified marketing correlated with increased marijuana use, increased teenage pregnancy, obesity, and the finding that fewer peers were 'kind and helpful'. Dr. Kasser goes on to illustrate that marketing values reduce the likelihood of lasting relationships as there is a trend to view others as objects. Dr. Kasser's research substantiates the observations of so many child researchers, families and educators that a child's development is indeed intertwined with their environment.

Julie Gale, of Kids Free 2 B Kids, joined us all the way from Australia to provide some much needed comic relief, inspiration, and a reminder of what the determination of one person can do. Ms. Gale was a riot as she spoke of the "corporate sleaze and community complacency" that she has encountered in her neighborhood and beyond. So much of what it takes to counter these influences is just a dose of common sense coupled with perseverance and the willingness to ask questions and to speak out. Ms. Gale is an inspiration on all of these fronts.

Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Lesley University professor, long-time child advocate, and author of the just-released Taking Back Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World, spoke on consumer culture and the obstacles that parents face. I find Dr. Carlsson-Paige's solutions to be simple and to the point. Some examples include: no ads for kids under eight-years-old as they are not developmentally ready to understand and distinguish persuasive content and the prohibiting of toys and products directly tied to television, especially toys and action figures connected to PG13 movie ratings. These initiatives are rooted in solid child development research and would provide monumental progress towards the goal of reclaiming childhood.

Our final two speakers are Enola Aird; scholar, lawyer, activist mother and director of the Motherhood Project and Josh Golin; Associate Director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Ms. Aird reminds us that those who tell the stories determine the culture. Who is telling our children their stories? In the United States, the current narratives are undoubtedly dominated by marketing and advertising and consumption. Ms. Aird reminds us of the spiritual dimensions of the marketing crisis, the loss of the sacred, the rituals, and the rites of passage that guided humanity for so much of our history. The recognition of these dimensions in my own life, the lives of my children and the lives of so many of the classrooms and homes that I have spent time in, has been my primary motivation for making the trip to the summit. All the statistics and research aside, the preservation of the sacredness of childhood is what it is truly about and as Ms. Aird reminds us, "marketing to children has no place in a society that holds up it's children".

Mr. Golin brings it on home with an address that is equal parts passion, celebration and motivation. He highlights a number of significant successes made by CCFC members and the CCFC organization. These include the taking on of my latest local nemesis, Bus Radio, as well as efforts involving schools, hospitals, fast food chains, and more. I feel pride and joy in this newly found network of activism and scholarship and am reminded again of the summit introductions, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the timeless power of people coming together for change.

On our return trip, trees are budding and new colors dot the fields and yards that we pass. The landscape is transformed and so am I. I leave Boston better educated, inspired, emboldened, and most importantly, not alone. I have connected with what I have been longing for. When we exit the car for a stretch, the ground is soft and springy under my feet. I feel a similar thawing. A few hours later my youngest calls to tell me that the tulips in Michigan are coming up. Summer is right around the corner.

Mindy Holohan is a writer, parent and is hoping to start a local chapter of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. mgholohan@gmail.com

Sometimes you do things that you know will be painful, but you do them anyway. This was the case for me on April 16 when I went to a luncheon presentation hosted by the Ad Club of West Michigan. The topic for the day was "The Hispanic Market: Solid Creative Requires Solid Research." It sounded somewhat interesting when I saw the promotional materials for this and I thought that maybe it would be a good opportunity to connect with folks in the Latino community. Wow, was I ever wrong.

The presenter was Craig Harper, Executive Vice President of Simmons Marketing Research based out of Memphis, Tennessee. You guessed it, he was a middle aged white guy, who by his own admission, had not spent much time working in the Hispanic community and spoke absolutely no Spanish. Seems like reason enough to have him speak on how best to target Hispanics when designing an ad campaign.

Craig started the session off by doing a "Reader's Digest" version on the history of Hispanic migration to the US. He says the first wave came in 1959 right after the Cuban revolution. Funny, I always thought that the use of Mexican labor in the early part of the 20th Century and then again during the Bracero program in 1942 were the first real waves of Hispanic immigration.

Next, the speaker stated that it is important to understand how widespread Hispanic culture has become in the US, even amongst the White population. The indicators he cited are the popularity of Latino music, Latino food, and the fact that many gringos celebrate both Cinco de Mayo and the Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). While these indicators may be true at some level, their popularity is in part due to the business community's ability to use these aspects of Hispanic culture to make a buck. Next time you are at the Mexican festival in Grand Rapids, notice the Mexican flags on the Miller Lite beer tent.

On the next page of the Power Point, the presenter finally got to the point of his presentation. The text that filled the screen said, "Hispanic purchasing power will be over $1 Trillion by 2012." Now we are getting somewhere. This explains why the room at the Ad Club luncheon was filled with primarily gringos representing a variety of advertising firms and the local Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Harper then went on to say that it is important for those in the ad business to understand that more and more Hispanics, particularly second generation Hispanics, are consuming English language media. The exception to this rule is radio where the majority of Hispanics prefer to listen to Spanish language radio. The increased consumption of English language media has meant greater acculturation. Acculturation, Craig said, has meant a shift from convenience for Hispanic shoppers (small neighborhood stores) to those who are willing to travel to shop (malls and big box stores). He also stated that another reflection of acculturation was that Hispanics are shifting from shopping based on need to shopping based on enjoyment. Yeah! Great will be the day when large numbers of Hispanic consumers trample each other at 5am the day after Thanksgiving in order to get their hands on the latest hyped toy for their kids.

Next, came the really fun part where he showed what he called "successful ad campaigns" that targeted the Hispanic population. The first example was a TV ad from Honda. The ad begins with a