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Because People Mater
Progressive News and Views September / October 2008
Botox Nation
Applying TeCosmetic Fix
by Richard Nadeau
W
hile Botox is derived rom a bacteria thatcarries a low risk o botulism, many Ameri-cans spend millions every year injecting itto reduce wrinkles around the eyes with the hope thatit will make them look youngerand hide their years. In act, thecosmetic x permeates every nook and cranny o Americansociety and is propped up by amulti-million dollar industry.ummy tucks, acelis, breastimplants, liposuction, hair implants, and penis enlarge-ments are readily available to change our appearance andmake us eel better about ourselves.We are indeed a Botox Nation, and every day wecelebrate the big lie and the big x. Te cosmetic x isapplied everywhere—to our politics, our wars, our envi-ronment, our news. We are incapable o seeing who weare, what we do.We cannot see our own violence and its impact onthe rest o the world. We are a nation that needs to lieabout our war in Iraq. Te war is now in the process o being “Botoxed’—the wrinkles are being removed and asmooth brow now shows. Te environmental crisis hasalso been Botoxed—all we need to do is drill or moreoil, buy up Iraqi oil contracts, and we can drive our bigtrucks and SUVs as carelessly as beore. In politics, itis the same—presidential candidates are symbolically Botoxed and polished to remove obvious wrinkles andcontradictions. Reality must not be allowed to intrude.Let’s ace it, the Bush Presidency has been a Botox Presi-dency par excellence—everything we were told and soldactually served to hide reality rom our eyes.And what do the wrinkles represent? On an individuallevel they represent the realities we don’t want to see, thewear and tear o living and aging that eventually leavesus with a urrowed brow. But we can’t ace aging so weBotox the reality as i we can ool mother nature andpostpone the inevitable. People do this or practical rea-sons (jobs, love), but now we have a whole industry tell-ing them they should, that they must do this. And why not? Aer all, every other aspect o reality in Americahas already gotten the cosmeticx.Just take a look at our BotoxCongress. Tey are incapableo impeaching the Presidentbecause they themselves can’tace reality—that they sent over4000 US youths and over a million Iraqis to their unnec-essary deaths. Tey preer the “culture o make believe”which says that there was something honorable in ourmission in Iraq, that our boys are ghting to “deendAmerica.” So what does Congress do when the Botox hasworn o and the realities o war become visible? Tey vote over and over again to reund the war, and apply more verbal cosmetics and nostrums to make it look better than it really is! Te mass media didn’t want us tohear about the real ongoing violence so they completely blacked out the 2008 Winter Soldier testimonies lastMarch. Te picture o the war and its everyday brutality that the soldiers testied about would have interruptedthe ongoing cosmetic x, shown the wrinkles, and ur-ther weakened support or the war.Te network news is the biggest supplier o symbolicBotox to our make believe world. Most o them, includ-ing the so-called “liberal”
New York imes
, lied us intothis 6 year Iraq war. Tey told us it was about WMDs,
We cannot see our ownviolence and its impact on the rest o the world.
told us that Iraq had a role in 9/11, told us that Iraq wasan immediate threat to the United States, even thoughthe country had been militarily devastated in the rstGul War. We were told that i we didn’t launch a pre-emptive war and attack rst, we would be seeing mush-room clouds outside our bedroom windows. O course,we were told that our own motives were exemplary. Wenow know that we actually ought the war to liberate theIraqi people and sow the seeds o democracy throughoutthe Middle East. Only in a Botox world could this pre-posterous lie be given even a smidgeon o credibility.Few o the media or politicians have really acceptedresponsibility. Tey may soon be lying us into anotherwar against Iran, or Venezuela, or some other chosenenemy o the Botox oil hungry empire. Since the Iraqwar and occupation, the media have been systemati-cally applying the cosmetic x to the war—the military slaughter in Falluja and Haditha, the realities o the“surge,” were deliberately hidden rom our perceptions.I guess such depictions would have been just too real orus to see.Remember the attempt by the Bush administration atthe beginning o the war to prevent us rom seeing pic-tures o caskets lled with dead Americans? Tat’s whatI mean when I say this war has been “Botoxed.” Its beenmade to look a lot better than it is.Te war is in reality a crime against humanity, anunnecessary war o aggression, according to the standardset down at Nuremburg. But we cannot be allowed tosee or grasp this reality, can we? So Congress keeps onunding the war. And why not? In the Botox nation noone’s responsible because no one has been or will bemade accountable! Everything in America nally gets thecosmetic x!
Richard Nadeau has been a peace and environmental activist since the 1960s. He lives in Sacramento and is aneditor with Because People Matter.
DWB
Alive in Sacramento
by Roger White
We’re all amiliar with the popular stereotype o theoverly touchy black who has made “the White Man” thecenter o his obsessive racial paranoia. But periodically astudy comes out that conrms the worst ears o blacks.Sacramento’s Community Racial Proling Commis-sion released such a report in August rom LamberthConsulting conrming that blacks are twice as likely tobe pulled over by Sacramento policeas non-black drivers. According tothe study “Asian and white motoristsare stopped less oen than would beexpected by their presence in tracand Hispanic motorists are stoppedat about the rate expected. black motorists are stopped at a higherrate than would be expected by theirpresence in trac.” Is this becauseblacks are speeding at rates higherthan others? Apparently not. “Terewas no evidence that either black orHispanic motorists are more likely to exceed the speed limit by 15 mphor more than were any other drivers.In act slightly more white motoristswere exceeding the speed limit by 15mph or more….”Such studies are regularly dis-missed by critics who claim that racial justice advocatesignore the outcomes o these stops. I a higher rate o black motorists are actually up to no good while they’rebehind the wheel (as evidenced by higher citationrates aer trac stops) then why shouldn’t the policetarget black drivers more than others? As it turns out,black citation rates are lower than their stop rates by 4percent. Whites, Asians and Hispanics are stopped andcited at roughly the same rates. Te report also oundthat the percent o searches that result in a seizure o contraband—the “hit” rate—was highest or “Hispanicmotorists, with white and black motorists closely bun-dled at a raction o a percent point below them.” Teauthors pointed out that the dierences between the raceswere “statistically insignicant.” In other words, blacks areno more likely to be engaged in trac violations or crimi-nal activity while driving than any other racial group inSacramento.It’s important to also point out that even i blacks weremore likely to be involved in criminal activity that by itsel would not be grounds to disproportionally stopblack drivers. Violations o the vehicle code should drive tracstops not one’s membership ina race presumed to have higherrates o criminal activity.I took part in the rst racialproling study o disproportion-ate trac stops in Baltimore,Maryland back in 1996. We alsoound that blacks were beingstopped at higher rates thanwhites on I-95 without justica-tion. We also ound that whiteswere actually more likely to bespeeding than black motorists.Since then studies rom Akron,Ohio, Oakland, Caliornia, andMassachusetts have showed thesame thing—blacks singled outby police or stops, searches, andarrests while driving. Unortunately, Sacramento is notalone.Getting stopped is oen more than simply an inconve-nience or Arican Americans. When drivers get pulledover or no good reason—like because o their race—they sometimes have an attitude about it. Tat encourages copsto get an attitude back which can lead to ugly conronta-tions, harassment, and in some cases police brutality andmisconduct. Te number one road (excuse the pun) intothe criminal justice system is the trac stop.We are regularly told by conservatives that whatis holding back blacks more than anything else is aninsidious victim mentality that cripples our initiative andretards our willingness to take responsibility or our ownlives. One way or our society to help blacks move rom victimhood to selood is to stop race-based victimiza-tion. A good place to start is by holding police depart-ments accountable or ailing to address racial bias intrac enorcement.
Roger White is a criminal justice researcher withthe Service Employees International Union. He lives inSacramento.
When drivers get pulled over or no good reason …they sometimes have an attitudeabout it.
Inside this issue:
Editorial.2Teach.Peace.2Living.Green.in.Sacramento.3Eat.Local.3Lower.the.Dropout.Rate.4Home.in.the.Projects.5Will.the.Votes.Be.Counted?.5 Media.Edge.Moving.Out.5
Immigrant Communities fght back
.6
Public Education
.7Ballot.Propositions/Mayoral.Race/Bill.Durston.8-9Prop.11/Gerrymandering10
Joan Lee remembered
.10Free.Speech.Victory.11No.One.is.Leaving.Iraq.11Sacramento.Area.Peace.Action.12Israel/Palestine.13Big.Media.13You.Go.Hugo14The.Frozen.Six.14Calendar.15Progressive.Media.16
Because People Matter September / October 008
www.bpmnews.org
People Maer
Vlume 17, Numbe 5
Published Bi-Monthly by theSacramento Community forPeace & JusticeP.O. Box 162998, Sacramento,CA 95816(Use addresses below forcorrespondence)
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Editorial
On the cover
The children of Tricia andShane Stirling join ArchnaSharma and Aaron Grace’sthree boys at the July 26peace rally at 16th and B’way.Say Peace! (Thanks to Keithfor the photo.)
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“Give up on all that 9/11 stu,” a riend says.”It’s going to be like the Kennedy assassination.We’ll never nd out what really happened.”But I’m not giving up. Te story is as grippingas a John Le Carré novel, and as a ormer Lit.proessor, I can’t resist the plot’s exciting twistsand surprises. ake, or example, the story o thedisappearing phonecalls.Many peopleremember that the rstnamed 9/11 victimwas Barbara Olson,wie o the SolicitorGeneral. Te blondbaby-aced conserva-tive V personality,CNN reported Sep-tember 12, called romthe plane that allegedly ended up hitting the Pentagon and asked herhusband to tell the pilot—who she said had beendriven to the back o the plane with the otherpassengers by dark men with box cutters—howto stop the hijacking. Her call made the tragedy immediately real and personal and gave the pub-lic its rst picture o the highjackers.But rom the start ed Olson couldn’t keep hisstories straight.He rst told CNN that his wie had “called himtwice on a cell phone.” wo days later, he wassaying,“[Barbara] had trouble getting through,because she wasn’t using her cell phone—she wasusing the phone in the passengers’ seats. I guessshe didn’t have her purse, because she was callingcollect, and she was trying to get through to theDepartment o Justice, which is never very easy.”But cell phone calls rom planes at high alti-tudes were only made possible in 2004. Andaccording to an ocial at American Airlines, theplane she was ying on was not equipped on Sep-tember 11 with airones.Tat no supporting records exist—rom theairline, the telephone or credit card company,or the Solicitor General’s Oce which allegedly accepted her collect calls—is clear rom theirabsence in the report the FBI prepared o all callsrom all our planes or the Zacarias Moussaouitrial in 2006. Te FBI said o Flight 77 that only one call rom Barbara Olson was “attempted” andit lasted 0 seconds!So there were no calls? And ed Olsen waslying?Well, when I looked into his history, it wouldhave been more surprising i he had been tellingthe truth. Years ago Olson told a congressionalinvestigation that he could easily “imagine aninnite number o situations where governmentocials might quite legitimately have reasons togive alse inormation out.” Indeed he has madehis career lying in public to advance the power o the executive branch.Famous in conservative Washington or theirlavish parties, ed and Barbara oen joked they were at the center o the “vast right-wing con-spiracy” excoriated by Hillary when Whitewaterand Bill’s sex lie were being dragged across Vscreens. And who turned up that dirt? ed Olsonand Ken Starr in the Scaie-bankrolled ArkansasProject. Beore that, in the Iran-Contra investiga-tion, Olson had been Reagan’s personal lawyer.And no one who deeply studies Iran-Contrands it hard to believethat 9/11 was an inside job. Iran-Contra waslikewise a covert grabor executive poweragainst the Constitu-tion—a practice runor the Bush regime,which is staed withthe (unpunished) law-breakers o that bloody operation.But Olson truly changed the history o the world when he arguedthe Supreme Court case o Bush vs Gore in 2000and orced Florida to stop counting the lawul votes that
in fact
had chosen Gore president. Tepresident owes ed a lot.Consider what it means to the ocial story i Olson was lying about those phone calls. And
did
his wie die at the Pentagon?Consider what Rumseld told a
Parade
maga-zine interviewer at the Pentagon a month aer9/11: “…a terrorist can attack any time, any place,using any technique and it’s physically impossibleto deend … against every conceivable technique.Here we’re talking about plastic knives andusing an American Airlines ight led with ourcitizens,
and the miile to damage thi build-ing and imilar (inaudible) that damaged theWorld Trade Center (emphai added).
http://www.deenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3845.
So
truth
is
coming out.For one we have an incredibly rich trove o on-the-spot real time video and interviews ull o evidence that doesn’t match the ocial story—and it’s plastered all over the internet, where itcan be and has been poured over, analyzed, slow-mo’d, evaluated, probed—by thousands o earnestresearchers.And there’s the internet itsel—which enablesthe discoveries to be shared, disputed, supported,added to. (And in VIDEO or the millions o intelligent compatriots decient in reading skills.)Most importantly, the JFK assassination didn’tprecipitate a war and surveillance state promisedto be global and endless.Te 9/11 ruth movement has become inter-national. Many o the millions worldwide whomarched against the US attack on Iraq have joined the movement, as have ormer and currentdeense ministers, prime ministers, intelligenceanalysts, military leaders and legislators romCanada, Italy, Germany, England, Japan.I beg you to read their stories and the storieso other
experts
in aviation, nance, explosives,architecture, and politics at Patriotsquestion911.org. Almost daily more highly qualied people inhigh positions dare to reject the ocial story andcall or a new investigation.Te truth o 9/11 is not tangential to our strug-gle or peace and justice, as some leies assert. Itis central to the way power operates in this worldright now, the brutal gangsterism o late stagecapitalism.Imagine: the people behind 9/11 not only hadplanes y into buildings and then blew them
up,they placed bets in the stock market in the daysbeore so the disaster made them hundreds o millions!We will not stop the neo-Orwellian warregime’s bloody pursuit o control o the planet’sresources until we destroy the myth o 9/11.More ino at http://unansweredquestions.org/index.php/2008/04/08/ted-olson-report-o-phone-calls-on-911-undermined/.
Ted Olson and the disappearing phone calls
9/11 myth continues to unravel
“They don’t come any more par- tisan and power-grabbing andruthless than Ted Olson. Thereisn’t a more consummate Bushinsider… .”
—David Neiwert
(http://iredoglake.com/007/09/1/ted-olson-and-the-pushovers/)
Have you volunteeredor BPM and NO ONEEVER CALLED YOUBACK?
Well, we get overwhelmedsometimes, and don’t ol-low up on the good helpenergy that many readershave sent us. So would youconsider trying again? Wecan use help prooreading,distributing, organizing volunteers.Email bpmnews@nicetechnology.com. with“volunteer” in the subjectline. Or call 916-444-3203
Learn the true new and thenTeach Peace
Check out
www.teachpeace.com
thewebsite o the same-named organiza-tion in Davis. I you’re a teacher, you’llbe especially interested in their materi-als or teaching peace to people o allages. But here we want to point out thesite’s other extensive resources. Alongwith important articles rom the worldpress on crucial topics in the news (likeRussia, Georgia and Ossetia), there isalso an extensive library o all the latestpolitical documentaries to watch with aclick o your mouse.
www.bpmnews.org
September / October 008 BECAUSE PEOPLE MATTER 3
By Kevin Wehr
Tis June, Anne Hartridge and Matt Georgedecided to “do the right thing.” When the Gov-ernor declared an ocial drought—aer many years o dwindling water resources—the EastSacramento couple let their lawn die, planningto move towards environmentally-riendly landscaping. But beore they could move to thesecond step, a neighbor reported them. TeCity’s civil code requires yards to be “irrigated,landscaped, and maintained.” Te two were ned$746 (later rescinded).Tis shows how dicult it can be to go greenin this city. City ocials are trying to encourageenvironmental responsibility—albeit in ts andstarts. J Street was repaved partially with recycledtire rubber and meters recongured as bike lock stands. Urban inll projects ght sprawl. O course much more needs to be done, especially in terms o zoning and building—the orces orblind development still avor building in delicategreen spaces, ood zones, and sprawling towardsthe Sierras, and city ocials are beholden todevelopers or election money. Our garbageis still trucked all the way to Nevada, and ourper-capita water use is among the highest in thenation.So while we must continue to push our electedocials to do the right green things (includinggetting rid o silly un-environmental codes),there are many things we can do ourselves,oen without spending a lot o money. Like ourEast Sac neighbors we can replant lawns withdrought-tolerant native species and never wateragain. Or better yet, use a recent code change andexisting irrigation to grow a vegetable garden inyour yard—it’s not too late to plant chard, kale,spinach, lettuce, or even butternut squash! Bury soaker hoses at the rooting level or under mulch,or use drip irrigation, and savor the avor o homegrown veggies.I have replanted my lawn with native Calior-nia poppies and other wildowers—with a beau-tiul range o colors and times o bloom—but o course some o the year they die o, perhaps tothe ire o my neighbors (please don’t ne me!).But that is what the landscape looks like here insummer. Nowadays, unnatural emerald greenlawns scream environmental irresponsibility instead o “neighborliness”!And when my 90 year old house needed newdrain pipes, I put in several diversions and nowmy grey water ows to those plants needingyear-round water. Tis was easy enough to buildinto the system, with the bonus o reusing dishand laundry water and easing my impact on ourwater resources. But no bleach down the drain,please!I you have the means, buy a hybrid or putsolar panels on your roo—but even theseexpensive endeavors are not necessary to havea relatively large impact on your environmentalootprint. Tere are many simple things we cando: install compact uorescent bulbs and turnthem o when not in the room; keep car tiresproperly inated, and even better buy a cheapbike and ride it around town; put in a timedthermostat, or better yet keep the windows openat night or the cooling delta breezes, then closeeverything up in the morning to keep cool in andheat out—you might not even need much ACwith this easy routine. And o course we shouldbuy locally and organic, or grow our own.We should save water and energy whereverand however we can, but we should also notmartyr ourselves or the environment. Whileconsumer choices and individual actions canhelp a lot (both in aggregate and or our ownpocketbooks), it is worth noting that these littlesteps will not solve our problems, and the largereconomic and political systems must continue tobe our main target or thorough-going change:capitalism requires continued growth and use o natural resources and unless we slow that downwe are headed o a cli.Similarly, elected ocials are embedded in thatsame economic system in order to nance theircampaigns, and we need to step o o that tread-mill as well. So get out and tend your garden, rideyour bike, and plant trees. But don’t miss the or-est or the trees!
Kevin Wehr is an Assistant Proessor in theDepartment o Sociology at CSUS.
…there are many thingswe can do ourselves,oten without spending alot o money.
Living Green in Sacramento
Kill your lawn!
Get healthier too
By Archna Sharma and AaronGrace
“In a world where life itself is a commodity to besold to the highest bidder, those of us who decide to pick up a shovel and work the unused land around us, to take back our stolen land and lives, to growour own food, literally hold the seeds of revolutionin our hands.”
‘Anonymous, Earth First’
S
o you say you wanna a revolution? It’s 2008and change is the mantra political drumsare incessantly beating. But no single can-didate or policy decision or ballot measure holdsmore impact than the actions o the ood con-sumer. Tis is where the revolution begins.As ood consumers we have a proound powerto demand that our ood be conscientiously grown, not genetically modied, and with aslittle negative environmental impact as possiblein production and distribution. It is our duty toconsider the consequences o allowing a globalood monopoly. Supporting the local ood econo-my goes ar beyond the reshness o our produce.“Long-distance ood” means the breakdowno our social and psychological consciousness.Long-distance transport o ood promotes extrapackaging, over-rerigeration, excessive uel con-sumption and enormous waste.Our own bodies suer rom consuming oodthat has traveled across continents and oceans.Long-distance transport and long-term storagedemand preservatives and additives. In recentdecades, ood scientists have successully extend-ed the storage lie o easily perishable oodsby altering plant biology using saety-untestedapproaches such as genetic engineering.Meaningul human connections are an aspecto ood choices. Shopping in a supermarket welose ace-to-ace interaction and we are le witheelings o oblivious indierence. Besides losingthe security o knowing exactly what it is that weare eating, we sacrice natural human contactsand diminish our own mental and emotionalcapacities.Long-distance ood means no locally ownedarms, dairies or grocers, leaving us stranded andpowerless. Community sel-suciency meanssupporting local armers’ markets as the manda-tory rst step in this revolution. Some o us may have a yearning to grow the oods that we enjoy;others may eel the need to grow or the nourish-ment o the local multitude.Consider the vision o our own local, urbanSacramento arm, Soil Born, reecting a nationalmovement o creating smaller arms. Tey desireto co-op a small network o local
urban
growersto create a source o resh organic oods especial-ly or underserved neighborhoods in well-popu-lated areas where land and water is available.What’s interesting about local arming, urbangardening, and organic growing in general isthat nothing here is righteningly new. For mil-lennia we have provided or ourselves locally.Te convenience o on demand eating, however,has created the de-evolution we now suer. ForSacramento residents the solution starts withthe continued support o our ever-growing localarmers’ markets throughout the region. Let’sstop waiting or our politicians to enact changeand act ourselves in our own best interests.1. Shop the armers’ markets2. Eat in season3. Demand locally grown ood at youravorite restaurants4. Visit a local arm5. Plant a garden6. Utilize CSA (Community SupportedAgriculture)7. Stop wasting ood8. Learn how to compost9. Initiate guerrilla gardening by planting inareas bere o lieIt all starts with a seed.Tere’s a Certied Farmers’ market in Sac every day but Friday (see
www.marketlocations.com
)
Archna Sharma and Aaron Grace are a mar-ried couple, the parents o three boys, advocateso home birth, members o the 9/11 truth move-ment and work at the Sunday downtown armers’ market.
Eat local and change the world
José Hernandez does the vegetable honors at the Sunday Farmer’s market atW and 8th.
photo by Doug Austin
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