Cassandra Voices

Author: Harry Tabony

  • George

    Yesterday, I met George. Several times before I’d seen him working on my corner, where Pontchartrain Boulevard crosses Veterans Boulevard. For our part of New Orleans, he was unique. George was black, very black, and very strong. Very strong and yet very confined to a wheelchair. From a hundred feet down the street, I’ll tell you what stood out was how powerfully he propelled his chair.

    A few days before, I’d decided I would try to get to know George. Marginalized to the grassy median, he perches on its curb, and poised there, he hopes to benefit from oncoming traffic in the left lane. So approaching that corner in the far-right turning lane, I was always too far away from George.

    Over the last few years, by observation I’ve analysed the various types of our ‘corner workers’ around town. You’ll yield to the sort that wash your windshield, and find others looking for support, if you put your mind to it. I attempt to aid those in need and avoid financing the next fix for chronic alcoholics, addicts, and freeloaders. I suppose like most people, I lumped them all together, under the label ‘Bums.’

    But I learned a thing or two from my daughter. Leslie developed a kind of understanding with every panhandler on Royal Street. She regularly encountered the same characters on her daily walk home. She knew them and they knew her. Sometimes Leslie doled out the odd tip, but there was always a cordial exchange. That inspired my curiosity, and I began to chat up corner-workers. Pressing a few bucks into a palm, I’d politely inquire if I could “put a name to a face” and sometimes glean a little more about their particular challenges.

    So yesterday it was a little after 5 p.m. when I saw George on the far corner. I drove home, parked my car in our garage and took a $20 bill out of my wallet. That’s a far larger denomination than my typical handout. But by the time I walked back to the corner, George was gone. Like a flywheel, he reeled furiously back up Pontchartrain Boulevard and there was no way I would overtake him. But finally he paused at a spot I later learned to be his bus stop. And that’s where I gave him the cash. I told him my name and spent the next twenty minutes talking to George.

    He’s not tall but his barrel chest and muscular arms are topped by a big bald head. Missing a few teeth, he’s a true entrepreneur who knows his business. George has to be, because he’s got no legs.

    The right one ends just above his knee and the left is shorter. At forty-nine years of age, he’s been married to the same wife his whole life, and they have teenage children who’re doing well in school. Being on dialysis for seventeen years, he gradually lost his limbs. George lives in the 9th Ward of New Orleans where he and his wife bought their modest house years ago. He told me, ‘I wouldn’t continue if it wasn’t for my kids. I’d just be a homeless and live on the street, much easier.’

    George picks his corner work-stations carefully. Our corner sees desirable drivers coming from Lakeview, an affluent neighbourhood. The traffic light is long there. I mean it remains red for an excruciating length of time. Too bad George can only “work” the first car that stops in the left lane, as wheeling in the grass isn’t a viable option. All things considered, he said it’s worth the long trip across town from his home to here, that is, to my corner. George took the bus at 5:30pm, expecting to arrive home, with luck, by 7pm. That’s quite a commute after a day’s worth of gruelling work.  George is an exceptional individual. But I suspect everyone on the street has a story.

    The solution to homelessness and hunger is simple. We can sink these hardships in a single stroke. Let’s provide room and board for the ignored. Raise the minimum wage and those half a million people seeking shelter will be able to afford a home. We could make quite a dent in these sobering statistics for cents on the dollar. Building safe places with public baths where people can shower, and launder their clothes in a pinch, would be a cinch. Some presidential candidates propose to eliminate poverty by instituting a universal stipend for all citizens. Why? Because the expense compares favourably to the price of programmes already on offer; those outdated doles that drain our coffers.

    All we lack now is the political will, written down in black and white, up on Capitol Hill. Clearly, cost can’t be a factor, when the impact of a fairly assessed universal income tax promises a pax humana. But in the land of milk and honey, our politics are controlled by money. Money that slobbers over obstacles, when if wisely spent it will pave the way toward intelligent jobs, and deployment for the indigent. There exists plenty enough to forge a gorgeous future. For all of us. You, me and George.

    Featured Image Jacob Pynas ‘The Good Samaritan.’

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  • Section 8

    It is the job of the market to turn the base material of our emotions into gold.
    Andre Codrescu

    In Ireland, if you hear ‘Section 8’, you might think THEFT, as here we have a statute for that, oh and FRAUD. No need to applaud. Meanwhile in America, they might mean housing the homeless or be talking about WWII-era homosexuals, bisexuals, crossdressers and transgender people deemed mentally unfit to serve in the military. Their undesirable behaviour being quaintly labelled ‘dishonorable discharge.’

    Social engineering aside, it seems even at the federal level, there’s a fine line between love and hate. But be aware there exists a vital Section 8 under Article One of the venerable U.S. Constitution, called ‘The Copyright Clause’. It reads: ‘To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries.’

    Also known as the ‘Intellectual Property Clause’, these precious words provide that each patent granted remains inviolate for a solid seventeen years. And I speak from personal experience: in the sixties, once expired, patents could not be renewed.

    Since then, Congress has consistently cobbled together rules around a patent to galvanize its value, with consequent financial benefits for the holder. These and other actions by Congress systemically thwart the laws that governed a creative capitalism under which America once thrived.

    One result has been to tilt the playing field in favor of corrupt oligarchs and multinational corporations, who can afford the capital-intensive funding of new ventures on the front end.

    While the Constitution’s specified process for amendment was ignored by Congress, a slew of new laws were spawned to maintain the 99% at 1960s income levels. This legislation bedevils a middle class who slaves for longer and less, but still pays the sky-rocketing price of ingenuity and innovation.

    To become a songwriter, performing artist, or movie producer today requires alliances or confrontations with giant media or technology corporations, and involves fighting prohibitively expensive legal offensives to retain patent rights in perpetuity.

    Michael Jackson’s heirs have inherited the highest-earning estate in history according to Forbes magazine, which collects more royalties than Jackson himself ever did. Michael’s life ended in a homicidal dose of sedatives administered by his personal physician. After being convicted of involuntary manslaughter, the doctor served four years, before being released based on a combination of prison overcrowding and his own good behaviour.

    Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the nom de plume Mark Twain, was a staunch advocate for authors against publishers. He identified the latter as pirates of copyright and speculated that last minute augmentations to his works could prevent them ever entering the public domain.

    Do his descendants still receive royalties for Tom Sawyer? The short answer is no. In 1966 the last of his line, granddaughter Nina, a heavy drinker, informed bartenders of her preference for vodka to be served, graveside, at her funeral. Found in her oft-frequented Los Angeles motel room, Nina was declared a suicide, and her cause of death presumed to be alcohol and an overdose of pills.

    Generating billions every year, Big Pharma makes minuscule changes to the secret sauces developed just prior to the expiration of a plethora of profitable patents. The drug cartel’s strategy buys another seventeen years of protection for products which remain fundamentally unchanged, while Americans continue to be overcharged. Smaller firms that could otherwise create efficacious generic alternatives at lower prices are cut out of this highly lucrative cycle.

    In technology for twenty-six consecutive years, IBM has maintained its position as the U.S. patent leader. Big Blue dominates the market and is on track to tally a grand total of ten thousand patents. This leaves companies like Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and Qualcomm to quibble over the crumbs of core technologies, meaning more artificial intelligence, cloud computing, virtual reality and drones.

    Be they for licensing or litigation alone, reaping the hefty annual fees from these expansive global portfolios remains their primary business activity, and these companies don’t feel compelled to produce anything of lasting tangible value at all.

    On reflection, a beacon can be weakened, but does the U.S. Constitution seek and destroy the same creativity it claims to preserve? On closer inspection, do ‘We the People’ get what we deserve at the till, when those good ol’ boys we elected hand us the bill?

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  • White American Pathology

    We don’t discuss white America’s common pathology. What we’ve begun, within limits, are discussions on racism, bigotry, white nationalism, and other disorders of the mind. Ever so guarded, these conversations are restricted to speculation about just who is a racist, a bigot, or a white supremacist, and always in the mode of, ‘us and them,’ as if we’re not all infected. Never do we seriously address the root cause of our illness, and how it manifests itself in our foreign policies. This national pathology manifests heavily when countless illegal acts by our government go uncontested. But let us save that story for some other time.

    Our common pathology is universal, infecting every white American citizen living in the States. There are no exceptions. No one is immune and there is no vaccine. Lifelong exposure to this plague starts early and occurs often. Many are infected by parents or siblings suffering advanced symptoms. If, as infants, we manage to avoid contracting the contagion at home, soon enough we’ll be exposed during a lifetimes’ social relations.

    It’s a serious psychological disorder of the mind on a par with Schizophrenia, a diagnosis as cruel as Cancer. Unlike Cancer, this contagion is measured in a million stages, from middle class microaggressions to self-styled white supremacists so riddled they’ve lost all logic and ability to reason.

    Their ideologies also usually include anti-Semitic and homophobic components that are in line with Nazi dogma. In contrast, groups such as the League of the South and Identity Europa propagate their radical stances under the guise of white ethno-nationalism, which seeks to highlight the distinctiveness––rather than the superiority––of the white identity.

    Furthermore, it claims that the white identity is under threat from minorities or immigrants that seek to replace its culture. For example, Identity Europa’s chant, ‘You will not replace us,’ insinuates that growing minority populations threaten to overtake whites of European heritage in American society.

    Members of this new generation of white supremacists, such as former Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP) leader Matthew Heimbach, have decried the traditional supremacist narrative of the inferiority of non-white races. Heimbach and his contemporaries have instead focused on racial separation rather than racial superiority, promoting the idea that all races are better served by remaining separate – take a look at www.counterextremism.com.

    More than two hundred hate-filled organizations have been documented in the United States. Their fear mongering membership find new recruits from every state. Growing in numbers as a percent of our population, these groups have local leadership within individual states, many directed by a centralized strategy, orchestrated from national level.

    Knowing their First Amendment rights, they dispatch speakers to every debate and gather. Bolder than before, the extreme right appears to be thriving in 2019’s chaotic political climate, where they barter with national leaders, buying legitimacy in exchange for base support. These are the chronic, if not terminal cases. But before you gloat, know that you are sick too.

    Our primary pathology is the myth of our own superiority. Its genesis lies in a set of genes designed for survival, which in turn, create a convincing cultural overlay leading us to believe  we are better in all respects. This evolutionary delusion comes from the back of our brains when we compare ourselves to people of color.

    Culturally, and on an individual emotional level, it always comes down to ‘us and them.’ We absolve ourselves, yet launch accusations of racism and bigotry at others. We cannot grant equal rights, respect or recognition because black people act as ‘benchmark’.

    What justifies the myth, if not our ‘benchmark?’ Part and parcel of our pathology is that we don’t know ourselves and we don’t want to. You and I share a built-in paranoia. It’s an inherited fear of loss in a zero sum game, forever exploited by the hard-right, most notably since the 1980s.

    This four-hundred-year old legacy of non-introspection is why I venture that a majority of descendants from slavery know us whites better than we know ourselves. I’ll also postulate that as they age, black people become infinitely wiser than old whites.

    They’ve had four hundred years to observe our faults and feel our cruelties. Meanwhile, we excuse ourselves a million more times. Some whites today say, ‘ah but that was years ago during slavery,’ as if cruelty no longer continues.

    Maybe black people are better positioned to see how systemically these values have been  embedded. One learns best by example, good or bad. And anyone watching our bad examples these last four hundred years has realized early in the game they don’t want to become anything like us. Minorities don’t envy whites, only the benefits we monopolize. As humans finding fault in other humans, these people might pity us, but harbor no desire to be white.

    If you want to explore and understand more about our illness, read some of James Baldwin’s essays. Try ‘Stranger in The Village,’ ‘In Search Of A Majority,’ ‘The Devil Finds Work,’ and many others in The Price of the Ticket his collection of nonfiction writing.

    Baldwin points out that before immigrants came to America they were simply Swedish, English, Irish, German, or perhaps Polish. People weren’t considered white until after they arrived. If we face the reality that our society is infected, we can proceed towards a human society populated by equals. Until then we’ll remain sickly and never truly civilized.