Clinton St Vol. 11 No. 3 Twin Cities Winter 1989-90
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S T A F F Oo-publishers Julie Ristau, Lenny Dee Editorial Board Lenny Dee, Diane Hellekson, David Morris, Julie Ristau, Karen Starr, Charlie Sugnet, Jay Walljasper Pacific Northwest Editor David Milholland Precious Metal Detector Lucinda Anderson Art Direction Lenny Dee Cover Design Connie Baker Designers Connie Baker, Julie Baugnet, Diana Boyer, Jezac, Kim Klein, Gail Swanlund, Eric Walljasper Contributing Artists Barbara Bloy, Lee Clapsdale, JonMarc Edwards, Frank Gaard, Seitu Jones, Polly Kiesel, Barbara Kreft, Ann Morgan, Stuart Mead, Denise Monaghan, Marsala Snow Gallery Curator Diane Hellekson Cover Photographer Gus Gustafson Proofreader Ann Laughlin Account Representative Barbara Nelson Typesetting Jezac Typesetting Tertulia Referee Karen Lehman Spiritual Advisor Camille Gage Windy City Beat Lynda J. Barry Thanks to thee Stephanie Ericsson, Jennifer Gage, Bill Herbst, Pegatha Hughes, Rick LeBarkeen, B.J. & Paul Loeb, Randi Lyders, Denise Mayotte, Tom Morgan, Pat Mulligan, Reva Rasmussen, Judi Ray, COMPAS ON THE COVER This is a self-portrait of Beth Upton, who also made the image on the cover. Subscriptions $10 a year. 212 3rd Ave. N., Suite 300 Minneapolis, MN 55401 The Twin Cities edition is published by the Clinton St. Quarterly, 212 3rd Avenue N., Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401—(612) 338-0782. Unless otherwise noted, all contents copyright ©1989 Clinton St. Quarterly. We encouraae your comments, articles and art. All material should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. A look at the ’90s from the irrepressible Mr. Vidal. Muslim Dopebusters— Dr. Alim Muhammed The brightest point of light in Bush’s America may come from the Nation of Islam. The New Materialism David Morris Managing Minnesota’s materials as if matter matters. HONESTY ISTHE BEST POLICY In the stultifying world of politics it is rare to find anything remotely inspiring. But Eastern Europeans’ recent surge to freedom has hit the Richter scale with such force as to make the California quake seem like a minor rumble. Only a hardened cynic could resist cheering the triumph of these oppressed people. Equally inspiring—though with far fewer photo opportunities—has been the USSR’s recent admission that its military presence in Afghanistan has violated Soviet law as well as international standards of conduct. How often since the invention of the modern nation state has a country come forth with such a frank confession? Imagine how different things would be now if the U.S. government had admitted that its military presence in Vietnam had violated U.S. law and international standards of conduct. If that had happened then maybe today we wouldn’t be involved in yet more butchery in El Salvador. The same spirit of candor might make us look at our domestic life differently. We presently are engaged in a crack, pot, war on drugs that we can’t win. Such flaming radicals as George Shultz, Milton Friedman, and William F. Buckley have admitted as much. Addiction is a social and psychological, not a chemical, disease. We ought to be confronting the spiri13 Responses to The New Materialism State officials add to the dialogue. Clinton St. Gallery— Polly Kiesel, Denise Monaghan, Marsala Snow, Barbara Bloy Four Twin Cities artists explore the family. Hell No, I Won’t Go— Ellen Willis You can’t win a Crack, Pot, War. tual, emotional, and economic deprivation that causes addiction. That means providing all people with meaningful employment, low cost housing, and a chance to restore a sense of community to their lives. Between August 1 and September 13, the three television networks combined with the New York Times and Washington Post to produce 347 pieces of reporting on the “ drug crisis.” Few if any of these reports told you that 50% of our crack users are suburbanites. No one told you that 9 out of 10 first time cigarette smokers become addicted as compared to 1 out of 6 first time cocaine users. Jn 1988, American hosp ita ls counted 3,308 deaths attributed to cocaine, as opposed to 390,000 deaths in some way attributed to the use of tobacco and 100,000 deaths directly related to the excessive use of alcohol. If drugs are a scourge, then alcohol and tobacco must be nothing short of a full-scale plague. The jingoistic tone of reporting about the war on drugs comes at a time when our national religion is coming unraveled. Seventy percent of Americans define ourselves as anticommunists, far more than any other common binding characteristic. In comparison only 49% define ourselves as religious. A drug-crazed apocalypse, supposedly emanating from the black inner city, is fast becoming our new national religion. Global Ecology at the Brink— Lester Brown The state of the planet as seen by one of America’s most far-sighted observers. 26 The Day We Discovered We Were Black— Davida Kilgore It wasn’t really Jo-Jo’s fault. That Francis Scott Key man started the whole thing. 28 From Words to Silence— Kerry Hansen A tale too manyof uswill have to tell. Fifty-five percent of us support mandatory drug testing for all Americans. Eighty-two percent are for enlisting the military in the war on drugs, and 83% favor reporting suspected drug users to the police even if it ’s their own families. An Orwellian hysteria of frightening proportions is underway. The Germans flooding west are looking for, and many will certainly find, political freedom and economic opportunity. Yet behind the alluring portrait of capitalist society painted by the media lies a spiritual vacuum that is at the heart of our substance abuse. A culture that places material rewards above all others is unable to find the will to make the dream all inclusive. The materialist culture creates a poverty of the spirit. Shop 'til you drop is not a motto to build your community around. We are 4% of the globe’s population yet we produce 25% of its pollutants and 30% of its garbage. The planet would be a science fiction nightmare if the rest of the world adopted our habits. If we aspire to matching the Russians’ candor we’d better ’fess up to an environmental felony and begin to use the ingenuity that put a man on the moon to build an environmentally sound economy that doesn’t leave anyone out of the picture. Once down that path we’d find many other walls come tumbling down. —Lenny Dee Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90 3
BYGOREVIDAL ■ ■ HEREHASNOTBEEN a political debate in the UnitedStates since theone that endedwiththe Japaneseattack onPearlHarbor. FromSeptember1939toDecember7,1941, therulingclassoftheUnited States was split between those who would join the Allies in their war against Hitler and those who would stay out. For three years there was fierce argument in Congress, the press, the schools. At my school, Exeter, there was a sharp division between the isolationists, known as America Firsters, and the interventionists. True to the populist tradition in which I was brought up, I was isolationist. Then, or as Lincoln once so bleakly put it, and the war came; and I enlisted in the Army, age 17. Since the victory of 1945, the United States, as befits the leader of something called “ the free world,” has fought open and unsuccessful wars in Korea and Vietnam; and relatively covert wars in Cambodia, Laos, the Caribbean, Central America, Africa, Chile, the Middle East, etc. In almost every case, our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom , democracy and human rights to their own people. We justify our affection for fascist (or, to be cozy, authoritarian) regimes because each and every one of them is a misty-eyed convert to our national Voices of dissent are either blacked out or marginalized. ity state’s directives to overthrow an Arbenz here or a Sihanouk there or— why not?—devastate a neutral country like Laos to show how tall we can stand in all our marvelously incredible credibility. Voices of dissent are either blacked out or marginalized, while known apostates of the national religion are either demonized or trivialized. Meanwhile, no one has noticed that the national security state, in its zeal to bring the national religion to all nations, has now deprived us of our original holy text— our Old Testament—the Constitution. Every war that we have fought since 1945 has been by executive (or National Security Council) order. Since only Congress may declare war, these wars have all been in violation of the Constitution. To the House of Representatives was assigned, uniquely, the power of the purse. But, in thrall to those religious wars that we forever fight, our debts are now so great that Congress dares not prepare a proper budget. So the power of the purse has been replaced by a ridiculous formula, involving a blind arbitrary cutting of the budget should Federal waste exceed a certain arbitrary figure. Although the most militant of our national religionists enjoy calling themselves conservatives, they have not managed to conserve either the letter or the spirit of the Old Testament. religion, which is anticommunism. Then, once our dictator is in place, we echo Andy Hardy: Hey, kids, let’s put on an e lection! And so, in the presence of cold-eyed avatars of Tammany and Daley, our general does. To their credit, our rulers don’t often bore us with tortured rationalizations or theological nit-picking. They don’t have to. Since we have no political parties and no opposition media, there is always a semblance of “ consensus” for these wars. Congress funds the Pentagon, which then responds to the national securORSOMETINEKNOWLedgeable foreigners have found it difficult to talk about much of anything to Americans because we appear to know so little about much of anything. History of any kind is a closed book to us. Geography is no longer taught in most public schools. Foreign languages make everyone’s head ache—anyway, they all know CUETHEGRE Art by Frank Gaard Design by Diana Boger 4 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90
Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90 5
The corporate grip on opinion in the U.S. is one of the wonders of the Western world. English. As for politics, that’s simple: It’s either us (what the silver-tongued felon Spiro Agnew, or his wordsmith William Satire, so memorably dubbed “ the greatest nation in the country” ) or them—foreigners who envy us our vast choice of detergents, our freedom to repeat as loudly as we want the national prayers, our alabaster cities to whichv we tell ourselves, they can’t wait to emigrate. On the other hand, the average American, when it comes to his own welfare, is very shrewd indeed. He knows that we are in an economic decline and that our quality of life, though better than that of Russia (all that really matters, our priests hum softly) is noticeably lousy. But the reasons for our decline are never made clear because the corporate ownership of the country has absolute control of the populist pulpit—“ the media” —as well as of the schoolroom. David Hume’s celebrated 1758 Of the First Principles of Government has never been more to the point than now: Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinions. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular. The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonCorporate America enjoys the freedom to make money without the slightest accountability to those they are killing. ders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent. Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is no time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions intended, like the avowed commercials, to keep docile huddled masses, keep avid for products addled consumers. I seldom watch television. But when I do set out to twirl the dial, it is usually on Sunday, when our corporate rulers address us from their cathode pulpit. Seedy Washington journalists, sharp-eyed government officials who could not dispose of a brand-new car in Spokane, think-tank employees, etiolated from too long residence ’ neath fla t rocks, and always, always, Henry Kissinger, whose destruction of so many Asians and their once-charming real estate won him a prize for peace from the ironists of outer Europe. The level of the chat on those programs is about as low as it is possible to get without actually serving the viewers gin. The opinion expressed ranges from conservative to reactionary to joyous neofascist. There is even, in William Satire, an uncloseted anti-Gentile. I was once placed between two waxworks on a program where one of the pair was solemnly identified as a “ liberal” ; appropriately, he seemed to have been dead for some time, while the conservative had all the vivacity of someone on speed. For half an hour it is the custom of this duo to “ crossfire” cliches of the sort that would have got them laughed out of the Golden Branch Debating Society at Exeter. On air, I identified the conservative as a liberal and vice versa. The conservative fell into the trap. “ No, no!” he hyperventilated. “ I’m the conservative!” (What on earth they think these two words mean no one will ever know.) It was the liberal who got the point; from beyond, as it were, the tomb he moaned, “ He’s putting us on.” l HAVEBEENINVOLVED in television since the early 1950s, when it ceased to be a novelty and became the principal agent for the simultaneous marketing of consumer goods and of national security state opinion. Although I thought I knew quite a bit about the ins and outs of the medium, I now know a lot more, thanks to Ben H. Bagdikian’s The Media Monopoly (“ second edit ion . comp le te ly updated & expanded” ) and Manufacturing Consent, a study of “ the political economy of the mass media,” by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. These two studies demonstrate exactly how the few manipulate opinion. To begin with: The average American household keeps the set throbbing seven hours a day. This means the average American has watched 350,000 commercials by age 17. Since most opinion is now controlled by twenty-nine corporations—due to be at least one fewer if Time-Warner or Paramount-Time or, most chilling of all, Nation-Time comes to pass, one can then identify those twenty-nine C.E.O.s as a sort of politburo or college of cardinals, in strict charge of what the people should and should not know. They also select the Presidents and the Congresses or, to be precise, they determine what the politicians may talk about at election time—that famed agenda that never includes the interesting detail that, in peacetime, more than two-thirds of the Federal revenue goes to war [see Vidal, “ How to Take Back Our Country,” The Nation, June 4, 1988], Although AIDSf can be discussed as a means of hitting out at unpopular minorities, the true epidemic can never be discussed: the fact that every fourth American now alive will die of cancer. This catastrophe is well kept from the public by the tobacco companies, the nuclear power companies (with their bungled waste disposal) and other industries that poison the earth so that corporate America may enjoy the freedom to make money without the slightest accountability to those they are killing. *HE INVENTIONOFTHE talk show on television was, at first, a most promising development. Admittedly, no one very radical would ever be allowed on, but a fair range of opinion could be heard; particularly as the Vietnam War began to go bad. On the original Today show, Hugh Downs and I would talk off and on for an hour as news, weather, commercials floated lazily by. But Hazel Bishop, an obscure lipstick company, changed all that. The firm began running commercials not linked to specific programs and it was soon determined that the thirty-second commercial duplicates exactly the attention span of the average viewer. Therefore, no in-depth interview can last for more than seven minutes; three minutes is considered optimum. Recently, I found m yse lf c o n f ro n t in g the amiable Pat Sajak. I was all set to do what I think of as my inventing-the- wheel-in-seven-minutes (why what’s wrong is wrong and what to do) when my energy level crashed. I did say that if you wanted to know what the ownership of the country wants you to know, tune in to Nightline and listen to Ted Koppel and his guests. The effect of this bit of information must have been surreal. Since no voices other than those of the national consensus are heard, how could a viewer know that there are any other viewpoints? I was made aware of the iron rules in 1968, when William F. Buckley Jr. and I had our first live chat on ABC at the Republican Convention in Miami Beach. I was billed as the conservative; he as the pro-crypto —or was it the other way around? Anyway, we were hired to play the opinion game in order to divert the audience from the issues. Buckley Junior’s idea of a truly deep in-depth political discussion is precisely that of corporate America’s. First, the Democrat must say that the election of a Republican will lead to a depression. Then the Republican will joyously say, Ahhahhhhh, but the Democrats always lead us into war! After a few minutes of this, my attention span snapped. I said that there was no difference at all between the two parties because the same corporations paid for both, usually with taxpayers’ money, tithed, as it were, from the faithful and then given to “ defense,” which in turn passes it on to those candidates who will defend the faith. With that bit of news for the national audience I revealed myself not only as an apostate to the national religion; I came close to revealing 6 Clinton St. Quarterly—WInter, 1989-90
what I really am: a dedicated antianticommunist, a category far more vile to the true believer than a mere Communist. Although my encounters with Buckley Junior got ABC its highest ratings, I was seen no more at election time. Last year, Peter Jennings proposed to ABC that, for old times’ sake, it might be a good idea to have me on. “ No,” he was told, “ He’ ll just be outrageous.” IN 1972THEFUTURESU- preme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote the U.S. Chamber of Commerce proposing that they “ buy the top academic reputations in the country to add credibility to corporate studies and give business a stronger voice on the campuses .” One wonders, Stronger than what? But the advice was taken. Also, as corollary, keep off prime-time television those who do not support corporate America. During the 1960s and early 1970s I used, once a year, to do a “ state of the union” analysis on David Susskind’s non-network, non-prime-time television program. Many people watched. In the summer before the 1976 presidential election, Susskind wanted to produce a series of one-hour interviews with the twenty or so leading candidates of the two parties. For one hour I would question each candidate about politics, history, economics—whatever came up. Since I favored no candidate and neither party, I could not be said to be partisan. PBS agreed that this sort of program was precisely why PBS had been founded and funded. All the candidates, save President Ford, affected delight. As we prepared for the first program, the head of PBS affiliate WNET, Jay Iselin, canceled the series without explanation. Then the intrepid producer, Hillard Elkins, took over. He had “ a good relationship” with Home Box Office, which was “ hungry for product.” HBO manifested delight in having its hunger so cheaply sated. Then, just before the first taping, Andrew Heiskell, the overall capo of Time-Life-HBO, canceled us. In due course, I was advised that it was not in the national (that is, corporate) interest for so many expensive presidential candidates to be questioned by me In a—what was the phrase?— “ nonstructured format.” Now, of course, with the megacorporate ownership of the media becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, structure is total, indeed totalitarian, and the candidates can no longer be discerned through the heavy blizzard of thirty-second spots. Currently, the p r inc ipa l d is penser of the national religion is Ted Koppel, a very smooth bishop indeed. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting- noble, doomed enterprise—had a study made of just who appeared as Koppel’s guests during a forty-month period from 1985 to 1988. White male establishment types predominated. Henry Kissinger (Koppel’s guru and a longtime cardinal in the national security state’s curia) and Alexander Haig (by his own admission, in one of many moments of confusion at the White House, “ a vicar” ) each appeared fourteen times, the maximum for any guest. Yet the cardinal’s views on almost any subject are already known to anyone who might be interested in looking at Nightline, while Haig’s opinions have never interested anybody in the course of a long busy career climbing ladders so that he could be close to those with power in order—to be close to them. The next two champ guests, weighing in at twelve appearances each, were the mendacious Elliott Abrams (Koppel assumes that although Abrams will lie to Congress, he won’t lie to Koppel) and Jerry Falwell, a certified voice of God whose dolorous appearance suggests a deep, almost personal grief that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution are not yet repealed. Most of the other guests are hired guns for the national security state. The Koppel explanation for this bizarre repertory company is that, well, they are the folks who are running the country and so that’s why they’re on. Well, yes, Ted, that is why they’re on, but there are other more interesting and more learned—even disinterested—voices in the land and, in theory, they should be heard, too. But theory is not practice in bravery’s home. Of semidissenters, only Jesse Jackson and Studs Terkel have been honored with solo interviews with the bishop, who insists, by the way, that the guest face not him but a camera in another room, preferably in another city, with an earphone but no mon ito r. Good te le v is io n one- upmanship. To my amazement, just before Mikhail Gorbachev spoke at the United Nations, on December 7,1988, I was asked to contribute a tiny prerecorded (and thus easily edited) cameo. I suppose that I was asked because I had attended Gorbachev’s famous antinuclear forum in Moscow two years earlier. I spoke to a camera. I predicted, accurately, that Gorbachev would say that Russia was unilaterally disarming, and that we were now dangerously close to peace. To the question What will the United States do without The Enemy?—a pretty daring question from those whose livelihood depends on the demonizing of Russia and Communism—I said that, thanks to television, a new demon can be quickly installed. Currently, the Arabs are being thoroughly demonized by the Israel lobby while the Japanese are being, somewhat more nervously, demonized by elements of the corporate state. But neither will do as a longterm devil because the Arabs are too numerous (and have too much oil) while the Japanese will simply order us to stop it; should we disobey them, they will buy the networks and show us many hours of the soothing tea ceremony. I suggested that the new devil will be the threat to our eco- sphere, and the new world god, Green. None of this was used, of course, but a man who w rites Russians-Are-Coming thrillers was shown, frow n ing w ith in tense anguish at, What, what! does it all mean? Because you godda be real careful with these guys. Fine show, Ted. ■HE UNLOVEDAMERICAN empire is now drifting into history on a sea of red ink, as I predicted in these pages on January 11,1986 [“ Requiem for the American Empire” ], to the fury of the few and the bewilderment of the many. Thanks to money wasted in support of the national religion, our quality of life is dire, and although our political institutions work smoothly for the few, the many hate them; hence the necessity of every corporate candidate for President to run against the government, which is, of course, the corporate sta te—good fun. In due course, something on the order of the ethnic rebellions in the Soviet Union or even of the people’s uprising in China will take place here. Too few have ripped off too many for too long. Opinion can no longer disguise the contradiction at the heart of conservativecorporate opinion. The corporate few are free to do what they will to customers and environment while the many are losing their freedoms at a rapid rate. The Supreme Court, the holy office of the national religion, in upholding the principle of preventive detention, got rid of due process two years ago, and now the Court is busily working its way through the Bill of Rights, producing, as it goes, a series of bright, crackling autos-da-fe, among them not only the hectic flag but children and mental defectives. Significantly, our prison population is now among the wo r ld ’s largest. Certainly, it is right up there, per capita, with the Soviet Union and the Republic of South Africa. Now the few are proposing that if the war budget is to be, tragically, reduced, the army camps—perfect symbolism —can be used to house our criminal population, particularly weak-fibered drug users. Thus do the few now declare open war on the many, as millions of citizens are now liable to mandatory blood, urine and lie- detector tests, while an electronic bracelet has been invented that will make it possible.to track its wearer wherever he goes. Theoretically, half a nation can now monitor the movements of the other half. Better we enslave ourselves, the priests chant, than they do. Lately, the language of government, always revealing, grows more and more fierce and commanding (due to so many wars lost? so much money wasted?), and military metaphors abound as czars lead all-out wars on drugs. Yet, at the risk of causing both offense and embarrassment among even the not-so-faithful, I feel obliged to say that I do not accept the authority of any state—much less one founded as was ours upon the free fulfillment of each citizen— to forbid me, or anyone, the use of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, sex with a consenting partner or, if one is a woman, the right to an abortion. I take these rights to be absolute and should the few persist in their efforts to dominate the private lives of the many, I recommend force as a means History of any kind is a closed book to us. of changing their minds. Meanwhile, let us hope that opinion will respond to recent events. For instance, despite millions of dollars spent in the last presidential election on trying—successfully—to obscure every political issue while demonstrating—unsuccessfu lly— that there was a dramatic difference between Dukakis and Bush, 50 percent of the American electorate refused to vote. When a majority boycotts a political system, its days are numbered. The many are now ready for a change. The few are demoralized. Fortunately, the Messiah is at hand: the Green God. Everyone on earth now worships him. Soon there will be a worldwide Green movement, and the establishment of a worldwide state, which the few will take over, thus enslaving us all while forgetting to save the planet. That is the worstcase scenario. The best? Let the many create a new few. Reprinted with permission from The Nation (August 7/14,1989). Gore Vidal is a world renowned author. Frank Gaard is a co-founder of Art Police and has been active in the Twin Cities community for twenty years. Diana Boger recentlymoved to the Twin Cities from Washington, D.C. where she worked as an illustrator, designer and typographer. Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90 7
Dr. Alim Muhammed is a physician in Washington, DC, and also national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, headed by the controversial Louis Farrakhan. In the following interview, conducted at Dr. Muhammed’s clinic in northeast Washington’s Paradise Manor public housing project, we talked about the ‘dopebuster” program and the voluntary, self-reliant Muslim effort to culturally revitalize their community M / Why has there suddenly been an explosion of concern over drugs in Washington, DC? Is the level of violence new? Is it because of crack? How is the current situation different from 10 years ago? Dr. Alim Muhammed/ The difference is that the tremendous problem of drugs has come to the notice of white America. The Nation of Islam has long recognized drugs as a severe problem in our communities. For nearly 30 years, we have had a very successful rehabilitation program for individuals caught in the clutches of drugs. Additionally, however, I think that the introduction of crack cocaine has made a qualitative difference in drug abuse and drug addiction. Because it is cheap, 100 percent addictive, and causes \ profound paranoia, depression and bouts of violent behavior in the individuals who use it, crack has amplified the crime and violence that accompanies the use of all drugs. Crack is also very alarming from a medical point of view. I would argue that crack is incompatible with life. The crack user is not only likely to be involved in violence and homicide, but the drug itself is lethal. As a physician, I have come in contact with heroin addicts and alcoholics who can describe a twenty- and thirty-year history of addiction. But with crack, it is clear that the user will be dead in two, three or fouf years—if not from the devastating physiological affects, then from the violence associated with the crack trade. In the Washington, DC area we have seen an evolution over the past few years. There has been a significant decrease in the heroin using population, and, while the drug of choice six years ago was PCP, it is now crack. Crack is all that’s out there today. Q / What is the difference between the Nation of Islam’s drug rehabilitation and education program and Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No campaign or Drug Czar William Bennett’s proposal for more prisons and boot camp? Muhammed/ Our approach works. And it works because we realize that drug abuse is rooted in a spiritual hunger. Millions of people are missing something in their lives. The churches and the schools have failed to fill this void. And, in many cases, the families have failed to provide a spiritual foundation on which an individual can begin to build a healthy life. So, those who hunger seek an artificial high jn drugs—a respite from a life drained of meaning. Furthermore, for the black community, this lack of a spiritual foundation is compounded by the lack of economic opportunity. In some inner-city areas, unemployment among black youth is as high as 60 percent. These young men have the same aspirations for living the good life as everybody else, but they just don’t have the career options or the , education. So, the drug trade is their upward mobility path. Q / Do you see drugs as the nexus between racial discrimination, crime and violence? Muhammed/ If we will not pay to educate, train and provide jobs for our troubled black youth, then we will pay another way. The drug-related crime and violence, and even the spread of AIDS by addicts, is America’s reckoning for its past: It is this country's day of judgment for the neglect of black America. But all these things are now beginning to plague the society in general, making the civilized life we all desire impossible. Q / Nearly two decades ago, black nationalists argued for cultural integrity, but against integration. They argued that integration would break up the wholeness of the black community by allowing those who could get out of the ghetto—small-businessmen, the educated, the employed—to escape, leaving behind a concentration of poor blacks that didn’t have the wherewithal to make it. Haven’t the nationalists’ fears come to pass? Muhammed/ I think that their fears about integration have proven to be true. In some respects, the doors of opportunity were opened, but only those who were qualified to go through those doors actually did so. In fact, those who became middle class left the inner-city areas to 8 Clinton St. Quarterly
languish—without leadership, institutions, hope or an agenda. In your terms, the inner-city was left without wholeness and integrity. And, of course, the black middle class has not found utopia through integration. I think we will see a return of the black middle class to their roots in the black community because they are not finding the acceptance they once thought they would among their white colleagues. Q / Is the basic agenda of the Muslims to restore cultural integrity to the black community as the bulwark against drugs and other social problems? Muhammed/ Yes. Starting with the individual and the family, the black community needs to be rebuilt. It needs to be rebuilt economically, spiritually, psychologically and educationally. The Nation of Islam faces up to _ the devastating effect of four centuries of slavery. We have no illusions about what happened to the black family. It was destroyed. Our approach is to rebuild the total individual. .We don’t attack the drug problem, for example, as a mass phenomenon. We realize that the key to community development is the self- affirmation and self-improvement of individuals—one by one, two by two, family by family, the black community must be rebuilt. While each effort seems insignificant, the cumulative effect over the decades, I would argue, has been more effective than all the mass programs financed by the government and other social agencies. Even though Drug Czar Bennett talks about restoring moral authority, do you think his approach can be effective? Muhammed/ I think Bennett wants to restore social order, not moral authority. He is a law and order man who is not particularly interested in social justice, economic opportunity or elevating the life of people caught in the web of drugs and violence. He wants safe streets. Despite his rhetoric about restoring parental authority, his only solution is to warehouse tens of thousands of young black males who he views as the cause of all the problems. He wants them off the streets. Ultimately, this approach is going to lead to a society that resembles South Africa. Already, Washington, DC has the highest incarceration rate for black males of any urban area outside South Africa. Out of a population of 200,000 black males in Washington, DC, more than 10,000 of them are incarcerated. Almost all of those incarcerated are under 30 years of age and about 70 percent have been jailed for drug-related offenses. Obviously, building more prisons will not solve the problem. So, the Nation of Islam looks at what it will take to make these young, black men productive and civil members of society. We must face up to the fact that If we will not pay to educate, train and provide jobs for our troubled black youth, then we will pay another way. society at large has failed to provide these young people with the proper avenues for development.. As a consequence, they have gotten involved in drugs and related criminal activity. Because many are just as unsuccessful at that kind of activity as they were in other areas, they end up in jail. Q / It seems what you are really saying is that police force can’t substitute for restoration of moral authority, which, in the last analysis, must come from within the individual and from within the black community. The government simply cannot weave integrity back into the black community. Muhammed/ I think you are right. That is why the Nation of Islam can be one of the brightest of President Bush’s thousand points of light—voluntary organizations who deal with America’s problems without reliance on government. The Bush Administration must come to terms with our successful track record in putting what you call "integrity” back into the black community. We have given people honor and self-respect; promoted self-help and self-reliance; made people productive and interested in learning; helped people to become entrepreneurs and to go into business; and, we have put families back together by making men and women responsible, law-abiding members of the community. When the force for these things comes from within the individual, it works. It cannot be implanted, or enforced from without. Decades of government programs have proven the failure of that type of approach. Q / In practical terms, just what kind of programs accomplish these objectives? Muhammed/ We have regular Womanhood and Manhood Training classes for young men and women. We teach these young people their responsibilities to themselves as self- respecting individuals, as well as their responsibilities to their families and their community. We teach them everything: hygiene, how to take care of their clothing, shine their shoes, apply for and keep a job, how to pay bills on time, etc. In the larger society, many of these things are simply taken for granted. But in the poor black community, with our legacy of slavery, who has there been to teach mothering skills? In many cases, our women have been more involved in raising other people’s children than in raising their own. Further, who has there been to teach fathering skills to the children as they grow up? What model has a black male had for being a father and a husband, if his own father was absent from the household? So many of these fundamental parenting skills, family skills, are just missing and, as far as I can see, no one other than the Nation of Islam wants to begin reforming the poor black community at this basic level. We take people where we find them. Then, with humility in the manner of Jesus washing his disciples feet, we help people do the things they are unable to do for themselves. Q / What about your “dopebuster” program in the northeast section of Washington, DC? How did it begin? Muhammed/ About a year ago we were invited by the residents of the Mayfair Mansions and Paradise Manor public housing projects to help them put an end to the drug siege, which had overtaken them in the previous two years. They noticed that when followers of the Nation of Islam came through the projects selling their newspaper, The Final Call, it had a chilling effect on the drug activity. We met with the tenant council and management of Mayfair Mansions and developed the idea of patrolling the area on a regular basis. We began the program on April 18th of last year, the first day of Ramadan—the traditional month of fasting in the Islamic world. That first day, we confronted approximately 300 people who were milling around at Mayfair Mansions, buying and selling drugs in what is called an “open-air market.” People would just hang out in the breezeways, the porches and the parking lots. Customers would drive in off the 295 freeway, swing into the parking lot, buy some drugs and drive away again. A group of us went up to the milling crowd and let it be known we were from the Nation of Islam and that we were there to restore order to the community. We asked who were and were not residents of the project. Of course, almost none of them were residents. We told the non-residents they would have to leave the premises and we escorted them to the perimeter. There was instant respect and just about universal compliance, because the Muslims have a certain moral authority in the black community. There was no resistance except for two individuals who came back a little later, one with a sawed-off shotgun and the other a handgun. But we managed to take the guns from them, gave them a little spanking and held them until the police came. Within the first week after we shut down the drug trading, we identified eight crack houses in Mayfair Mansions and several more at Paradise Manor. With the cooperation of the management, the marshall’s office and the housing authorities, we obtained eight evictions in three days. Once those crack house were shut down, the drug traffic in the area evaporated. So, what we have created in these public housing projects is a drug-free environment. Because it is drug free, it is also virtually crime free. We work very closely with the police, who now only have to patrol here once or twice a day. In the last year, there has been only one serious crime—a domestic homicide. Q / What have you done on the rehabilitation and treatment side? Muhammed/ We took the apartments opened up by the evictions and transformed them into what one could call “treatment” centers, where we walk and talk the addicts through withdrawal. As soon as we started doing that, of course, more and more people began coming to us for help. Over the last six months, we have had more than 40 individuals who have come to us for help, including Louis Farrakhan’s son, Joshua—most of them trying to get off crack. So far, only three of them have failed to really turn around. Q / Are these individuals kicking drugs as part of a religious conversion to Islam, or is it something less religiously specific? Muhammed/ Most people who went through the program didn’t convert to Islam. We were simply able to give them something they sorely needed, which can be summed up in the phrase “knowledge of self”: who they are, where they come from, their purpose in life. Q / Kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous? Muhammed/ Yes. And if we can extend our short-term success into the long term, we can really begin to have an impact. The health commissioner of Washington, DC, for example, finds our program much more effective as a model than the old drug rehabilitation programs designed 20 years ago to deal with heroin. But our treatment principle can be applied in any city. It is not racespecific or religion-specific. It simply requires a dedication to the universal principle of self-affirmation. This interview was first published in the summer 89 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly. Ann Morgan is a Twin Cities artist. Eric Walljasper is a Twin Cities art director. MuslimDopebusters The Brightest Point of Light Art hyAnnMorgan, Design by Eric Walljasper Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90 9
The New Materialism Managing Materials as if Matter Matters By David Morris The toxic waste crisis, the garbage crisis, the greenhouse effect, acid ra in , ozone dep le tion , groundwater pollution, are all symptoms o f the same disease: our m isuse o f materials. In the last decade a powerful worldwide environmental movement has forced every level of government, from cities to the United Nations, to re-examine, and begin to change, the rules governing materials extraction, processing and disposal. As we change the rules, we alter the underlying economics for much of our economy. "Everything is connected to everything else,” is the credo of the ecology movement. Banning leaded gasoline created a billion gallon a year market for ethanol, which, in turn increased the price corn farmers received from 10-40 cents a bushel. Curtailing land dumping of garbage hiked the cost of disposal 5-10 fold and transformed a tiny, voluntary, community based recycling movement into a global enterprise. If we seriously try to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup, we may witness the most dramatic change of all. Carbon based materials represent 85 percent of our fuels and perhaps 50 percent of all nonfood materials. In 1987 an international accord called for a 20 percent reduction of CO2 emissions by the year 2005. The U.S. is not a signatory, but in 1989 Oregon’s legislature required its Department of Energy to develop a specific plan to achieve that goal. We cannot predict the specific environmental regulations that will be enacted over the next decade, but we can predict their general impact. Each time we raise the cost of waste we increase the value of efficiency and recycling. Each time we regulate acid rain or greenhouse emissions, we make plant matter, which contains very little sulfur and absorbs carbon dioxide as it matures, more attractive as both a fuel and industrial material. While changes in the external regulatory environment raise the cost of the traditional way of doing things, techno log ica l advances make it increasingly feasible to change the way we do things. We can now take a molecule of almost any material and, through processing, impart to it properties previously unique to a very few materials. Auto parts previously made only from steel or aluminum can now be made from oil-based plastics or sand-based ceramics. Automotive fuels previously made only from fossil fuels can now be made from plant matter. Industries that previously used only a small amount of scrap can now make high quality products using 50 percent, or even 100 percent used materials. Only 4% o f the globes population, we produce 25% o f its pollutants and over 30% o f its garbage. These unprecedented changes in the regulatory and technological environments concerning materials offer a unique challenge for state government. States that anticipate these changes can reap significant rewards. They can simultaneously clean up their own environments, and strengthen their internal economies. They can nurture new products and services that will become attractive exports as other parts of the country and world also adapt to the rules of the new age. There is another reason for acting first. Americans consume twice as much fuels and industrial materials as Western Europe and Japan, and almost ten times the planetary average. Only 4 percent of the globe’s population, we produce 25 percent of its pollutants and over 30 percent of its garbage. If the rest of the world adopted our habits, the planet would quickly become uninhabitable. Yet this is exactly what developing countries hope to do. They will be unlikely to heed our warnings of impending catastrophe if we ourselves do not dramatically change our consumption habits. This combination of carrot and stick should prompt Minnesota to develop a coherent and comprehensive materials policy that combines economic and environmental objectives. In the last 12 months we have moved in the right direction. 1. Last May the Public Utilities Commission, on the basis of “ widening evidence of the environmental effects of acid rain and global warming,” declared “ increased e f f iciency in the use of energy” to be “ critical.” It is designing new regulatory procedures to encourage utilities to pursue energy conservation as aggressively as they trad it iona lly develop new power sources. 2. In 1989 the state legislature, for the first time, also declared: “ The fo llow ing waste management practices are in order of preference: 1) waste reduction and reuse, 2) waste recycling and yard waste composting, 3) resource recovery through mixed municipal solid waste composting or incineration, and 4) land disposal.” 3. With regard to plant matter, state tax credits have encouraged ethanol production. Various researchers are devising ways to convert lignin and starch into plastics. The state has several fast growing tree plantations. State government has assisted state institutions to convert to wood energy. These steps, however, fall far short of a comprehensive policy. State and regional agencies project another 10-15 percent increase in per capita consumption of electricity and an equal increase in per capita garbage generation by the end of the century. The recent legislative session established a 30 percent stateI f the rest o f the world adopted our habits, the planet would quickly become uninhabitable. wide recycling goal by 1993. That implies accepting two-thirds of our used materials being burned or land- filled. Two more ethanol plants may soon join the Marshall plant, but even with the proposed expansions, instate ethanol will be able to provide only 3-4 percent of the state’s transportation fuel needs by the early 1990s. State support for fast growing tree plantations is modest. NSP abandoned its support for wood fired electricity in early 1988. What should be done? First, we need to formally adopt two objectives o f state policy: reduction in our per capita consumption of virgin materials; and a dramatic shift from a reliance on hydrocarbons or fossil fuels to carbohydrates or living fuels. Slight improvements in efficiency or recycling are insufficient if we increase our consumption even faster. Modest increases in vehicle efficiency, for example, can be overwhelmed by major increases in the number of miles driven. Second, we need a Materials Czar who can vigorously promote these goals. Such a person must cut a c ro ss an o f te n fragm en ted adm inistrative structure inherited from a different era. Today the sanitation department has no connection to the public u t i l ity agency or the economic development department. The Public U tilities Commission regulates only one component of fuel use—electricity. No agency regulates non-electrical use, although building codes and some pollution regulations affect such use. Plant matter harvested in 1-2 years, as a matter of tradition, is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture (DOA). Plant matter that matures over 10 years is under the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), as is vegetation that promotes wildlife. The Pollution Control Agency (PCA) regulates waste disposal although a subset of this, solid waste, is also regulated by counties and cities. The Department of Trade and Economic Development (DTED), Office of Waste Management (OWM), A g r ic u ltu ra l U t i l iz a t io n Research Institutes (AURI) and other agencies provide financing for raw material processing and distribution enterprises. Their specific jurisdictions are still evolving. A first task will be to develop benchmarks to evaluate the progress we are making toward our objectives. How efficient are we? What portion of our fuels comes from direct solar energy, or the stored solar energy of plants? How much are we recycling? What is our per capita consumption of materials? What is Possible? Energy Efficiency In 1976 a typical Minneapolis-Saint Paul home used 154 million btus for heating, the equivalent to 7.5 tons of oil. In 1984 the same size house needed only 3.5 10 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90
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