A Town Called George

I recently saw in a magazine (I don't remember which one) a letter-to-the-editor written by a reader who lives in a town in Washington State called George.

Looking the town up in my Michelin North America road atlas (2012 edition) to satisfy my curiosity, I discovered its location--a hundred miles more or less northeast of Yakima, in the central part of the state, on Interstate Highway 90, population 528.

George, Washington. I wonder how long it took the founders of the town to come up with that particular name. 

The Declaration Of Independence In Words And Music

I'm amazed that conservative radio talk show hosts, who are so ultra-patriotic on the air, have not discovered the Fifth Dimension's The Declaration (Bell Records, 1970) and played it on their shows.

On the recording, the Fifth Dimension, the African American pop vocal group better known for hits such as Up, Up and Away and Wedding Bell Blues, takes the words of the Declaration of Independence and sets them to music, beginning with the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal...."

Maybe these talk show hosts have heard the record and think the Declaration of Independence is too sacred a document to be trivialized by turning it into a song intended for airplay on Top 40 radio stations.

I think it's a wonderful "song" and maybe it, instead of The Star-Spangled Banner, should be sung at public events.

An Imminent Race War In America?

So much has been written and said in the national news media about Trump's racism;white nationalists in Charlottesville,Virginia; and white supremacy that I'm motivated to read The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call by the late journalist Carl T. Rowan (1925-2000), published in 1996 by Little, Brown, to see how prophetic it is.

After reading the book, I hope I will be motivated enough to write about it in an essay/review.

Concentration Camps For People With AIDS?

The following brief transcript is from a tape recording I made off the radio of an interview that New York talk show host Barry Gray did with Dr. Stephen Caiazza, on WMCA, in June 1989. Dr. Caiazza (pronounced ky-ay-zah) specialized in caring for people with AIDS and died in 1990 of complications from the disease himself at the age of 46.

Barry Gray: "We are coming close to what someone suggested to me a couple of years ago. I thought he was just kidding. He said we're going to wind up where everybody with AIDS is going to be behind barbed wire in a concentration camp."

Dr. Stephen Caiazza: "Fortunately--unfortunately, I think, the numbers are so astonishingly high that will never happen. The jails in the city of New York are already running at a hundred and four percent of capacity. And that's for convicted felons.

"Where are we going to put these concentration camps? In your backyard?"

Barry Gray: "In Gracie Mansion [the New York mayor's official residence]."

We've come a long way from the days when it was suggested that people with AIDS be tattooed to easily identify them or be put in concentration camps.

Today such sentiments would be considered ridiculous, barbaric, and inhuman.

However, we should keep in mind that in Donald Trump's America anything is possible.

Photographing Poverty In America

Lining the stone wall outside the grounds of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in Morningside Heights, on the 110th Street side, is a gallery of a dozen photos, all of them in black and white, that were taken by photographer Matt Black. Between each group of three photos is a plaque with a quotation from an impoverished person from one of the towns visited by Black, like this quote from a worker in the strawberry fields of Santa Maria, California, in Santa Barbara County: "I had no shoes when I worked in the fields. I used to sleep by a tree. I barely made money for food." (Ten thousand people work in the strawberry fields of Santa Maria, earning $1.25 per box picked.)

These photos are reminiscent of those taken by famed photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression.

Called "Geography of Poverty," Black, a native Californian, allows passersby to "see not only what America looks like to the 45 million living in poverty," notes the mission statement  posted on  the wall at the beginning and end of the photo exhibition,"but also that poverty is inextricable from issues of migration, land use, industry, and the environment."

"Geography of Poverty" is a project that Black and the cable news channel MSNBC have collaborated on. Most of the photos on display outside the church were taken in California, while the rest document poverty in such places as Hosmer, South Dakota;York, Pennsylvania; and El Paso, Texas.

One photo that was striking is of a long black arm wrinkled by age. Attached to it is a hand clutching the top of what looks like a sawed off telephone pole or tree. What really intrigued me is where the caption said the photo was taken--Allensworth, California, in Tulare County. I first learned of this town in a Washington Post article published more than twenty years ago.The article revealed that Allensworth was founded in the early twentieth century by African Americans, some of whom were teachers, doctors, and other professionals.(This is a part of California history I was never told about when I attended school in Los Angeles and its suburb Compton.) Today, according to the caption, the population is 451 and 54 percent of its inhabitants are living below the poverty level.

It is very fitting that these photos are on display where they are. Just a few feet away are a group of mostly homeless Hispanic men, who have formed a camp along the side of the church.

Also worth noting is the church's construction of two 15-story residential towers on its 113th Street side.The new buildings will have 320 luxury apartments and only 80 affordable ones; the church's first residential building was built about six years ago and faces Morningside Park, at 110th Street and Morningside Drive.

In 2012, plans to construct the two buildings sparked a neighborhood controversy and a petition drive* was started by area residents who feared that the buildings would block their view of the cathedral. Apparently the church administrators took heed. The buildings are now situated so that the cathedral, which is a tourist attraction, on the 113th Street side, can be viewed between them. Not a perfect solution, but better than not being able to see that side of the cathedral at all.

Could it be that the church administrators have self-consciously mounted this photo exhibition to remind their critics of their awareness of and concern for the poor, especially those who are literally at the church's doorstep each night?

*Disclosure: I live near the cathedral and signed a petition opposing the new construction.

Note: This is the full text of the previously abbreviated version.
Matt Black's photos can be viewed at www.geographyofpoverty.com.

The Social Justice Hall Of Fame

The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame by Peter Dreier (Nation Books, 2012) is so engaging, it is hard to put down. (I had the book on reserve at the public library for six months before a copy became available. It was worth the wait. I will probably end up buying my own copy.) Each profile is a brief summary of the life and contributions of individuals dedicated to bringing about progressive social change. These profiles are a great introduction and stepping stone to further study of each progressive person in the book. Among the luminaries profiled are Louis Brandeis, Harvey Milk, Eleanor Roosevelt, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Fiorello LaGuardia, Clarence Darrow, Pete Seeger, and Bayard Rustin.

While going through some of the profiles, I found a factual error in the profile of sociologist C. Wright Mills, author of  The Power Elite. Dreier writes that "In 1952, two left-wing writers, William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman, launched MAD, a comics magazine of political and social satire that became an instant sensation with the baby-boom generation." The baby-boom generation, which began in 1946, would have been too young to have appreciated MAD. The people more likely to have been its first readers were those born twenty years earlier.

"Each of these 100 profiles can be read separately," writes Dreier, in the introduction, "but it will be quickly apparent that every individual was part of a mosaic of movements for social justice.  ...So it should not be surprising," he continues, "that many of these 100 individuals knew each other, were members of many of the same organizations, and participated in many of the same events."

Dreier admits that "[n]o single list of 100 people can come close to capturing all the figures who deserve a place in the century's Social Justice Hall of Fame."

It will be interesting to see if Dreier puts out a book called The Social Justice Hall of Shame as a companion volume.