My Clinton Problem

I've discussed Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign quite a bit with friends via social media. I'm not a Clinton supporter. I believe that Bernie Sanders more closely represents the views I hold and I plan to support him in the Democratic primary. I'm undecided what I may do in the general election if Clinton wins the nomination.

Several of my friends have told me that Sanders cannot possibly win the nomination, so I am just wasting my vote. "It's time," some have told me, for a woman to become president. She has "paid her dues" and "deserves" the presidency, others have said.

While I do agree that a female president is long overdue, my heart wishes Elizabeth Warren were leading the pack of nominees rather than Clinton. The other arguments are simply unconvincing to me.

Setting aside Sanders' electability for just a moment, I'd like to discuss in greater detail the larger issues with which I disagree with Clinton.

1. Citizens' United. Clinton has recently said she would make the overturning of the Citizens' United  decision a litmus test for a Supreme Court nominee. I will first say that I actually think this is in direct response to Sanders' continued calls for substantial campaign finance reform. Clinton has a troubled history of campaign finance and while I believe she has not broken the law, it is unclear that her public policy positions have not been influenced by substantial private money that has come her way. Apart from this is the fact that Clinton has arguably gotten the biggest financial windfall from the Citizens' United decision. The super-PACs contributing to her campaign are the very reason that some view Sanders' candidacy as unviable: how could he win against Clinton's money?

2. Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Clinton has received over $3 million in speaking fees from banks who are investors in the controversial Keystone Pipeline, which environmentalists have universally decried. Her husband has told everyone it is time to "embrace" the pipeline that risks major environmental damage from oil spills and increased CO2 emissions. Given Clinton's identification as an environmental supporter, this is unconscionable.

3. Failure to call for serious Wall Street Reform. The 2008 financial bailout brought the specter of banks that were "too big to fail." It is a frightening proposition and an expensive one. The initial cost was $700 billion but some have estimated the true cost to be upward of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money. Sanders continues to call for the break up and regulation of these financial institutions, but Clinton has been silent on this front. Why? Perhaps it is because the major contributors to Clinton's campaigns have been from that sector: Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Ernst and Young, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, et al. There is no evidence that Clinton supports serious reform or regulation of the financial sector, which leaves the American taxpayer vulnerable to big banks.

4. Failure to support an increase in the minimum wage. This week Clinton called for an increase in the minimum wage to $15, but only for workers in New York City by 2021. The income disparity in this country is alarming and while CEO salaries continue to skyrocket as our economy grows (and even when it doesn't), the minimum wage has become anything but a living wage. If adjusted for worker productivity and inflation since 1968, the wage would be $26. It is a myth that our economy couldn't handle the increase. (I won't address all the ins and outs of this issue here, except to say that our public subsidy of the Walton family alone would be enough for me to support the increase.)

5. Hawkish foreign policy. Clinton has indicated time and time again that she favors the military option in places where it is almost certain to fail, including Iran and Syria. The support of the Syrian forces opposed to Assad reads like a chapter from Reagan's foreign policy book, the one that gave us arms to Iran, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban. Our failure to learn from our continued mistakes is troubling, especially from someone who served as Secretary of State. While it is understood that the U.S. will have a continued role in world affairs, our interventionist policies ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend") have cost us thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, and have not made us safer.

6. Her lukewarm civil liberties record. Clinton has been a supporter of the Patriot Act, and roundly condemned Edward Snowden for his exposure of the NSA. Wikileaks documents reveal that she supported the wiretapping of U.N. officials. She sponsored an amendment punishing the burning of the American flag and until very recently, was opposed to gay marriage. She has supported the suspension of habeas corpus, our extensive drone program that occasionally targets U.S. citizens, and anti-terrorism measures that have led to a curtailing of American civil liberties.

7. Support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Clinton called TPP the "gold standard" in trade agreements, even though it will almost certainly lead to the loss of American jobs and potentially compromise the sovereignty of U.S. courts. The trade agreement was negotiated in secret, without the review of the U.S. Congress. In addition, it provides no significant human rights or labor protections in signatory countries.

8. Opposition to single-payer healthcare. While I believe the Affordable Care Act is an important first step in providing reasonable healthcare for all American citizens, the U.S. needs a single-payer system, most likely run through Medicare. We already pay more in tax dollars for the healthcare system than most western countries, but without the benefit of universal coverage. Considering healthcare was Clinton's signature cause as first lady, it is troubling that she does not support a universal, single-payer system. I would opine that it is due to many of those contributors to Clinton's campaign, many of whom are major investors in the that industry. Amid cries that "It won't work!" we see single-payer systems working all around the globe.

I do not dislike Clinton. I think many of the attacks on her personally have been unfair. But she is not a "progressive," whatever that means. And she does not represent my interests on the issues that are most important to me and to my family.

Why the Christian Right is Going to Lose the Culture War

It's been a busy couple of weeks for culture warriors.

The figurative war became a literal one when a white supremacist terrorist shot and killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, SC. We've seen Confederate flags coming down and rainbow flags going up. And we've seen a lot of grandstanding by local politicians.

I think Pat Buchanan was the first person I heard use the term "culture war," though certainly Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority thought of themselves in much the same way. These are people who believe it is a divine mandate to seize the culture from humanists, atheists, and other non-Christians so as to enact laws based upon the morality of the Bible, as interpreted by their leaders.

But they're going to lose.

They are going to lose and they already have. Many times.

As Neil Carter pointed out in a brilliant post last week, modern evangelicals like to pretend that they were on the cutting edge of the Civil Rights Movement. But a careful examination of source materials of the era does not bear this out. The most conservative evangelical denominations were those that defended the practice of slavery and it is no surprise that most of these fought against desegregation. Bob Jones University did not admit black students until 1970 and then continued a policy of prohibiting interracial dating.

The movement gained much steam in the years following Roe v. Wade, although many evangelical leaders were initially rather lukewarm on the issue of abortion. There was rock and rap music, women's rights, evolution v. intelligent design, marijuana, and gay rights . . . And there's something interesting about that list.

In every single case, it is clear that the culture has moved progressively toward secular values. Yes, we have Tipper Gore stickers on our CDs, but it's pretty rare to hear of anyone trying to ban a record. Women still make just 78 cents on every dollar a man makes, but very few Americans think this state of affairs is preferable. We are woefully behind other industrialized nations in accepting evolution as a fact, but more Americans do now than ever before. Marijuana is being legalized in more and more states and we will probably see a change in federal policy in the next few years. And now there is last week's SCOTUS ruling legalizing gay marriage in every state of the union.

The extreme right sees nefarious forces at work. There is a vast communist conspiracy, it is the liberal media, or Satan is at work. Given the energy and money spent to defeat these causes, it seems only reasonable to imagine that your enemies have dark and unimaginable tools to work with.

I think the truth is more mundane.

The Christian Right is going to lose because most of them actually like the world they live in. And who could blame them? One article floating around social media this week listed companies that were celebrating gay marriage, including Visa and Mastercard, Coke and Pepsi, Facebook and Twitter. Jesus may have told his followers to take up their crosses, but most evangelicals I know would have a hard time giving up Coca-Cola.

Witness the Texas pastor who announced that he was "ready to burn" to protest gay marriage, only to clarify after the court's decision that it was, of course, meant figuratively. And can you blame him? I mean, I'm sure living in Texas is no picnic, but he probably hasn't even had a chance to see Jurassic World and he still hasn't gotten the iPhone 6 yet.

Contrast this with civil rights leaders who endured beatings, dogs, and lynchings to secure liberties for people of every color. Can you really imagine hundreds of thousands of evangelicals ready to die just to keep two guys from registering at Macy's?

I eschew the term "liberal" (a topic for another time) but I like the word "progressive," for this very reason. "Progressive" values are the ones that lead to real progress in our culture. They are the values that lead us from superstition to the scientific method, from feudalism to equity, from oppression to liberty. They are the values that gave us vaccination and the moon landing. But they are also the values that gave us rock and roll and cable television.

Because conservative evangelicals are first and foremost human beings, they still value progress. They may not believe in evolution, but they certainly enjoy the benefits that evolutionary biology has given us. They may not value gay marriage, but they do not want a return to marriage as it was in the first century, no matter how much they protest otherwise. 

100 years ago the foremost social cause among evangelicals was the temperance movement. Today, a large number of them are social drinkers and it is unthinkable that they would support prohibition. The Coors family, one of the largest beer producers in the U.S., supports organizations like the Heritage Foundation. As important as that cause was to a large part of the American population, it was no competition with the great taste of beer. It tastes good even to fundamentalists. 

100 years from now there will probably still be those who identify as conservative evangelicals. But many of them will claim that evangelicals have always supported gay marriage. Others will privately oppose it, but will agree that the rule of law is what is best for living in a pluralistic culture. They will alter their understanding of what the Bible says about it, without so much as a nod to their critics of yesteryear.

Progress is too great a temptation to resist.

Demand More Science

I've been on a bit of a mini-crusade recently.

It centers on the manufactured controversy around childhood vaccination and vaccines in general.

I say "centers on" because it encompasses a lot more: climate change, evolution, GMOs, the teaching of science in schools, fracking, mining, etc.

The crusade is for science literacy.

I'm not the poster boy for this topic. Let me tell you a true story.

When I was in 10th grade, I had a great biology teacher named Karen Emery. She was a very hands-on teacher and I had a great time. The thing was, I wasn't a "science kid." I was a "music kid," which, you know, is supposed to be the opposite. Anyway, I was dicking around in class one day and got called out to answer a question regarding eurkaryotes and prokaryotes. I hadn't really been paying attention, but instead of just admitting that, I did what any 15-year-old dickhead does to save face in class. I said, "Why do I need to learn this? I will never use this information for the rest of my life."

But I took it a step further.

That night, I found two poems — Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer" and Poe's "Ode to Science" — and typed them out. Both are Romantic reactions to reason and the Enlightenment, decrying the lack of poetry in science and the loss of wonder. Then the next morning, I placed the poems on Ms. Emery's desk. She came and found them. I watched with glee while she read them. Then I saw her eyes getting wet.

She regained her composure then and tacked the poems on her bulletin board. She carried on with class and said nothing more about them.

Yeah. I know. I was a major asshole.

Fast forward about ten years.

I'm teaching music at a middle school and this student asks me if she can go to the library. She has a report she must complete for science class. I allow her to go and am shocked when she returns in five minutes.

"You're finished?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Let me see."

I looked to see that her "report" is simply copied and pasted web pages.

"There's no way you know what any of this means! You haven't even read it! Like this word here — what does that mean?"

She read. "Eukaryotic." Then, "I dunno. What's it mean?"

Boom.

I wrote a letter of apology to Ms. Emery that night.

But I grew up thinking that science wasn't important. At least, not to me. I was artsy, you know, not concerned about all those facts and rational thinking. That stuff was for other people.

Besides, I was an evangelical Christian in an evangelical Christian community in an evangelical Christian state. We knew that scientists were liars.

I remember the "Chick tracts" we got at church. There was one about evolution that I loved. It was like a little mini-comic featuring a college student who calls out his godless college professor on evolution and convinces everyone that the Bible is right — the heavens and the earth were created in seven days.

I memorized those talking points and had them ready any time evolution was discussed.

The thing was, it wasn't really discussed all that much. I had science teachers in junior high and high school that went to my church or other churches like it, and they didn't believe in evolution either. They certainly didn't think the universe was billions of years old. Well, maybe Ms. Emery did, but she was probably bullied into going light on the topic.

The only time I ever heard these things — the age of the universe, human evolution, all of these wondrous discoveries — was from my friend Rebecca. And she was a Unitarian, so I wasn't about to trust her.

And this is the way I grew up.

As I got older, I mostly just ignored science. It wasn't my field, so I wasn't interested. And I was still an evangelical Christian, so I knew that science was wrong on many, many things. I had the Bible and the Bible was God's word — inspired, infallible, and profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.

And then I lost my faith.

That's a subject for another time, but I lost it hard. All of it. It was gone, leaving a big God-shaped hole in me.

I'm not sure when, but I decided to re-visit the whole "Science Isn't Important to Me" thing. Because, you know, I had a lot of free time on Sunday mornings.

I "discovered" Neil Degrasse Tyson. And Bill Nye. And Stephen Hawking. And Lawrence Krauss. And Brian Greene. And Richard Dawkins.

You know what else I discovered? I discovered that Whitman and Poe were wrong: science is full of wonder.

Consider this: all matter that exists in our universe was once contained within a dense ball about the size of a softball.

Or this: scientists may be on the verge of discovering why anything exists at all. It takes math. Lots of it.

Or this: all the elements in your body — the oxygen, the carbon, the nitrogen — were forged in stars. AND the elements in your right hand were probably forged in a different star than the ones in your left, perhaps separated by billions of light years. We are made of star dust.

How's that for inspiring wonder?

Beyond that though, I live in a world made possible by science.

We wouldn't have DVDs and CDs if it weren't for quantum mechanics. We would have no understanding of DNA — which has led to breakthroughs in medicine, criminal science, and history — without understanding human evolution. And my children and I enjoy a life relatively free from diseases that two generations ago crippled and killed thousands of people a year in this country.

Science matters. So does science literacy.

Here in this state and others like it, we are battling against regulation of the fossil fuel industry. This is because those interests own our state government. Luckily for them, they have a ready audience of climate-change deniers in people who are like I once was: scientifically illiterate or otherwise indifferent.

Our state and federal government actively fight against student learning standards that require critical thinking, partly, I am convinced, because students who are able to evaluate claims and evidence will begin to make better-informed decisions about global warming and other hot topics. Those decisions may result in a shift of power in this country.

The current of anti-intellectualism in this country is profound and disturbing. The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said that global warming has to be a hoax, because the Bible promises seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, as long as the earth continues. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has said repeatedly that no one knows what causes the tides. Georgia Republican Paul Broun, a member of the House Science Committee, said, "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell." California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher opined that dinosaur flatulence is what most likely contributed to past changes in global temperatures.

That's right: dinosaur farts.

The thing is, we need science desperately if we are to survive as a species. This world was not created for us and in fact, 99% of the species who have ever lived on this planet have gone extinct. We have an advantage, though. We have an advanced brain, one that has given us survival skills and tool-making abilities and the ability to reason. One that has given us science.

Those who have known me for a while know that my mantra for many years was "Demand More Art." I've not abandoned that cause, to be sure. I regularly advocate for the importance of the arts in the lives of people young and old, and I make my living in the arts. But we need to demand more science, too, and more scientific thinking among every day people.

If we do not, we may be beating the drum for a return to the dark forests of an age long past, back to the gloom of superstition and a time when we lived in ignorance and fear, praying and offering sacrifice to mute gods against the perils of the elements and disease. This is a future I do not wish for your children or mine.

Buffalo Creek

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply. The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries. Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM. A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people. Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

42 years ago today, my grandparents lost their home on Buffalo Creek in Logan County to a flood created when a coal slurry impoundment dam burst. 125 people lost their lives. A federal inspector found the dam "satisfactory" just four days before it burst. 

The flood could not occupy a more prominent place in our family mythology. My family speaks of "The Flood" as I imagine Shem and Japeth might have at 4th of July cookouts and such.

My mother and father had left Logan County by this time and were living in Wyoming County. My father was familiar with the "dam." He'd visited it several times and once told me that everyone knew its burst was imminent. The slurry water, black and mucky, rushed down the hollow that February morning, taking some houses off their foundations and washing cars downstream. By the time it reached Amherstdale, where my grandparents lived with their children who were still young enough to live at home, it filled homes more slowly. The water covered Granny's ankles when she left the house. Mother says she shut the front gate behind her, out of force of habit.

Grandaddy stayed behind. He escaped to the house's top floor and then made to the roof. The water eventually took the house with it, and he rode the house until it caught on a train trestle, where he climbed off. There he saw a neighbor's boy, face down on the ground, praying as hard as he could. He took off his coat and covered him with it.

My mother says that my father was the last person they "let in the hollow" before the National Guard shut off all traffic. He found his in-laws and he seems to have taken some of my younger uncles to stay with relatives. At least one of them stayed with my parents for several months.

My Uncle Joe played tenor saxophone in the school band and Mother says he was going that morning to a county band practice. One of his best friends, a boy who played saxophone with him, died in the flood that morning. Mother always thought Joey acted very different after that. He still went into the mines though.

Grandaddy, my father, his father, several uncles on both sides, and other assorted relatives worked for coal companies up and down that hollow and in places like it in the southern coalfields. The companies had names like Ameagle, Amherst, Winco, Aracoma, Guyan Eagle, and Pittston. The communities their workers lived in bore the same names. Sometimes one coal camp would be right across the narrow road from a coal camp of another company, their tipples occupying opposite hills and churning out the black stuff around the clock. Most of them lived in "shotgun" houses or, if they were a lucky, in a "bosses" house. My grandfather Paul was a tipple foreman, so their house was probably a little better than many of the others at Amherstdale.

The companies built the housing, even the churches, and ran stores than originally dealt only in company-issued scrip. It would be a mistake to believe that life in coal camps was only hard. If you speak to those who grew up in one they will tell you about playing at the pool, going to the Wesley House for youth group meetings, and dances. But they will also tell you about men covered in coal dust from head to foot, looking, even after they bathed, like they wore eyeliner and mascara. They will tell you about the way their gut wrenched when they heard the company siren blow, a signal that something was wrong in the mine, something that might mean their husbands and fathers might not come home that night. And if they lived on Buffalo Creek, they will tell you exactly what they were doing on February 26, 1972.

My grandparents settled quickly with the company and never regretted it. They moved up to McConnell on Three Mile Curve, closer to Logan.

Pittston Coal called the dam break an "Act of God." They argued that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the loss of life on that rainy Saturday morning. Everyone knew that was bullshit. The "dam" was really just settled sediment from the coal slurry, not a proper dam. There were no controls, no regulation, and millions of gallons of water were building up the pressure behind it. Everyone knew that Pittston was saying that to avoid the enormous payouts that might be owed families. But what could you do? The company was your benefactor, your employer, the one to whom you owed allegiance. 

In the end, the company lost that argument, a rare instance in the coal fields. Settlements were paid, legal precedents set. But after the slurry settled, little changed. Life continued much as it had, though savvy companies learned to rely more on developing technologies to take coal from the ground. Men were a liability if courts insisted you value their lives.

I was born that same year, just a few months after The Flood. Hearing about it as frequently as I did growing up undoubtedly influenced my thinking about a lot of things.

It's easy to imagine a grand legacy to the Buffalo Creek Flood. It's easy to imagine that in the coming years, West Virginians were protected by a more responsible coal industry and state and federal governments who worked together to ensure their safety. Yet that is not the case.

Instead, I sit at home in Charleston, miles away from Buffalo Creek, and I'm afraid to drink the water. I'm even more afraid to give it to my three-month-old son. I'm afraid because a coal-cleaning agent called MCHM was poured into the water source where my drinking water comes from. I'm afraid, because I know that our state's leaders have been bought by the coal industry, and rather than protecting us, they are frantically working to minimize damage to the purses of billionaires who live out of state.

I'm afraid. But I am also angry.

West Virginia, indeed all of Appalachia, is a violent place. It's violence is not only against the body though. It is the violence committed against human dignity. Until our leaders regard her citizens more highly that the wallets of their patrons, that legacy of violence will continue. 

Claims (and Evidence) about the Common Core

This morning, while laying in bed watching the snow come down, really wishing I could just sleep in, I got a text from a teacher friend of mine. It said, "Take time to read," and included an image entitled "The 8 Most Important Things You Need to Know About Your Child's Teacher and Common Core."

First, let me say that I'm sure this friend is a good teacher, though I've never seen her in action. (We went to college together.) Let me also add that I think there are legitimate concerns with the Common Core, student learning standards in English language and mathematics that have been adopted by most states. (I would encourage you to read what Diane Ravitch has to say on the subject, though I would disagree with many of her assertions as well.) Yet I also think there is a great deal of disinformation being given to parents and teachers, too. In my previous work, I learned a lot about the Common Core and even had to occasionally present on the topic.

Since part of the Common Core is evaluating claims with evidence, I thought I'd take a few minutes to address each of these "eight important things." I'm no expert, but I may have a little bit of insight.

1. "Your child's teacher did not create the Common Core standards, politicians did." Well, this is kind of true, depending on what exactly you mean by the word "create." The Common Core was created by a joint initiative of the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers -- "politicians." Used this way, you may also say that politicians "create" public schools, road systems, and the space program. But the standards themselves were written (i.e., "created") by teachers of English and math. I personally believe that higher education was over-represented in this process, but it is a mistake to believe that Congress may have debated whether i would still go before e, except after c.

2. "Common Core aligned instructional materials (books) are not provided to your child's teacher. Teachers are creating their own curriculum. Daily." This is also kind of true. Most textbook companies have struggled to keep up with the Common Core and states have been wary of adopting materials that claim to be aligned and are not. But my main response to this complaint is, "So what?" As a teacher of music, I actually never had a book that was aligned enough to my standards to simply teach from the book. I taught multiple subjects from year to year, including band, chorus, music appreciation, AP music theory, piano, and guitar and I wrote my own curriculum for every single one of these. You want to know a secret? This is what all good teachers do. Because teachers who just open up the book, read from it, and then assign the questions at the end are not really effective. I would also note that #1 above complained of lack of teacher input and #2 complains that teachers are given more autonomy.

3. "Teachers are being pulled out of their classrooms to learn about the common core [sic]. Teacher absences directly affect student performance. Negatively." This may be true in some areas, but it has nothing to do with the Common Core. If school districts reduce instructional time for teacher professional development, that is a local decision. The alternatives are to schedule professional development during non-instructional time (which is what most school districts in the nation do, contrary to this claim), not offer professional development when new standards or pedagogy are introduced in the classroom, or never do anything new.

4. "Math is new again. In order for your child's teacher to say your child as [sic] a successful math student, your child must explain - in writing - their [sic] thinking. Even if your child has a communication disorder like Autism [sic]." This one is just wrong. Math is not new, though the Common Core does expand approaches to the teaching of math. This is a good thing and allows more students, including those with learning disorders like autism, to succeed. Sometimes they may be asked to communicate their understanding in writing, sometimes they may do it verbally. I fail to understand why this is a bad thing. When a student has the opportunity to explain his or her process, the teacher is better able to understand student thinking.

5. "Your child is supposed to 'dig deep' into the standards, even though the foundation has yet to be laid." Firstly, the child is never meant to dig into the standards themselves; that is the work of the teacher. Secondly, the standards certainly do not ask teachers to dig deeply into their subject without foundational teaching. Actually, the standards are not prescriptive as to pedagogy at all. This one is just nonsense.

6. "Your child will be tested on the new standards before the teachers are trained, before instructional materials have been purchased (if they're ever purchased), and before adequate technology is available to facilitate test administration." Wait, I thought you just complained that teachers were being trained in the new standards (see #3). The two assessments that are being used for the Common Core, from the Smarter Balance Consortium and PARC, have not yet been administered, though the Common Core was released in 2010. That means that there will have been five years from release of the standards till the administration of the first assessment. There may be bumps along the way, including technology issues. This is just how change works, in any area. The alternative is to never change.

7. "Your child's teacher is becoming an alcoholic." Let me buy you a drink.

8. "Your child's teacher is looking for another job." There are numerous problems in public education right now, including an undue emphasis on standardized high-stakes assessment, the narrowing of the curriculum in some districts, the continued politicization of our schools, the charter school movement and the inequitable comparisons made between schools, school voucher systems that favor private schools, teacher quality due to filling positions with untrained "professionals," and much, much more. Anyone leaving the field now may be perfectly justified in doing so. But the Common Core is not one of these problems.

To hear what one talented teacher has to say about the Common Core, read here.

The Myth of the Appalachian

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply. The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries. Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM. A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people. Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

I was able to catch all of the U.S. Senate hearing about the chemical leak. I heard just a bit of the House hearing that was conducted here in West Virginia, but I filled in the missing pieces via Twitter. I found little of either to be enlightening and much to be angry or saddened about. The most interesting remarks in the Senate came from Jay Rockefeller, who started speaking off the cuff: "I came from outside of Appalachia, so sometimes I see Appalachia in ways that are different than others."  He started talking about what he called a mythic Scotch-Irish fatalism, ". . . the idea that somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them. Not true. Industry does everything they can and gets away with it almost all the time, whether it’s the coal industry, not the subject of this hearing, or water or whatever. They will cut corners, and they will get away with it."

I've been thinking about that Appalachian myth for a very long time, even obsessing over the idea. I suppose it is natural. We spend a good deal of our lives trying to figure out just who we are. If we are lucky, we are raised in a family that gives us a secure sense of our own identity and encourages us to be ourselves. Even so, there are powerful cultural ideas that can be hard to shake.

Here in Appalachia, we have always struggled to define ourselves. Even before Europeans got here, the place we call West Virginia served as a sort of borderland between tribes and was used as common hunting area. Some of the "tribes" who inhabited the area, such as the Mingo, probably weren't tribes at all, but smaller bands of native people who had left their tribal lands and lived in mixed groups of Cayuga, Seneca, and others.

The Europeans who finally settled were a mixed lot, too. Some were farmers, some were trappers, other were probably criminals hiding in the forest. There probably were a lot of Scots and Northern Irish, but also English, of course, Welsh, some Germans, and a smattering of others. They were Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, but some other lesser-known sects like Dunkards, too. I'm guessing there were probably a good handful who were happy to be living in the wilderness out of reach of church and minister.

There weren't large numbers of slaves, mainly because the land didn't lend itself to the large plantations they had in the deep South. But there were some, and Reconstruction brought more African descendants, including those working on the railroad.

When someone finally figured out how to start making lots of money from the coal in the ground, recent immigrant groups came in large numbers to the mountains: Greeks, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, even some Russians. They were mostly Roman Catholic or Orthodox and brought with them different ideas about family and culture.

Even this brief narrative is an oversimplification, of course. There were Jews from various places, small numbers of Asians, and more. Though perhaps not as diverse as America's port cities, it is a mistake to believe in the homogeneity of Appalachia. And even given the large ethnically European make-up of the region, there is no reason to imagine a general uniformity of opinion. There were secessionists and abolitionists, modern industrialists and farmers, Democrats and Republicans, Klansman and Communists, and everything in between.

Despite this, there has persisted in the mountains a romantic idea about exactly what it means to a true Appalachian. We've heard it in recent weeks since the chemical spill, in the form of our leaders heaping left-handed "praise" on their constituents: the people of West Virginia are a poor but noble race, hearty Scots-Irish stock, who love God and their families, are fiercely independent, and thrive in harsh conditions.

It's nonsense, of course. Some of us are rich. Some are wicked or servile. Some of us aren't Scots-Irish at all. Some are atheists. Some abandon their families. Some are extremely dependent on others. Some are soft.

I'm not saying they're all this way. I'm just asking that our leadership stop patronizing us.

The myth is useful to political and industry leaders. It is how they have justified taking land and mineral rights for a pittance for over a century. It is how they justify polluting our air and water. It is how they justify denying us economic opportunity. It is how they justify denying us basic civil rights.

As I watched the hearing today of the House Transportation Committee, I realized it was how they justify dismissing our voices, too.  Chairman Bill Shuster, R.-PA, had not called representatives of citizen's group to speak, but reluctantly gave those assembled two minutes apiece to voice their concerns. I listened with increasing disgust as it became clear that he was not interested in what these everyday people had to say. He answered most by dismissing them paternally and assuring them they were being taken care of.

The same way industry and government has taken care of us for decades.

Many of us are uncomfortable with the myth.

I might be Scots-Irish; no one in our family is completely sure. It's true I come from a family of farmers and coal miners, and they sure have been poor for a long time. A few have been god-fearing and loyal to family; others have been irreligious scoundrels.

But I am not an Appalachian of myth.

It's true, I like fiddle music and eating beans and cornbread. I can sing all the verses to "West Virginia Hills" and know the state flower, bird, and animal.

But I don't work in coal; I play saxophone. I think before I vote. I have read books --  a lot of them -- not just the Bible. I like films with subtitles sometimes. I like jazz and punk music. Thai is my favorite cuisine. I have my ears pierced and my hair colored. I like to travel.

I have lots of "Appalachian" friends. Some of their families go back generations; some of them just arrived. Some of them are Buddhist or Muslim. Some are gay or lesbian. Some are from Pakistan or Nigeria or Venezuela. Some of them have never been hunting, fishing, or mud-bogging. Some like Broadway shows more than football.

It doesn't make any of us less "Appalachian."

We live here.

We have a right to demand clean water and air, as much as anyone else.

We pay taxes, just like everyone else.

We're tired of being told we're not being true to our "heritage" because we do not kowtow to the wishes of the power brokers in this state.

We're not the "noble poor." Some of us have been (and are) poor. We can tell you that it sucks.

Some of us think that working all day entitles us to healthcare and decent wage. We're sorry if that spoils the image you have of us "simple folk."

I'm Appalachian and I demand that my voice be heard.

My Open Letter to the West Virginia State Legislature

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply.  The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries.  Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM.  A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people.  Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

Dear Delegate:

I am writing to you today as your constituent, as a father. and as a sometimes-proud West Virginian to ask you to support the "Water Bill" that came from the Senate (SB373).

I say "sometimes-proud West Virginian" because frankly, there are times I am deeply ashamed at the leadership of our state. Following our legislature can be a depressing exercise at times. The body seems reactionary at best and plagued by political pandering. I remember that there were over thirty bills introduced last year designed to protect our "gun rights." I cannot remember a single piece of legislation discussed related to water quality, though every member of that body knew that chemical plants dotted our river valley and that there had already been major chemical incidents in the last three years.

Disheartening, too, has been the rush by our leadership to defend the coal industry's connection to this incident at all costs.  As I am sure you are aware, MCHM is used in preparation plants for the cleaning of coal.  That alone makes this issue "coal-related."  But apart from that, the question on many of our minds is, "Why do 300,000 residents of a rural state like West Virginia use the same water source?"  The answer, at least partially, has to do with the fact that coal slurry has polluted the water table in many rural areas.  Coal companies have done this with impunity as our leadership has kowtowed to every demand from that sector.

Also of concern is that many of us now get water from for-profit corporations like American Water, instead of traditional public service districts. While it may be that privately-held companies can provide more efficient service, it is also obvious that they will put profits ahead of serving West Virginians. Clean water and air are basic human rights. It is clear from the actions of West Virginia American Water that they do not believe this. Our water bills this month have increased significantly, in spite of the fact that WVAW has been unable to provide a safe, quality product.

Many of us are further angered that it appears that Freedom Industries will be given chapter 11 protection to "re-organize," rather than simply liquidating and ceasing business in our state. As has been seen by their continued failure to safely store MCHM in Nitro, this company will seek to skirt any regulation they can. If a foreign power did to our water supply what Freedom had done, we would call it an act of terrorism. Instead, our laws will protect them and their leadership from any criminal penalty.

The attitude regarding this incident, as with most industrial catastrophes in our state, has been, "Privatize the profits; socialize the liabilities."  Although I hope you will support the "Water Bill," it is bit like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted. We need leadership in our state that does not simply react to crises, but anticipates the needs of our people. We need leadership that puts our people above the profits of the fossil fuel industry, much of which leaves our state.

I urge you to act and I urge you to be part of the change we need in the Mountain State.

Regards.

My Open Letter to Natalie Tennant

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply.  The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries.  Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM.  A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people.  Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

I was unable to find an email address on the Secretary of State's website. I am publishing this letter openly and will share the link with her via Twitter.

Dear Madame Secretary:

I'm sure you do not remember me, but I have been an admirer of yours for years. I went to West Virginia University with you actually, and occasionally traveled with you during your tenure as the Mountaineer. I played with the basketball pep band, and I was immensely proud to see you serve as the first female mascot of our beloved Alma Mater. I continued to loosely follow you when you worked in broadcast journalism and when you began your political career. I've admired you and voted for you in the race for Secretary of State.

When you announced your candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated by Jay Rockefeller, I was hopeful. You have been a breath of fresh air, a departure from the "good ol' boy" politics that plague our state, and you seem committed to your principles. I looked forward to casting my ballot for you.

I live in the Kanawha Valley, on Charleston's West Side.  Like 300,000 of my fellow West Virginians, my water was contaminated with what we learned was something called Methylcyclohexanemethanol, a "foaming agent" used to clean coal. My water had the now-familiar licorice scent and I refrained from its use for weeks, finally using it to bathe and flush toilets, but not ingesting the water itself. To date, I am still using bottled water to drink, cook, and brush my teeth.

I do not work in the coal industry, though like many West Virginians, my family comes from coal.  My maternal grandparents lost their home during the Buffalo Creek Flood, my paternal grandfather lost a leg to the Winco Coal Company in the 1930s, and my father passed away just days ago from complications related to many ailments, including black lung disease.  He was a coal preparation plant foreman for many years, in fact, a "tipple boss."  I imagine he had regular contact with MCHM in the work that he did for several coal companies.

In the early days of the water crisis, you tweeted, "Today just showed again how when the worst hits West Virginia, the best in West Virginians come out. #ProudofWV #WVWaterCrisis."  I've heard this sort of thing my entire life.  West Virginians are a proud people, fiercely independent, etc., etc., etc., and they really shine the most during a crisis.

I will be frank: I think this is complete bullshit.

It's bullshit because it is a story that has been sold to us for over a century now, a story that tells us that it is our lot in life to suffer, to be the object rather than the subject, to be the victims rather than the actors in the story of our own lives. It's part of the Appalachian myth that imagines us as a band of noble Scots-Irish savages, with pure motives and a love of family and God above all things. It's sentimental and patronizing.

Nevertheless, I was willing to pass by this trite sentiment, expressed as it was when the crisis was fresh with us and when we were all seeking to encourage one another.

Then this week, President Obama delivered his State of the Union address.  I will be clear here, too: I'm not a great fan of the president. He's certainly not the worst executive we've had, but I take issue with much that his administration has done that has infringed upon our liberties. If you had spoken against his defense of the National Security Agency, federal persecution of whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, and the federal government's continuing use of cyber-security laws to imprison so-called "hacktivists," I would have applauded you. Loudly.

Instead, you said this: "If the president wants to promote opportunity, he needs to rethink his energy policies. The president is wrong on coal and I will fight him or anyone else who wants to take our coal jobs. At the height of our water crisis, no one could tell us how harmful the chemical was or what levels were safe. But the EPA has time to go after our coal jobs in West Virginia? That doesn't make sense."

In just a few sentences, you continued to propagate the nonsensical assertion that the president is waging a "War on Coal," and attacked the federal agency charged with regulating air and water. You did this in spite of knowing that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has primary responsibility for regulation of the state's water and that the EPA has been hamstrung in recent years by an anti-regulatory Congress, including four-fifths our own state's Congressional delegation.

I can only guess that you did this in hopes of increasing your chances of success in the race between the presumed Senate nominees: yourself and Ms. Capito. You know of our state's distrust of the federal government, their suspicion of our president, and the firmly held belief that without coal, West Virginia would cease to exist. Most importantly though, you pandered to potential fossil-fuel interests that you may need to bankroll your chances for a successful Senate race.

Like other prominent political voices in the state, you seem loathe to associate our recent water crisis with the dominance of the fossil fuel industry, in spite of the fact that both the chemical itself and the unregulated business environment created by the fossil fuel industry allowed this to happen. You continue to perpetuate a defense of an industry that has never treated West Virginians fairly, from the taking of mineral rights from unsuspecting farmers, to child labor, to unfair working conditions, to environmental hazards, right down to the lackadaisical safety attitudes at Upper Big Branch and the recent larceny by Patriot Coal.

There is no "War on Coal." According to the West Virginia Office of Mine Safety and Health, there were 119,568 coal jobs in 1950, leading to the production of 145,563,295 tons of coal. In 2012, there were 53,934 coal jobs, leading to the production of 129,538,515 tons of coal. In other words, we now use about half the work force to mine about a tenth less coal. What could be the explanation? Is it the fault of President Obama? That seems unlikely, since according to the WVOMSH there has been an increase in coal-related jobs during his presidency, though coal production itself has slowed.

The answer is simple: automation. It takes fewer people to mine more coal from the ground. This is not the fault of President Obama, it's the natural result of the market and the development of technology. Likewise, increasing use of alternative cleaner energy sources around the world may explain the slight decline in coal usage in recent years.

The fact of the matter is this: coal companies are taking billions of dollars of minerals from West Virginia ground each year and sending the profits mostly out of state, while employing fewer and fewer West Virginians.

There is more to West Virginia than coal and gas. Our people are our greatest natural resource and we could become a center for wind and solar energy, technology, or even the arts. This will not happen while our state's leaders offer corporate welfare to the fossil fuel industry. Our elected leaders are not able to ensure clean water and air for our children because of their pandering to coal money. We stand idly by while polluting industries are deregulated and given tax breaks, while our schools are prevented from teaching climate change lest our corporate overlords be angered, while our economic opportunities are increasingly narrowed, and while we listen to our leaders tell us just how good we are in times of crisis.

I am sick and goddamned tired of listening to it.

So it is with regret that I tell you I will not be voting for you in your campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Some have told me that I am "wasting my vote" to cast it for someone who goes against the coal industry. I'm guessing that your tenure as Secretary of State has taught you the same and you're playing the odds. This saddens me more than you can know. I had hopes that you would serve us well.

Warmest regards,

John A. Deskins
Charleston

10 Questions West Virginians Should Be Asking About the Water Crisis

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply.  The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries.  Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM.  A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people.  Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

In my opinion, every West Virginian should be asking our leadership these questions:

1. Why are MCHM and other chemical agents produced in the Kanawha Valley unregulated by state or federal code?  After multiple chemical spills in the valley, why has the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act not been reformed to protect us from these substances?
2. Why is virtually nothing known about the toxicity of MCHM?  How can we be sure that 1 ppm is a safe level for use?  Who provided that information?  What tests were conducted?
3. Why has Tomblin's DEP (and Manchin's before him) not been strengthened to protect our water sources?  How is it possible that this plant was last inspected in 1991?
4. Why has Attorney General Patrick Morrisey's sole action been to warn against water price-gouging?  Why has he not acted against Freedom Industries on behalf of West Virginia citizens?
5. Why is it that Senator Joe Manchin, Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, and Governor Earl Ray Tomblin felt the need to immediately spin the disaster as not in any way related to coal?  How does that even make sense, given the fact that MCHM is used in the cleaning of coal?
6. Why do Sen. Manchin and Rep. Capito continue to attack the regulatory power of the EPA, even in light of these events?
7. Why do 300,000 people in a rural state like West Virginia rely on a single water source?  Is it related to the fact that local water tables have been polluted by coal slurry?  
8. How has the privatization of our water affected the water quality, and can we expect this trend to continue?
9. Why was Freedom Industries allowed to file chapter 11 protection and be repurchased by the same owners under the guise of Mountaineer Funding, LLC, a newly-created entity that did not exist until the date of the filing?
10. What did any of West Virginia's elected leaders do prior to January 9th to prevent this crisis from happening?

My Letter to Congress

On Thursday, January 9, 2014, residents of the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia learned that a chemical used to clean coal, 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol (a.k.a., MCHM), had been spilled into the Elk River, upstream of a primary water supply.  The company responsible for the spill was Freedom Industries.  Many had suspected there was a problem all day in "Chemical Valley," as there was a notable licorice scent in the air, a scent we later learned was MCHM.  A strict "Do Not Use" order was sent from West Virginia American Water, effectively cutting water off for 300,000 people.  Schools were closed, restaurants and other businesses shut down, and medical procedures were postponed as we were told the water was only safe for flushing toilets.

This is my letter to my representative in the U.S. House, Shelley Moore Capito, regarding the event.


Dear Ms. Capito:

I am one of your constituents currently on my fifth day without water in the Kanawha Valley. I am employed by a small family-owned music store, also without water, and work as a performing musician. I'm also a recent homeowner, having purchased a house on Charleston's West Side. I had planned to move my family into the residence this coming week, but this water emergency has delayed that.

I am sure you are aware of the considerable inconvenience the lack of water has caused your consituency: no drinking water, no showers, no water to do laundry, and all the rest. More troubling is the massive economic impact. There are thousands of food service workers, bartenders, hair stylists, tattooers, and others who will go without wages. In my own field, there are dozens of musicians I know who have lost gigs because the bars, restaurants, hotels, and private parties who employ them could not open. As is so often the case, disasters like this most impact those who are least able to absorb it. The worst hit, of course, are the elderly and infirm who are shut-in and unable to make it to water distribution sites.

Much has been made by our political leaders and the news media of how wonderful West Virginians are in a crisis. When faced with gross corporate irresponsibility, our leaders turn to these myths of the noble poor to quieten communal discord. Neighbor helping neighbor, relying on faith and family, sharing with one another . . . these are all wonderful things. Yet one begins to suspect that these stories are told to keep us from asking hard questions, questions like, "How is it possible that MCHM is an unregulated chemical?" and "Why don't we know and understand the toxicity of this substance?" and "Why is a chemical like this stored so close to a primary water source for thousands of West Virginians?" and "What have our leaders done to ensure we have clean water for ourselves and our children?"

I believe I know at least a portion of the answer to these questions.

I grew up in southern West Virginia and come from a family of West Virginians. My father and many others in my family have worked in the coal industry. One of my grandfathers lost a leg while working for Winco Coal Company. The other lost his house in Amherstdale during the Buffalo Creek Flood. For as long as I remember, friends and family have always said, "Coal feeds us," and, "Coal pays the bills." Coal keeps the lights on, right?

It's not just coal, of course. The gas industry has a similar grip on much of our state. Fossil-fuel and related industries have a hold on the imaginations of West Virginians -- and a hold on our elected leaders, too. No one is elected to state or federal office who isn't beholden to industry leaders. This, of course, is why you issued a press release, just hours before the chemical leak became public, reiterating your fighting stance against the EPA. Although the release was about greenhouse-gas emissions, it was ironic to say the least.

Clean water (and clean air) seem at the very heart of why we have any sort of government at all. If these are not the "blessings of liberty," it is difficult to imagine what are. If the average person -- not to mention the very weakest members of our society -- cannot be protected from industries who would sacrifice our health for profits, then what is the purpose of our government?

I would ask several things of you as my representative in Congress, some specific and some more general.

First, I would ask you to work for the reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act. One of the reasons there was so little information about MCHM is that it was grandfathered in by the original act in 1976. As it is now, we are relying on information provided by the developer of the chemical, trusting that it is accurate. This is unacceptable. I would ask that you not only require more strict regulation of MCHM, but of all potentially harmful substances. It is mere luck that the chemical that Freedom Industries leaked was not deadly. The possibilities are frightening.

Second, I would ask that you stop seeking to strip the EPA of its regulatory power. It is this agency that we rely on as Americans to help ensure clean water and air. As much as we may depend on the coal and gas industries in our state, that means nothing if we do not have air to breathe and water to drink.

Third, I would ask that you desist from contributing to the toxic political culture of our state. Big Coal and Big Gas OWN our politicians, both Democrat and Republican. Before worrying if you will offend a corporate contributor to your election campaign, I would ask that you think of the elderly shut-in who has poisoned water this week. Before you attack the EPA, please think about my two-month old son who will grow up in a world with alarming changes in climate and weather as a result of our carbon emissions -- something innumerable scientists have proven, even if those in Congress don't believe it.

West Virginians may be a noble people. I know too many of them to argue otherwise. But I also know that they can be goddamn ANGRY people when their friends and family are attacked, as they have been by Freedom Industries. I implore you to work for change in the way we prevent these disasters.


Thank you for your consideration.

Why Gitmo Matters

So today is the start of Ramadan, the month-long daytime fast of Muslims worldwide.  This normally doesn't make a whole lot of news here in the U.S., but 106 of the 166 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp are on a hunger strike right now.  The strike began in March and more detainees have joined in the weeks since then.  At some point, the U.S. made the decision to force-feed the prisoners, ostensibly to prevent their suicides.

Now, force-feeding doesn't really sound nice, but most of us probably just imagine something like when we make the cat swallow a pill.  But yesterday, actor Yaslin Bey (aka Mos Def) released a video recreating a force-feeding.  The thing has gone viral now and the Twitterverse is alive with discussions about what is happening there in Cuba.  The issue of how the prisoners will be force-fed through Ramadan has also been brought up by many.  The U.S. insists that they will try to only force-feed after after sunset, but many think this just won't be possible, given that it takes between 45 minutes and two hours to force-feed a prisoner a can of Ensure, and they do it twice a day.

The Pentagon has responded predictably, saying that Mr. Bey is an actor and the video was a "theatrical performance."  That really just begs the question though.*  To date, no actual video of a force-feeding in Guantanamo has been provided (ahem, Wikileaks), so most of us have no reference point.  Bey's video at least puts a face to the practice.

It also seems to have people talking about the prison camp, which seems like a good thing.  Since the first prisoners were brought there in January of 2002, the camp's existence has just become another fact of American life.  President Obama ran on promises to close the prison, but that priority has lagged.  Most of us are ill-informed about Guantanamo and it seems we'd rather not think about what goes on there.

Here are a few of the most pertinent facts:

• Of the 166 remaining prisoners at Gitmo, 86 have been cleared for release, yet they still remain imprisoned.
• The majority of detainees do not have demonstrated ties to terrorist organizations.
• Only 7 of the total 779 prisoners that have ever been held in the prison camp have been convicted by the military commission set up to try them.  This is more remarkable for the fact that they are not afforded full legal rights that American citizens would expect.
• Each prisoner costs about $800,000 a year to house.  This compares to $25,000 for the average federal prisoner.

The "international community," such as it is, feigns occasional outrage over the prison camp, but what can they do?  The Geneva Conventions only define individuals as "combatants" or "non-combatants," but the U.S. has simply by-passed these classifications by redefining the prisoners as a third unnamed category.  This seems like a pretty clear flouting of international law, but our lawmakers hide behind sovereignty and dare anyone to challenge them on the issue.  And because the "War on Terror" is, by definition, a never-ending "war," it may be that these prisoners will be detained permanently and never be repatriated.  

According to a recent poll, most Americans are in favor of keeping the prison open and almost half think that all of the prisoners pose a threat to the U.S. ­— in spite of the fact that only nine of the current prisoners are even charged with a crime.  Why is this?

Apart from a general xenophobia that we as Americans are guilty of, there seems to be a concerted effort in dehumanizing the prisoners in the public eye.  They have, from the beginning, been called extremely dangerous, although we've sent over 500 of them back home.  The military has limited the public's access even to images of the prisoners, as well as the detention camp itself, all in the name of "national security."  This may be why the Congress has blocked efforts to even bring them to U.S. soil and incarcerate them in federal prisons.  Out of sight is well out of mind for most of us.

We would like to believe the very best about our soldiers who work at Guantanamo, but we should have learned to be vigilant after Abu Ghraib and other abuse scandals.  In my mind at least, the recent letter from Prisoner 329, Abdelhadi Faraj has a ring of truth.  And if force-feeding is anything like what we have seen in Bey's video, a lot of us would classify that as torture as well.  (In a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the American Medical Association has said that the practice "violates core ethical values.)

America should be better than this.  Our founding documents anticipated human rights abuses and sought to prevent them.  The fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth amendments might be invoked were we being treated in like fashion in a criminal proceeding.  Supporters of the camps argue that those rights do not extend to the prisoners in Cuba, failing to grasp that their capture and transport to foreign soil only further indicts our actions.  Were American soldiers captured and transported across the globe and held in indefinite detention and deprived of basic human rights, we would be justifiably outraged.  

Arguments that these rights do not extend to the detainees also demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of "rights."  Were one to ask the average American where our rights come from, he or she would hopefully not say from the Constitution, much less from the government or military.  The framers of our government said that all men were endowed with these rights and though they failed mightily to live by that creed when it came to the non-white population, it is their legacy to us.

If we likewise fail, history will judge us more harshly.  Whatever their race, language, religion, or place of birth, the 166 detainees in Guantanamo Bay are men.  They are our fellow travelers here and even those who may have committed crimes against us should be treated with dignity.  Perhaps it is due to the decline of religion in our lives, but past generations would have seen the image of God in each of the prisoners.  That's a very Christian idea, and one probably not espoused by the prisoners themselves, who are likely circumspect in not "ascribing partners to God."  Perhaps we don't need to go that far either.  Perhaps it would be enough if we could just see ourselves in these men.

Beyond what it means for the prisoners, our ability to respond with dignity to even those we number among our enemies humanizes us.  It seems we have become dull and do not easily hear the better angels of our nature speaking within us.  We are diminished by that prison camp in Cuba and as a people are more base and savage with each day it remains open.

Yet I am hopeful that as a nation we will progress toward our ideal of extending life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the entire human family.  Let's begin in Guantanamo.

[*I think this is a correct use of the phrase "begging the question."  I checked on Grammar Girl and everything.  Forgive me if it's not.]

Mike and Lazarus

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that forbade the recognition of gay marriages.  The ruling was the most anticipated of the session, nearly eclipsing all other action by the Court, including striking down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The responses to the Court's ruling were predictably varied with both opponents and defenders of DOMA taking to traditional and alternative news outlets and social media to express their joy or frustration.

Amidst all the hullabaloo, erstwhile Arkansas governor, presidential candidate, and Baptist minister (and current Fox News host) Mike Huckabee tweeted, "My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined same sex marriage is okay: 'Jesus wept.'"  I was truly surprised by the tweet.

Huckabee, a self-identified evangelical, is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  In 1989 he was elected the president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention - the youngest person to ever hold the post.  My guess is that Mr. Huckabee has had multiple undergraduate and graduate courses in Biblical hermeneutics, or how to correctly interpret scripture.

For the evangelical Christian, correct interpretation of the Bible is central to faith; the Bible is infallible and is, in fact, "God-breathed."  The process of correct interpretation is called exegesis.  The term means reading in a way to learn what the original author meant when it was written.  (It's the religious equivalent of "strict interpretation" of the Constitution.)  It is contrasted with eisegesis, which is interpreting the Bible in such a way as to introduce one's own presuppositions and biases into the text.  Likewise, much care must be given by the evangelical teacher in scriptural application.  The context of the original passage is of prime importance.  Noted Christian teachers study the original Greek or Hebrew language of the text, the genre of the particular book, the author, and the historical context before presuming to speak to it's meaning or application in the lives of believers.

That's what puzzles me so much about Governor Huckabee's tweet.  I'm quite certain that he knows the context of the passage he is quoting and to make application to the subject of gay marriage is a little mystifying.

I'm sure many of you will know the story, but just a quick refresher in case it's been awhile since you've been in Sunday School:  Jesus has gone to Bethany to visit a sick friend, Lazarus, who lived with his two sisters, Mary and Martha.  By the time he arrived there, Lazarus was dead and in the tomb.  It was then that John's gospel records Jesus' tears with the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept."  Then we read that the Jews, seeing him crying, remarked, "Behold how He loved him!"  The passage goes on to describe how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, one of the many miracles recorded in the gospels.  (You can read the passage yourself in the 11th chapter of John.)

It's difficult to imagine any scholarly interpreter of scripture believing this passage was originally about, or had application to, the issue of whether the Congress of the United States could require states' to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex.  The passage is usually interpreted as a picture of the power that Jesus had over death, a testament to his divinity.  In the same chapter we find him saying, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."  It is a heady and dramatic passage for believers and one that has given comfort in times of mourning.

It's just unfathomable to me that Huckabee would twist a passage about Jesus' love for another man (an no, I am not inferring anything sexual) to make it a passage condemning the love one person has for another.

The problem is that when you believe you are speaking not just for yourself, but for the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Creator of the universe, it is difficult to not behave with a degree of arrogance.  I know of which I speak.  I used to believe, as Mr. Huckabee does, that the Bible is the final authority on all matters and that it is infallible in every respect.  To be fair to the Governor, the Bible does, in many places, roundly condemn homosexuality - and in no mild terms.  Levitical law prescribed death for any man lying with another man, calling it an "abomination."  The New Testament, too, lists homosexuals with fornicators, idolaters, thieves, and the like, as those who will not see the kingdom of God.  If you believe that each an every word written by this group of men in past centuries is without error, it is difficult to escape the conclusion, and you are emboldened to behave as some sort of divine press secretary when the Supreme Court or Congress take up the issue.

I will not detail my change of heart and mind here, but suffice it to say that I no longer hold the opinions I once did, to the dismay of many of my family and friends.  All of my confidence that I converse minute by minute with the One who spoke worlds into existence is gone.  I have been humbled.  I'm sure that many of my Christian friends and acquaintances would ascribe that to God, but I've been humbled by my own actions in recent years.  I've learned that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" better than I ever did when I was an evangelical.  To me, that means I have more questions than answers, I don't know the mind of God (or even if there is a literal god), and I try to think more kindly of my fellow travelers on this planet, though I fail often enough there, too.  (And to be clear, I'm not feigning enlightenment here, nor pretending I'm moral.  Those who know me will attest I'm neither wise nor good.)

So I would caution Governor Huckabee to behave with more humility.  If Jesus of Nazareth is risen, as those books say he was, I couldn't begin to imagine what he thinks about the ruling yesterday.  The gospels only record that he attended a wedding one time, at Cana of Galilee.  It was there that he performed his first miracle, when his mother came to him to tell him that a real crisis was about to happen - they'd run out of liquid refreshment.  Most Biblical scholars will say that it was there that he attested to his approval of marriage by turning water into wine.

Mr. Huckabee might have more accurately tweeted: "Jesus is pouring the champagne."

Spies and Metadata

I'm thinking today about Edward Snowden.

The technical contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton celebrated his 30th birthday this week hiding in Hong Kong, after revealing to The Guardian that the U.S. National Security Agency has been collecting something called "metadata" on U.S. citizens and hacking civilian computer servers of both our allies and enemies as part of a clandestine program called PRISM.  The U.S. government has revoked his passport and is seeking his extradition for revealing this information to the British newspaper.  As I write this, he has landed in Moscow, en route some believe, to Ecuador.

I'm thinking about Snowden because I believe his case provides an in-time study for how word and image cause us to process reality.  As an artist, this is no surprise.  In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, image, story, and phrase mean everything.

Take for example that word "metadata."  "Meta-" is almost certainly the most overused prefix in the English language today and no one seems to know what it means.  Meta- implies abstraction from another concept, or something that happens above or adjacent to the concept, as in "metaphysics," i.e., "above or beyond the physical realm."  "Metadata" would seem to mean "data about data," but the NSA has been collecting information about who is placing phone calls to whom and how long the calls last.  As my friend Jacob wryly noted, that just seems to be plain old data.

Yet we are meant to believe that government security agencies are not collecting "data" on U.S. citizens - it's only "metadata."  Whew.  I feel much better now.

A similar problem has arisen with just what to called Snowden.  Depending on who you ask, he may be a "traitor," or a "whistleblower."  The AP this week directed its correspondents to identify him as a "leaker," one of the most inelegant terms of recent coinage.  Some have accused him of being a "spy," failing to note the irony that he was, in fact, employed to be a spy.  Some have opined that the term "whistleblower" does not apply to Snowden as he did not follow the "proper channels" for revealing potentially embarrassing information, but what would the "proper channels" be in such a case as this?

In the age of traditional media, most of us would almost certainly know Snowden as a spy and a traitor and might not give it another thought.  But that age has passed and millions of Americans are getting to hear Snowden's story in his own words and in the words of his supporters.  Many of us wonder why the largest superpower that has ever existed is going to such great lengths to silence a man who is really just confirming something many of his fellow citizens have suspected all along.

Also troubling for the U.S. government is the image that Snowden has been able to project.  When the "enemy" is seen as "other," most of us will not investigate further.  This has been used to great effect when discussing both Islam and the Far East, whose languages, customs, and mores might be treated as a monolithic "Axis of Evil."  But Eric Snowden is a mild-mannered tech nerd with stylish glasses and hipster facial hair who has voluntarily surrendered home, family, friends, and a comfortable life in Hawaii to pass on this information.  (A similar image problem is faced in the court martial of Bradley Manning, though Americans seem to believe that soldiers should not be afforded most of the liberties for which they ostensibly fight.)

The information itself is not actually damaging to national security.  The Chinese have insisted for years that the United States is engaged in this sort of activity and now they have confirmation from someone who was involved that yes, we have hacked Chinese universities and mobile phones.  What exactly will our enemies now do with this information except say, "I told you so"?

No, the thing that is most upsetting to our government is that they are unable to control the narrative.  When we think of data we imagine things like pass codes or the locations of counter-operatives within foreign intelligence offices.  The most important piece of data that Snowden has revealed is "metadata": your government is spying on you.

That piece of data changes everything.  Government in our country is predicated on securing our liberties.  If the mechanisms designed to ensure that end are instead used to violate our liberties, what obligations do we owe our government?  As another traitor has written, "[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them (i.e., the rights of the people) under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . ."  Or as Mr. Snowden has said, "The public needs to know the kind of things a government does in its name, or else 'consent of the governed' is meaningless."

The outcome of this case may well depend on who controls the story and who is able to best capture the imagination of the American people.

To My Mountain Mother, on Her Birthday

Today is the 150th anniversary of the founding of my home state of West Virginia. That's called a "sesquicentennial" in case you were wondering. I was born here and have lived here my entire life.

I've always been a proud West Virginian. I am not a knight of the Golden Horseshoe (you non-West Virginians will just have to Google that), but I do know a lot about our state's history. I can tell you the state flower and bird and animal. I can sing every verse of the official state song, "The West Virginia Hills."

Yet the holiday finds me with mixed emotions. I was walking with a friend the other day along the Kanawha River in Charleston, the state capital and the city where I live. The conversation turned to our state, as it often does when hillbillies get together. 

Our state has a colorful history. There is still a wild beauty to the place, which is completely enclosed in the Appalachian mountains, and that served as a type of borderland between the native nations who inhabited the eastern U.S. when Morgan Morgan, the first white settler came to the area. 

Yet by contrast, it is also a violent place, in a way that has captured the American imagination. First came the conflict with the native peoples, like the Mingo, as they were forced from their homes and hunting grounds. There were the infamous feuds between large Scots-Irish clans, the most legendary being the Hatfield-McCoy conflict.  The feud lasted decades and resulted in over a dozen murders of men and women, most of which were never prosecuted. Then came the mine wars, with bloody clashes between Baldwin-Felts detectives and coal miners led by the fiery Mother Jones. Sheriff Sid Hatfield was murdered on the McDowell County courthouse steps and the U.S. army was eventually sent in to do battle with the miners on Blair Mountain. 

Perhaps it's just my own perspective, but for such a small place, there seems to be much bloodletting: corrupt state and county officials, wielding their power to quell dissent; Klan lynchings; fights between revenuers and moonshiners; hundreds of deaths under tons of coal; unsolved murders of small-town socialites; fatal floods caused by acts of God and the carelessness of industry; and untold incidences of domestic violence.  There was even a "textbook war" - a violent conflict over a school book adoption in the 1970s that led to shootings and school bombings. 

I suppose I've been thinking about this the last few years. As I've traveled more of the state, I've become more convinced of the fundamental violence of poverty. It's not just that the poor are driven more to overt acts of violence, along with drug use, alcoholism, obesity, and all the rest. It's also that poverty itself is dehumanizing. We have accepted a myth in this country of romantic notions of poverty. But poverty is not ennobling. The lives of the very poor are lives of incredible stress, which some seek to alleviate through OxyContin or booze, and that occasionally erupt between family members or friends. Those who have not fallen prey to these likely find themselves in church pews on Sunday mornings, where they hear that poverty is only temporary, that they should busy themselves laying up treasure where moth and rust cannot destroy, that they should pray and have faith, that the God who created them wills their poverty, or else that they simply lack the faith necessary to reap the reward they desire. They live in extreme rural locations with no access to routine medical care or other services their countrymen take for granted. 

What we fail to notice is the systemic poverty - and violence - of the place. We have a government that serves the interests of the fossil fuel industries, both coal and gas. When they aren't doing that, they occupy themselves with ensuring ready and quick availability of weapons to the criminal and mentally ill, and wrap it in patriotism and Jesus. 

Lest anyone think I'm advocating some type of socialism, I am not. It's just that our entire state has built itself around one or two business interests, instead of the interest of her own people. There are still "coal barons" who pull millions (and billions) of dollars of minerals from beneath the feet of the poorest of the poor. We accept that they "own" the coal - forgetting the untold eons it took to form.  Many who comfort the poor with tales of golden streets rush to defend the rights of the super-rich to possess the Earth itself. The meek may inherit the Earth, but Don Blankenship probably owns the mineral rights. 

It's not just coal and gas, though they historically have profited the most. And it's not just our government - it's our entire culture. We do not ask our children, "What are your aspirations?"  Instead, we seek to prepare them to serve the dreams of the wealthy. 

I know that West Virginia is not alone in this regard, but it serves as a case study, perhaps, of our failures to our fellow travelers in this world. And it's also my home. 

So happy birthday, Mountain State. I hope this evening to enjoy the fireworks over the Kanawha, sitting on the sun porch of my apartment, just across the street from the governor's mansion. My dream for you is that you come to embody your motto: "Montani Semper Liberi" - "Mountaineers are always free" - and that this freedom would come to embrace the very least among us. 

A Humble Proposition

The last few weeks have me thinking a lot about guns.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal here that I have been a gun owner in my life and am historically very leery of efforts to disarm the citizenry.  Jefferson famously said that where the governments fears the people, there is liberty; but where the people fear the government, there is tyranny.  This is one of his primary arguments for the second amendment to the Constitution.  It was also, of course, why Jefferson argued against a standing army.  It is interesting to me note that the disbanding of our standing army plays so little in discussion of second amendment rights.  It may also be worth noting that Jefferson rarely armed his slaves, though I'm not entirely sure what motivated his decision there.

Yet, despite my desire for an armed citizenry and a disarmed military, I think that the time has perhaps come for me to rethink my position somewhat.  I will confess here that my judgment may have become somewhat clouded by the recent events in Newtown, Conn.  I have a certain sentimentality for images of frightened children sobbing uncontrollably after their classmates have been shot multiple times with a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.  But I recognize the media's attempt to manipulate my emotions through shocking images such as these.

It is hardly fair, after all, to attack weapons such as the AR-15 (the rifle the U.S. military refers to as an M16).  The AR-15 is actually banned as a hunting weapon in some states because the ammunition is not strong enough.  Wiser state legislatures recognize that it would be extremely inhumane to allow a less-effective weapon to be used against a 250 lb. adult deer.  Fortunately for the children at Sandyhook Elementary, the weapon was sufficiently effective in its use against first graders, as the average 40 lb. six-year-old can be felled with significantly less ammunition than his cervine counterparts.

It seems to me that a rational compromise can be reached on this front.  If we allow the state to restrict which weapons may be used against game animals, it certainly seems reasonable that they could restrict which ones may be uses against other human beings.  I realize that the language would have to be crafted rather carefully, however, taking into account the age, size, and general health of the would-be target.  For example, the state could require that those targeting adult males in the prime of life use a 50-caliber weapon, making a clean kill more certain.  If your target were kindergarten students, however, a simple 22 might suffice (though the larger caliber weapons would obviously do the job, too).  In that particular instance, however, it might be essential to craft code to insist on at least semi-automatic weapons with large magazines, since young children are small and naturally quick and all the more so if startled by the unexpected arrival of a stranger with an assault weapon at school.

The National Rifle Association has been quick to point out that more guns may have prevented the recent tragedy.  When I learned that the shooter, Adam Lanza, had taken his mother's legally-purchased hand guns and semi-automatic rifle, leaving her with only two traditional hunting rifles to defend herself against her murderous son, it really got me wondering.  What if she had owned two legally-purchased Bushmaster AR-15 rifles?  She might just have had a fighting chance herself, and prevented the needless deaths of 20 elementary school children.  (I would add here that it is probably advisable to actually own a third rifle as a back-up, as the AR-15 is known for it's tendency to jam when not kept clean. And let's face it: who has time to clean all of those weapons on a daily basis?)

In the wake of the shooting, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for an armed officer in every school in America.  While the closet libertarian in me may question the wisdom of putting an armed police officer in every school and vaguely wonder if this may be the precursor to the sort of police state our aforementioned third president may have been warning us against, I think LaPierre has a point.  He correctly pointed out that we have armed guards at courthouses and airports and this effectively prevents tragedies in those venues.  And please spare me the liberal diatribe about the New Jersey gunman who seized an officer's weapon in a police station filled with armed officers, just two weeks after the Newtown incident.  The fact of the matter is that in that particular case, the gunman was killed while only wounding three officers.  Were it a school and an unarmed criminal had seized an officer's weapon, it is unlikely that he could take out more than five or six children before being shot himself.

This does bring me to another salient point, however.  Many in the public sphere, such as Texas Governor Rick Perry, rightly recognize that this does not go far enough.  These critics have called for arming teachers.  I could not agree more.  Like many on the far right, I do not trust the education of our nation's youth to such a lazy and incompetent group as public school teachers, but let me be the first to say that I do trust them with the safe handling and discharge of large-caliber rifles and handguns in America's classrooms.

Yet I cannot help but wonder, "Is this enough?"  Clearly, the answer is "no."  In the average American classroom there is only one teacher.  A savvy gunman would obviously target the teacher first, preventing her from quickly accessing her safely stowed weapon and defending the children in her charge.  No, the answer is much more radical, yet ridiculously obvious: we need to arm every single student in American schools.

I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that arming every school-age child creates myriad problems, including the likelihood that some outcast loser (like an Adam Lanza or Dylan Klebold) would use the state-provided weapon to attack other students because he was picked last in kickball.  But consider it for a moment: if you knew that the class weirdo had a 44 magnum in his backpack, would you even think of giving him a wedgie?

Is it an expensive proposition?  Certainly, but isn't the safety of America's children worth it?

So how are we going to pay for it?  Well, I wondered that, too, until I read Mr. LaPierre's comments more carefully.

What is the root cause of this violence we see in America?  Clearly, it is neither legal gun ownership nor the availability of weapons with 30+ round magazines.  No, it something much more sinister.  Hear the words of the NRA spokesman:

There exists in this country a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.  Through vicious, violent video games . . . blood-soaked slasher films . . . and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life.  And they have the nerve to call it "entertainment."

Digital media creators, actors, writers, directors, singers, and musicians.  These are the true culprits in American society.

Guns don't kill people, art kills people.

To pay for the presence of a school police force, the arming of both teachers and students in every school, and the design of a comprehensive marksmanship curriculum, I suggest the complete elimination of school arts programs.  These programs are costly and encourage students to "express themselves."  It is, no doubt, this sort of self-reflection that leads many of these monsters to unleash their inner demons on society at large.  Further, the content espoused by these so-called "academic subjects" include violent music, such as murderous British folk ballads and drug-induced homicidal fantasies, like Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique; the sexualized violence of the dance stage, as evident in Le Sacre du printemps; and canvas grotesqueries, for instance, those by Hieronymus Bosch.  Theatre, of course, seems almost designed to inculcate violence in our young people, with the Bard's Scottish play practically a requirement of the high school literary curriculum.

With the complete elimination of school arts programs, those industries will soon dry up and leave our shores for more barbaric countries like Finland or the U.K.  We will have no more music, film, or literature poisoning young minds.  Our children will grow up knowing only fresh air and the joy of mastering assault weaponry.

I realize there may be resistance to this plan at first, but I can honestly think of no reasonable alternative.  I urge the president, Congress, and the U.S. Department of Education to implement this plan quickly, before it is too late.