Bad news from the Blue back woods

 Bad news from the Blue back woods 

Here in Oakland California, we had our own slip into darkness on election day. 

Our local version of the reactionary backlash in the deep Democrat part of dark Blue California does not conform to the liberal-radical reputation we have across the country. 

That is a good reputation that we do not deserve. 

To start with, two reactionary recalls won hands down. Oakland will be without our mayor and our Alameda County will be without our progressive district attorney. They are being blamed to for high crime rates and other things that have nothing to do with them and had started literally before they were born. 

Our own Oakland Local mini-Musk bankrolled the expensive signature gathering required, starting only weeks after the mayor and DA had been sworn into office, two years ago. 

The subsequent, well-funded advertising campaign sounded a lot like the campaign against the progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin two years ago. We all know the Trump song about how the liberals just let the criminals go without consequences and how we need to teach those bad people a lesson with harsh policing and harsher punishments. Well, the song sung around here by recall people should open them up for copywrite infringement. 

It is all BS of course, but it tugs at the heart strings of the common people who are sick of seeing their car windows broken. The failure of local law enforcement and total failure of rehabilitation was not on the ballot, or even discussed. The public is at wits end and these demagogues who have failed to provide public safety found a convenient scapegoat that that they also used for political revenge. What Chesa Boudin in San Francisco in 2022 and our Alameda County Pamela Price had in common was that they were progressive district attorneys. There is no reason to believe that they would not prosecute criminals. There is every reason to believe that they would prosecute misbehaving police, and that is why they faced recall. 

And yes, some of the people who backed the recalls on this side of the bay were involved in the one on the other side of the bay. For some history, that was the second time San Francisco got rid of a progressive DA. The first time was via the ballot box and the “moderate” replacement was none other than Kamala Harris. 

And after all of this, crime in San Francisco had not gone down. 

Just as disappointing as the recall campaign, was the campaigns for some of our local offices. There was not a lot to get excited about on the local lists, but there we some bad apples. 

The bad apples got elected. 

We have a local state legislator called Buffy Wicks. She used to work for Obama and once called herself “Buffy the Bernie Slayer”. After running a campaign with dirty false accusations against a local progressive, her parachute landed her in state house after a long history of doing absolutely nothing in local politics. 

Buffy’s candidates did really well this time. One for state Senate against the same highly qualified local representative Buffy slandered in her run. One for Alameda County Supervisor with a union busting track record, running against an honest progressive, president of the local Oakland City Council. 

The ballot in California is eight pages long, so I will cut this short right here. 

It is only after the election that one gets a look at how bad some of the candidates are. We don’t like Trump in the White House. Well, we got little blue Trumps in State House and County Court House. 

Not all of the worse ones won. A few were really good. Some were shoe-ins provided by our local Democrats giving the public a pre-managed limited choice. Other candidates were just people working on their careers. Few stand out in a good way. A couple stand out in a bad way. 

All in all, it was another good election for the funders representing real estate ownership, real estate speculation and real estate development along with the Silicon Valley money that is spreading out from San Francisco. Our mini-Musk of the recall fame is into hedge funds or something like that. 

Our all-blue elections were swamped with all-blue campaign funding. 

There was a constant, misleading barrage of advertising in Oakland and across the state. 

San Francisco takes the lead with rich people paying to get themselves elected mayor and supervisor. 

Other big winners who are telling us about how good their work is and how this election shows progress of our values are the local pro-charter school NAACP, the pro charter Great Oakland Public Schools and the pro charter school group Faith in Action. The school board elections were not great, and the only good news was that we may at least keep a couple good people. The school board majority? Meh… 

While on the subject of the local NAACP, lets keep in mind that their pro-recall community includes the former prosecutor, now judge, who ran against our recalled district attorney, the former council member who lost the election to our freshly recalled mayor and the police chief that our recalled mayor fired for not implementing internal discipline. The undisciplined officer in question was racking up something like a quarter million in extra salary, and did things that included setting off his gun in an elevator. 

You see, we don’t need Republicans to be a farce. 

Not all of the turn to the right required knowing who the players were. The mood of so-called progressive California showed its colors in some statewide ballot initiatives. Of course, the vote to take the prohibition of gay marriage out of the state constitution won. It was only necessary because not too long ago, an anti-gay marriage proposition called Prop 8 had passed. 

This time we add to our shameful votes a big NO on an end to prison slavery. NO was also the answer to raising the minimum wage. The answer was NO on allowing local governments to have rent control. 

A YES vote was there to punish the AIDS health and housing people who promote rent control. Another big YES vote was there to punish criminals more than we already do. 

We saw bucketloads of the same advertising themes as used for our local recalls, but statewide. 

The advertising against rent control was exceptionally dishonest. 

Our governor is holding an emergency session of the California State Legislature to discuss how to keep our civil liberties. I suppose that means keeping the religious extremists out of our bedrooms, clinics and the panties of little girls trying to go to the bathroom. But what else? Not electoral reform. 

Are they going to tell us that people voted Trump because they are ignorant? 

Will any of them recognize that their own shenanigans turn people off? 

When you actually live here you can see why the Democrats don’t really offer a lot in leadership. 

Thanks to the Berkeley Daily Planet for putting this one out there. 

Bad News from the Blue Backwoods. Category: Extra from The Berkeley Daily Planet

Adapting to climate change means spending the money to do it

With the “cyclone bomb” and the “atmospheric river” both hitting California again, the resulting floods are showing us again that we are not ready for the rain.

A good watershed protecting forest coverage will not be able to do more than slow down the high-water flows produced by excessive rains.  But we do not even have that kind of watershed protecting forest health.  When it rains in California we have floods.  Some of them are avoidable.  Some can be mitigated and some just cannot be helped.  Our land management does little to slow things down or get out of the way. 

And now we have bigger swings in our weather.  It is dryer for longer and then it rains harder.  There are a lot of details, exceptions, caveats and questions that need more study.  What does not need more study is that we are not doing what it takes to deal with the weather that we should expect.

The call for strategic reforestation embracing our waterways and traditional prescribed burns to keep the forests healthy and fire safe has been gaining ground.  The result is a lot more than lip service.  The people fighting the wildfires are taking proactive measures. Some of the landowners have come around. 

And it is all insufficient. 

It is not insufficient because nothing can be done.  It is insufficient because we are not spending the money.  Making the decision to reverse the land management policies of the last century and a half is not easy.  It is a case where we are telling people what to do with their property in name of the greater good. It is the larger society that is deciding what that greater good looks like. 

It is time that society at large be willing to pay for what we are telling individuals to do in our name.  

Some of the new rules need not cost much.  A field is just as productive when the fence is a few yards away from seasonal and all year creek beds. 

Some of the rules should cover things that people are going to have to spend money on anyway.  A roofing tile should not be made out of flammable materials, not in this state.

Then there are things that will cost quite a lot, and the state should help pay for.  If we need to move houses away from repeated flood or burn zones, the public needs to pick up the cost. We need to reclaim wastewater and capture flood waters and build the structures and artificial wetlands needed to clean up water and allow it to soak back into the aquifers. We need more and larger flood channels than ever before. We need to plant trees all over and create more forest buffer zones.  We will need to be telling people what to do on big farms in a way we never have before.  The government will have to tell, not ask, but at the same time it can work with established landowners to make the changes understood and done in a way that people can live with. 

We have to give up on the old American practice of making a big plan and then sticking only certain people with the bill. We need to share the costs, and nobody should be treated as “undeserving”.

If we rise to the occasion, we can adapt and mitigate the global crisis.  The trail to doing so leads back to everyone doing their share to pay for it.  That includes the wealthy paying a fair share.   

Not Unprovoked

When talking about the current Ukraine war, it is hard to know where to start.  

Each side has its own spin.  

The biggest piece of BS that our government is feeding us here in the US is the “unprovoked” part.  

To listen to all the ex-CIA hacks, retired state department hawks and military analysts talking as pundits in our media, NATO, the US and the EU are all a bunch of clean-handed angels while Russia is acting crazy under the leadership of madman dictator Putin.  

Funny how we do not hear much from anyone outside of the narrow band of NATO supporters. The reporting should remind us all of the babies in the incubator story and the clear assurances of an earlier secretary of state about weapons of mass destruction.  The same western allies all fell in line then too. 

It would be nice to hear more from China and India, for example, not to mention the Russians themselves.  Why don't any of them get interviews, but any American journalist who stands around Moscow in a Dan Rather jacket is treated like an expert? It would be better to interview their translators.  

Our western alliance governments are using this crisis to sweep a lot of their own actions under the rug. 

The eastern expansion of NATO is real, and it has been upsetting every government in Russia since the end of the cold war.  It comes with the United States pulling out of established arms control agreements and NATO holding exercises in eastern Europe that are dress rehearsals for an invasion of Russia. 

You will hear a lot of downplay, evasion and change of subject on NATO expansion from our media.  

Things in the Ukraine are not as cut and dried as Mr. Blinken and company like to pretend.  

The overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014 was sketchy.  Our government was involved but exactly how is not clear.  Just because a bunch of telegenic people storm a building it does not mean that some kind of liberation took place, or that it was democratic, or even that popular.  

The political parties that formed the prior government were outlawed and a for a quick minute, so was the Russian language, which is the first language of about a quarte of Ukrainians.  A fascist political party was very involved and that is not some Putin fantasy.  

The situation was bad enough that two the Russian speaking areas broke away and we have had around 15,000 deaths in eastern Ukraine in the following years, none of which seem to warrant a tear-jerking report from NPR or any credence from think tank spin doctors.  There was little reporting on the oligarch paid private army that initiated the Ukrainian suppression of that Russian speaking revolt.  

So, yes, Russia was hiding the fact that their troops were involved, but they did not create the situation.  There is no talk of any of the Russian speaking side of this tragedy now as the west spins up a new past for this old conflict. The problems of the Dombas is described only as a Russian aggression by our press.

Since 2014 a steady flow of weapons has entered Ukraine.  All the purr words about the Ukrainians and all the snarl words about Putin and Russia don’t change the fact that there has been anti-Russian military buildup based in Kiev and that the Russian government has been asking for it to stop.  

Russia has its own lies and dirty deeds in this conflict and our media has been doing its best to underline an exaggerated misrepresentation of them to fit the needs of the hawks.  

For example, we are being told that this aggression against Ukraine is one of a long list.  On that list is Georgia. Think what you may of the two regions involved, there is no doubt that Georgia started that war.  Look it if up you don’t believe me.  Now we are being told the opposite.  

And there is certainly more we do not know.  Are there weapons in Ukraine that both sides do not want to talk about in public?  

Russia is clearly the aggressor here.  

Being for a Russian withdrawal is justified. 

But becoming pro-Ukrainian in this war is not.

There needs to be a negotiated settlement.

Both sides have legitimate concerns.    

And to understand this war, we Americans have to stop believing that this war was unprovoked.

Today's Nicaragua and the US left

 
The US left is divided over Nicaragua.
One side feels that Ortega and the Sandinistas can do no wrong.
The other could do a better job explaining itself to the left and the public at large.   
 
This weekend Nicaragua will hold a farse election under repressive conditions.  The US left is well placed to either not explain the bad news well, or to tell us that the bad news is not true. 
 
I nearly lost my life building that revolution.  Be clear that I too wish that the bad news was not true.  But to be a revolutionary is to have a commitment to the well being of the people, and to seek out the truth, not matter how upsetting.  We have a duty to know the nuance and contradictions of any political situation in which we work.  Denial is bad psychology and worse politics. 
 
A few years back Ernesto Cardinal, my former culture minister, a poet, and a priest who was on Pope John Paul II’s shit list for being a member of the Sandinista government, was the star presenter at the San Francisco “Flor y Canto” poetry and music festival. 
 
He read some poetry and talked a bit; while doing so he said that President Daniel Ortega had become a new Somoza.  Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the dictator of Nicaragua that the Sandinistas, including Ernesto Cardinal and his brother (and fellow priest) Fernando, overthrew in 1979. 
 
I knew that things were bad in Nicaragua and had been so for some years, but to say “the same as Somoza” to me meant a lot, especially coming from a man I respected so deeply. 
 
For clarification, the Ortega-Murillo marriage are president and vice president of Nicaragua and also run the current version of the Frente Sandinista. When people refer to the Sandinista revolution, they are talking about the period from 1979 to 1990.  Some people think that the current government is a continuation of that revolution while most independent analysts think that Ortega-Murillo government is repressive and much to the right of traditional Sandinista views and ethics. 
 
Recently I have attended two Zoom meetings that both called themselves a left perspective on the current situation in Nicaragua. 
 
The first supported the current Daniel Ortega government treating it like the ongoing triumph of the revolution that I worked for in the 1980’s. It was hosted by a local Veterans for Peace group. 
 
ICSS 20210801 Revolutionary Nicaragua in the crosshairs of Imperialism Gerry Condon - YouTube
 
And the second was organized by the North American Congress on Latin America which opposes and denounces the current Daniel government.  The main takeaway from that one was to focus on getting political prisoners released.
 
The Nicaraguan Crisis: A Left Perspective (October 7, 2021) - YouTube
 
I found the second one disappointing and the first one seriously misguided. 
 
The disappointing one more closely reflected my own views, but I did not find that the answers that they gave would mean much in our discussions with the other part of the left represented by the Daniel supports.  The answers were too dismissive of other concerns in my view.  It felt like a good opportunity missed.
 
The first concern they just pushed back on, but did not really discuss, was the concern about US involvement and support for some of the opposition that has emerged in Nicaragua. 
 
Recently a friend sent me a pro Daniel article that got published on the Black Agenda Report website.  The Black Agenda Report is a damn good show and I doubt that they know how badly publishing this article damages their credibility. 
 
The article is called:
Why Defending Nicaragua is Important | Black Agenda Report by Stephen Sefton 26 Oct 2021
It starts with the line:
The U.S. effort to destabilize Nicaragua is an ongoing crime against that nation's people.
 
Is that really true?
 
American Imperialism is an ongoing reality, especially in Latin America but I do not believe that the US State Department is trying to overthrow the Danielista government.  For all the years since Daniel was elected back to the presidency, they seemed totally fine with his pro market, pro neo-liberal policies not to mention his anti-union and anti-farmer strongarm tactics.  US concern for the increasing authoritarianism and eroding democracy did not even include lip service before 2018. 
 
For imperialism to be inactive in a Latin American nation means a lot. The CIA does not just go away. I do not believe that they are totally dormant at any time. 
 
So, for the CIA to not be doing anything serious is an important event. 
 
The pro Daniel folk point to the grants and scholarships that some of the opposition leaders received from US based organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy.  The other side waived that aside saying that it is minimal, and it is true that it is minimal. When the speakers just brushed those scholarships off, they lost an opportunity to explain that it is NORMAL and LEGAL in international relations to offer students above-board education in hopes that it will influence the educated in their favor.  It is sleezy, but not subterfuge. 

 
Today’s CIA is built on a long tradition of interference in the internal affairs of Latin American nations funding political groups, unions and supporting military coups, insurgencies and US invasions.
 
Scholarships is not what we mean by imperialist interference in other nations internal affairs.  In the past, and in other nations, we have seen and still see, such tactics as pouring cash into opposition groups, including armed forces and militias (as in Venezuela recently, and many places, including Nicaragua, historically), putting the heat on to get a congress to recall a president (Honduras and Paraguay) and supporting a takeover by the police and military as in Bolivia.  This is today’s CIA. 
 
I was disappointed that the speakers did not give the accusation of US intervention more credence and provide a stronger argument as to why this is not the case in today’s Nicaragua.
 
In the course of the conversation there was only a passing mention that the participants do not support any US government interference.  In my book that should take top bill with some clarifications.  And we should also discuss the international human rights organizations that we do support getting involved. 
 
Keeping the US out of Nicaragua is always important.
 
I also felt that the Sandinista critics were too dismissive of the social welfare aspect of the Daniel version of Sandinistas.  It kind of gave away where they fit in the social-economic pyramid. 
 
Yes, the nation is poor. Yes, Ortega-Murillo practice savage capitalism.  Yes, the government is corrupt and people are losing their labor and land rights. But no, roads, schools, sewage, drinking water and such are not nothing. 
 
Try living without them! That was true for much of Nicaragua only 30 years ago.
 
There is a reason why the unaccompanied minors turning up at the US boarder are mostly from Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.  Well, two reasons.  One is that to be poor in Nicaragua is not as bad as in those three countries to their north.  The other reason, and I feel it is a big one, is that the Nicaraguan street is not under the control of the gangs.  The national police, formally called the Sandinista Police are repressive, but they are also efficient and powerful.  A Honduran does not have basic security and a Nicaraguan does, and both know it.
 
A pro Ortega-Murillo friend just sent me a digital election poster.  It lists 20 things that the government has done since this second Sandinista period began.  Some are debatable, most not. 
 
No-one on the panel mentioned any of that. They just pointed out that Nicaragua is still dirt poor and capitalist. True.  Nicaragua does not have the social network of Cuba.  But it is better than before and better than the neighbors to the north. 
 
Poverty and social welfare in Managua is one thing, poverty deep in the countryside is another.  Out in the rural areas many people still have reasons to support the Sandinistas, avidly. 
 
I was happy to see that former Comandante de la Revolución Luis Carrion Cruz (member of the committee of 9) is still willing to speak out and has taken a good stand.  I just wish that he had done a better job of reaching the American left, as the hosts said that they set out to do.
 
The first Zoom meeting I saw, the pro Daniel one, was not disappointing, it was upsetting, and I feel that it was spreading the Ortega-Murillo talking points, may of which are lies and distortions.  According to this crowd:
 
·        The protests were all just US backed instigations. 
·        The protestors are pro-imperialist, pro-contra right wingers.
·        There is no repression Nicaragua.
·        All the arrests are justified. 
·        The Nicaraguan government is socially progressive.
·        The US hates Nicaragua because it is anti-imperialist. 
 
I think you get the idea.  This crowd was mockingly dismissive of anything that the Ortega-Murillo has been accused of. Their far-fetched justifications for every arrest and repressive action were akin to what we hear from the Republicans who just cover for their leaders even when they zig zag on policies. 
 
This presentation was also upsetting to me personally.  I have met a lot of these people and at one time they had my respect for what they did to oppose Regan era wars in Central America.  The host was a local group where we used to hold meetings in person before the pandemic. At one point they showed a video of two Americans being guests of honor at a Revolution Day event in Managua.  Both don’t speak enough Spanish to beat their way out of a wet paper bag, yet they felt that “they were there and saw it for themselves” and could lecture us on the reality of Nicaragua.  It was kind of sad and pathetic. 
 
A good friend of mine looked at it and said that she feels that some people are trapped in their own nostalgia. Being part of the Sandinista revolution was the high point of their lives.  
 
What bothers me is that some people are very active telling the US left, and anyone who will listen, that the current Ortega-Murillo is just great and once again what we are hearing in the press is all just imperialism up to its same old tricks. 
 
That seems to be the entire Stephen Sefton writing franchise brand. After I saw his awful article in the Black Agenda Report, I spent some time looking him up.  He has about a half dozen pro Daniel articles running in about a half dozen places in the alternative media.
 
I consider that mis-leadership. 
 
What should the left do? 
 
Continue to fight for the respect of nations.  We should be for noninterference into other people’s affairs ALL the time, whether we like that government or not.
 
We should continue to stand up for human rights ALL of the time.  There are credible, independent human rights groups and agencies.  We should take their lead, and not that of our State Department.
 
And we should educate our own people on imperialism as practiced by our own country, wherever that may be.  In this case, the history of interference and military intervention explain much of what hurts the people of Central America today.   
 
On a personal note, it is hard for me to be objective about anything in Nicaragua.  That place ate up 7 years of my life, 5 years of my employment and 3 years of military service. 
 
We left a lot of people dead because we were fighting to defend the revolution.  The revolution meant education, it meant development, but above all, we had a promise to the people of Nicaragua that they would never suffer the cruel repression of the dictatorship again. 
 
In that, I feel betrayed. 
 

Time to vote in the KPFA station board election

Time to vote in the KPFA station board election 

And by that, I mean that I am asking you to vote for me.  

If you are a member of KPFA you can vote for me now. 

Your ballot should have arrived either via email or a post card. 

If you are not a member, please become one.  

The community radio part of the progressive community needs all of our engagement.  It is too late to register to vote for me, but it is not too late to join and help build this local radio station and our national network.  

A lot of friends have let me know that they are concerned with the age group that KPFA seems to center on.  I am concerned too, that is why I am on the board and running for a full term.  It takes board members to advocate policy changes.  The biggest change that I am standing up for is a change in generations.  We need new and younger people on the air, in the production studio and on the board.  That way we make needed steps forward and older people like myself can step aside.  

My other concerns are membership recruitment in general, our spending and fundraising, and better coordination of our news resources, especially local news. 

Most people have heard of the faction fighting at KPFA.  As a current board member, I have to say that it looks worse from the inside than it appears in public.  I am extremely disappointed and offended by the antics of the “New Day Pacifica” group even though I know some of them personally and have respect for their work in other parts of the radio station and around town generally.  

There is a difference between having alternative opinions and being on a warpath to be in charge.  Everyone should put their ideas out there; that is what a board is for.  There are a few tendencies around KPFA.  They are currently called New Day Pacifica.  When it comes to fighting for power, there is just one faction who is fighting for control any way they can.  There have been attempts to change the rules.  There has been a lawsuit.  There have been underhanded attempts to close a station (in New York). Meetings are not respected.  There are farfetched motions of censure.  

Members of this faction have some very good ideas and important points to raise.  But they need to stop trying to be the only people with a say in the present and future of KPFA and Pacifica.  Please do not vote for anyone that they recommend until they agree to stop abusing the system.  

I personally have thrown in my lot with Rescue Pacifica and I recommend that you vote for the same people that they endorse.  Rescue Pacifica is not a faction, it is an alliance of people who want to run the station together with everyone.  There are Democrats, Greens and others in this group. For more information visit https://rescuepacifica.net/ There are some independents running worth a listen.  Vicente Cruz is an old friend and a very ethical person who I endorse.  Thomas Lord I have never heard of, but I agree with his idea about bringing in youth and scrappy, innovative reporting.  

Right now, California is going through a fire and water crisis of historic proportions.  We need KPFA to be looking into the causes and solutions and keeping people informed.  The corporate media gives us a view that they call balanced.  That is a balance between agribusiness and real estate developers.  Yet environmental biologists agree with the traditions of the native peoples on land management.  Alternative media like KPFA should be our front on this issue.  

Just as we should be out front on all other climate change issues, other environmental issues and be a main source of honest news on race relations, economic justice, military intervention and all the other things that matter to most of the public.  

So, my message is to help us build our community radio, and its on-line counterpart, to represent the community and cover the news that our people need.  You can do that by joining.  You can do that by listening and sending feedback to the shows.  And you can do that by electing people who want to make something better out of what we have.  

And I hope to be that person you trust to elect.  

-------------------------------   

Over the past weeks there have been some questionnaires and debates.  

We were also asked to make our case in a 1-minute spot. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3-GAhlPgM4&list=PLkHN5Oufe4XPCt9LtG9lzC1n9onviaEla 

You can see the debates and other information here:

https://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/youtube-channel/kpfa-candidate-debates/

Nicaragua and the crisis in solidarity

Nicaragua and the crisis in solidarity 

Perhaps we in the United States would do a better job of making good international solidarity decisions if we had any serious resistance to capitalism and imperialism of our own. 

There are a lot of things that we as a people could do to stand up for ourselves and oppose what our system, and its government, does here and around the world, but we don’t really.  We get a few great marches in at the beginnings of wars and such, but without any socialist opposition political party or other sustained, organized popular movements, the resistance always fizzles out.  

After a short time, the Democrats switch the public conversation back to something they like better, such as the right to be gay in the military.  The Republicans oppose.  The press follows. 

What little popular resistance we have is fragmented, and depends on the legal status of the shrinking remains of our union movement and even more fragmented opposition electoral politics.  The spaces that could have been organizations of people’s power are dominated by the bunch of private businesses called the non-profit sector.  Very few of our popular organizations even have a voting membership; of those fewer still have real, contested elections for the leadership.  Our government is not really a democracy, so what tools do we have to do better with organizations that should belong to the people? 

As a culture, we do not do grass roots led organizing very well, any more. 

So, how does a society that does not really have a strong movements practice solidarity with the peoples of other nations that do?  

For the most part we don’t.  

What we have instead is individual advocacy work, often embodied by some self-appointed people who set up some of those non-profits.  Such groups do a lot sometimes.  The boycotts of South Africa back in the day and the current Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement would be the two big cases of such an advocacy practice making a lot of political noise when noise is needed.  

Many would say that our Bernie movement, the AOC squad and the other left Democrat efforts being made with some success around the country are that kind of a popular opposition.  I disagree on two levels.  First is that they depend on our advertising model of expensive campaigns to get elected.  Second is because I do not feel that it works.  In Oakland we live in an area represented by such heroes as Ron Dellums and after fifty years, I am not sure we have a lot to show for it.  

In any case, the US practice is that advocates advocate for their thing and for the most part do not represent any consensus of our popular movements.  That is not solidarity; it is supporting a cause. 

What we do not have is some kind of agreement between trade unions, civil rights associations, political parties, immigrant associations, etc. that some part of US foreign policy or some outrageous human rights crimes of other nations should be opposed, by us, now. 

That would be a real solidarity movement.  We only have bits and pieces at best.  

On the positive side we have had some good “hands off” movements. Now would be a good time to be clear on the hands-off Cuba idea.  

A wish was expressed that Cuba resolve its current crisis peacefully without external interference. That is not coming from our liberal Democrat left, it is the position of the president of Mexico. He also offered to send food and vaccines to Cuba, if helpful, and expressed a desire to see an end to the economic embargos of Cuba.  

Less productively we have seen more than a couple “call your congressman” campaigns directed at the internal affairs of other nations.  

That finally brings us to the current situation with Nicaragua.  The last thing any nation in Latin America needs is some kind of self-declared left progressive movement in the United States advocating for US government involvement in their internal affairs.  

Why be willing to boycott Israel but not Nicaragua?  That depends who is doing the boycotting.  When it is the United States government in Nicaragua, there is an inconvenient truth that changes everything. 

The history and current reality of US imperialism in Latin America is a war crime itself.  It is a century and a half of invasions, subversions, proxy wars and military coups that we in the US should classify in our history as one of our national shames alongside the genocidal displacement of the Native Americans and the enslavement and subsequent oppression of African Americans. In Nicaragua all those things happened and that nation suffered death and destruction at our government’s hands.  We should not be asking our government to sanction Latin American individuals or nations or to be involved in any way any more than a German should be asking their government to sanction Israel.  

That does not mean that people in the United States should not be aware of, active around and opposed to the recent political arrests and the repressive actions of the Nicaraguan government.  It just means that we should be just as adamantly opposed to our own government doing anything about it.  

So, what can we do, how should we do it?  

Respecting the sovereignty of other nations does not mean that we don’t choose our own friends.  

We may not have the mass movement we really need here, but we do have some organizations we can trust to be consistent in supporting human rights and opposing US intervention.  Let’s work with them.  Let’s convince them that the arrests of the opposition leaders in Nicaragua is really repression.  

We should be able to form a consensus that demands the release of those political prisoners, the reopening of the media groups and the operation of Nicaragua’s own human rights organizations.  

And we can tell the Nicaraguan government directly how we feel about it.  

We can get more than a few hundred names on petitions, if we worked on it. 

We can get some unions and grass roots groups to sign on to prison release.  

We should find our friends in Nicaragua using the same criteria.  There are groups and organizations who are asking for civil liberties, but do not want a return to imperialism.  We can help them get their voices heard outside of Nicaragua, here and in other nations.  Sending some money might help.  A popular boycott of Nicaragua’s tourist resorts might help. We should ask our Nicaraguan friends what they would like us to do. If it jives with our values, then we should do it.  

There are other Nicaraguans who are not the friends of solidarity because they are wanting to impose a right-wing government totally allied with the US State Department that would roll back all that the revolution in Nicaragua ever did.  They deserve civil rights and their political prisoners should be released too, but be clear, they would not support democratic rights for anyone else, especially anyone on the left.  

Both the left and right have allies and friends in Nicaragua, and pretty much anywhere else.  

Finally, we and those of like mind around democracy and civil rights should make our voices heard, while we respect the fact that Nicaragua needs to sort its own problems out.  

And we as Americans have a lot of problems to sort out too. 

We would be doing the world a favor if we made some progress here.  

Can I have your vote for KPFA Station Board?

 I am running for reelection to the KPFA Local Station Board because our community needs community radio. As our country drives itself over many social and environmental cliffs our airways are jammed with a worthless discussion between the pseudo left, the center right and the extreme right. Community radio is where more encompassing news and ideas give us one of the few counter balances that we have in our national dialogue. 

KPFA is in a long-developed crisis of low listenership and low membership coupled with high costs and serious budget problems. In the SF Bay Area, an independent, progressive, community radio station like ours with developed programing and resources should have a much larger audience and support base. We need to correct this and put much more effort into recruiting. 

We need younger people as members. We need them on the air making new programing. We need them helping to run and lead KPFA and our Pacifica Network. We need more members of every age and background. This should be the job of EVERYONE at the station; the board, the management and all of the shows on the air. Every program should be promoting new members into leadership roles. Every program should be doing outreach out in the community, not just on the air. 

We also need to put more effort into improving our on-air offer. We need a better plan for the reporting on and regular delivery of local news. The current programming is very split up and individualized when some better cooperation and sharing of resources would give us a better coverage. 

The constant infighting and multiple attempts by one faction to take total control distracts us from fixing problems. I am not, and will not be part of the dubious actions taken such as the lawsuit, the bylaws takeover attempt, the midnight closure of another member station or anything else that will shut out voices on our governing boards. If that group becomes a minority at KPFA, I will not support the new majority shutting them out as they currently do to everyone else. I feel that to be on a community radio station board is to hold a public trust and will not have anything to do with tactics and actions that are not ethical. 

On the board I will work for complete and understandable reporting to the board and membership. If needed, I would be glad to server as a board officer to help turn things around. 

My personal background is that I am 63 years old, of white English-speaking extraction, a machinist, union member, shop teacher, retrained computer network engineer, small business owner, father of two and a polyglot with a deep, antiimperialist international background. Hopefully some of my developed skills and experiences will add to the human resources of our board and our station. 

It is what we can do, combined with what we are willing to do collectively that will determine the future of the KPFA-Pacifica project. 

If you are a KPFA member you can help me get on the ballot by signing my nomination. 

For instructions, follow this link:  Sign up to nominate candidates – Pacifica Foundation Election Website