Monday, October 31, 2016

An Atypical Election



To say that this presidential election season has been atypical is an understatement.

By now, most of you who are eligible will have made up your minds. But, for those who have not, I offer the following.

This is an era of rapid-fire social media that offers opinions without facts at the speed of light. So I targeted major daily newspaper endorsements because typically a newspaper's editorial board will offer plenty of factual reasons for choosing the candidates they support.

The Democratic presidential candidate has received the support of 215 daily newspapers, while the Republican candidate has received only 8. Overall, the Democratic candidate has garnered a total of 389 newspaper and magazine endorsements, while the Republican candidate has received eight. Only one major daily newspaper (the Las Vegas Review-Journal) has chosen to endorse the Republican candidate.

USA Today's editorial board broke a tradition of not supporting any presidential candidate, by endorsing the Democratic runner. In part, USA today explained, "Trump has demonstrated that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents."

One of the more noteworthy endorsements for the Democratic candidate came from the Arizona Republic. It has never endorsed a Democrat since its inception in 1890, being a fiercely conservative newspaper. Nonetheless, the Arizona Republic's editorial stated "The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and is not qualified. That's why, for the first time in our history, the Arizona Republic will support a Democrat for president."

In such a heated campaign, it's natural for the candidates to cherry-pick the truth to make their points. But there is a marked difference between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in this regard.

PolitiFact, which has earned a Pulitzer Prize, reported that the Democratic candidate has a 50 percent truth telling ratio (145 out of 287 statements being true or mostly true), while the Republican candidate came in at 4 percent (15 of 315 statements being true or mostly true). Perhaps more telling, the Republican candidate had 55 statements being rated as liar-liar-pants-on-fire while, the Democratic candidate had a total of seven statements in this category.

Even among conservative evangelical Christians, support for the Republican presidential candidate has been dropping. Most notably in response to the release of a video in which the candidate bragged about his sexual advances on women. Women make up more than half of the evangelical church in America. And over 800 of them signed on to a letter denouncing the Republican candidate within hours of its publication.

And the dissent among evangelicals isn't limited to whites. Minority evangelicals voiced their disapproval of the Republican presidential candidate way before the outpouring tied to the letter written a few weeks ago.

The Republican candidate has made many attention-getting remarks throughout the campaign. There are too many of them to go into detail here, but if you're interested I'll refer you to what Newsday has recorded.

This tactic of making outrageous statements that stoke fear and bigotry has worked very well for the Republican candidate. One wonders, without this questionable trait, would he have even been nominated in the first place?

The Republican candidate says he has the ability to Make America Great Again. It would seem a leader would need to be able to draw a diverse population together in order to achieve that goal. Something the Republican presidential candidate and the Republican party, in general, have not been able to do.

A recent article in the LA Times noted that the candidates seem to be getting their support from two different Americas. The Republican candidate's base is white and heavily male. The Democratic candidate's support is much more diverse and reflects the reality of present day America. (The LA Times referenced a report from the Pew Research Center that estimated a 17 percent increase in Latino voters and 16 percent increase in Asian voters from 2012 to 2016.)

In the end, the choice, come election day, may come down to which version of America do you prefer? One that seems rooted in the past, giving in to fear of the future; or one that embraces the future, believing that America will be able to face its challenges? The choice isn't yours if you don't choose to vote.

Regardless of how you feel about the candidates, or the campaign process itself, please vote on November 8. 

Photo Credit. uconntoday















Monday, October 24, 2016

13th: Review of film by Ava DuVernay



"Neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States." 13th Amendment to the US Constitution


13th, a documentary by Ava DuVernay (director of SELMA), begins with a stark statistic.

The United States holds 5 percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of its prisoners.

13th (titled after the 13th amendment) seeks to answer the question: Why?

DuVernay picks up the story after the Civil War, making a case that targeted incarceration of blacks began as a means to rebuild the Southern economy.

Lynchings became increasingly more common during the Reconstruction era, setting the stage for Jim Crow legislation, a series of state and local laws in the South that enforced racial segregation.

The "separate but equal" status they sought to justify was anything but.

In 1954 the US Supreme Court struck down segregation in public schools, but the practice still remained. Causing Martin Luther King Jr. to comment years later, "Justice too long delayed is justice denied."

13th makes the point that after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, mass incarceration of blacks began. Prior to that time, the incarceration rate had been flat, but the sheer volume of people in prison speaks to the point: In 1970 there were 357,292 people in prisons across the US. By 1985 that number had increased to 759,100. And by 1980 there were 1.1 million people in prison.

A big part of the reason for the increase was the infamous "War on Drugs" started during the Nixon Administration. 13th makes a case that the War On Drugs turned drug addiction to a crime issue rather than a social issue.

A decade later, Ronald Reagan took the economic inequality that existed among the races, bringing the War on Drugs to another level, instilling a fear and law-and-order attitude in relating to inner city communities. During this time period (mid to late 1980s) criminologists coined the term "super predators" in an attempt to identify minority members who committed crimes.

The effect of this stereotyping was plainly evident. "We make them their crime" said Bryan Stevenson, head of the Equal Justice Initiative. "You have then educated a public, deliberately, over decades to believe that black men in particular, and black people in general, are criminals."

The administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton featured the continuance of the get-tough-on-crime message. (Bush pushed for and signed the Crime Control Act of 1990, while Clinton pushed for and signed the Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994). And the number of people in prison continued to grow. From 1,179,200 in 1990 to 2,015,300 in 2001.

During President Clinton's tenure in office, in particular, he signed into law a bill that helped fuel further expansion of the prison system, and eventual privatization of it, making it a multi-million dollar industry. Of that bill, Clinton was to later admit: "I made a mistake. I signed a bill that made the problem worse."

In 2014 the US prison population was 2,306,200. (Keep in mind that 40% of those incarcerated in prisons across the country are black.) Even though the incarceration rate has leveled off in the past year, 13th points out that if you are a black man, you have a one in three chance of being incarcerated.

As an example of how police can target minorities, before Ferguson became famous, there was an average of 3 warrants per household in the city, which is 67 percent black. An investigation found that most of these warrants were for minor offenses.

13th ends with a visual montage of disturbing images of photos of slaves with scars from whippings and lynchings to civil rights marches. The narrator says "This is what segregation looks like."

The final quote of the documentary comes from Bryan Stevenson, who takes the part of a person who asks: "How could you have tolerated slavery and lynchings? Segregation? If I had been living in a time like that, I would never have tolerated it." Stevenson goes on to make the point, "But the truth is we are living in a time like that, and we are tolerating it."

Throughout the film, DuVernay includes several experts to back up the points her film makes, including Stevenson, Jelani Cobb (Professor of African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Professor of History at Harvard University), John Hagan (Professor of Sociology & Law at Northwestern University), Malkia Cyril (Director of Center for Media Justice) and Charles Rangel (Congressman from New York City).

DuVernay's documentary isn't easy to watch, but it remains engaging and necessary in its straightforward examination of the incarceration system in the US.

Here's the trailer to 13th.





Monday, October 17, 2016

The Real Queen of Katwe


QUEEN OF KATWE is a film about Phiona Mutesi, an unlikely chess prodigy from Katwe (pronounced kah-tway), one of Kampala's (Uganda's) largest slums.

When Phiona was three years old, her father died of HIV/AIDS.

When she was nine Phiona had to drop out of school because her mother could no longer afford to send her, and she was needed to help bring food to the table by selling maize in Katwe's street market.

Around this time, Phiona followed her brother, Brian out of Katwe one day. He was headed to the Sports Outreach Institute, run by Robert Katende, where kids were playing chess.

Tim Cruthers, writing a feature story on Phiona in 2011 for ESPN magazine, reported that in Uganda, chess was "a game so foreign there's no word for it in Luganda, their native language."

"Phiona Mutesi is the ultimate underdog," Cruthers wrote. "To be African is to be an underdog in the world. To be Ugandan is to be an underdog in Africa. To be from Katwe is to be an underdog in Uganda. To be female is to be an underdog in Katwe."

Cruthers described Katwe as being a place with no sewers, human waste flowing freely, helped by torrential rains so powerful that during storm season, people sleep on roofs or in hammocks tied to the ceiling to keep from drowning.

"Chess is a lot like my life," Phiona told Cruthers. "If you make smart moves you can stay away from danger, but you know any bad decision could be your last."

When asked, Phiona couldn't tell Cruthers her birthday because  of the sheer reality of life's harshness there. "Nobody bothers to record such things in Katwe."

"When I first saw chess," Phiona said. "I thought, what could make all these kids so silent? Then I watched them play the game and get happy and excited, and I wanted a chance to be that happy."

QUEEN OF KATWE details Phiona's rise from the day she followed her brother to Sports Outreach Ministry and began playing chess, to her eventual success. She represented Uganda in chess championships in Sudan and then in Russia.

Although QUEEN OF KATWE is a powerful film, there is another story within its story. That being the life of Robert Katende, a born-again Christian who runs the Sports Outreach Ministry. Katende was Phiona's initial chess instructor. (That's Katende with Phiona in the photo to the left.)

Katende knew well the harshness that Phiona was trying to escape because he had experienced it.

According to an article that Tim Cruthers wrote for The Guardian, earlier this year, Katende lived with his grandmother until he was four. Then he was reunited with his mother. That's when he learned his first name was Robert.

Katende's mother died when he was eight and he spent the next 10 years being shuffled among aunts. He also became very good at soccer.

He eventually got a job with Sports Outreach Ministry teaching soccer. But he noticed the kids who couldn't play, watching from the sideline. Katende began teaching these kids chess, playing after soccer matches. These six children formed the original group called The Pioneers.

After two years, Katende had grown the group to 25. That's around the time Phiona followed her brother.

Cruthers notes that Katwe is a place where about 40 percent of teen-aged women have kids. Katende offers an insider's view of it. "I call it a poverty chain. The single mother cannot sustain the house. Her children go to the street and have more kids and they don't have the capacity to care for them. It is a cycle of misery that is almost impossible to break."

Phiona is now 20 years old and she is considering applying to Harvard University.

Meanwhile, Phiona has earned financial security from the book Cruthers has written about her and the recent movie contract (for QUEEN OF KATWE). She has bought her family a home located away from Katwe.

When Cruthers asked Phiona if she'd seen QUEEN OF KATWE, Phiona pointedly replied, "No. I haven't seen it yet. I already know the story,"

Here's the trailer to QUEEN OF KATWE.

QUEEN OF KATWE benefits from a triad of excellent performances that include Madina Nalwanga as Phiona Mutesi, Lupita Nyong'o as Phiona's mother (Nakku Harriet), and David Oyelowo as Robert Katende. Director Mira Nair skillfully weaves in equally good performances of the children playing The Pioneers, as well as Katwe itself - offering remarkable scenes of everyday life there. The film is a Disney Pictures and ESPN Pictures production.



Photo Credits:
top photo: www.theconsciouscommunity.blogspot.com
middle photo taken by Stephanie Sinclair for ESPN
lower photo taken by Muyingo Siraj for The Guardian














Monday, October 10, 2016

5 Take-Aways from the Presidential Debate



Five take-aways from the most recent presidential debate.

1. Who won?

Not the voters, or the American people.

There was too much time spent by the candidates criticizing each other. And not enough time on details of solutions offered (although the democratic candidate actually spent considerably more time on this than the republican).

As one undecided voter mentioned to a New York Times reporter after the debate: "There haven't been enough positives on either side for me to make a firm commitment."


2. Who told the truth?

Not the republican candidate.

Take a look at any of the major newspaper's morning-after fact-checking and you'll get a more detailed scoop. Here's what the New York Times team found.

According to the Times, the republican candidate lied or was grossly misleading in 14 out of 16 allegations - a rate of 87%. The democratic candidate was misleading only twice.

Here's a handy summation of the debate by the New York Times' David Leonhardt, from a liar-liar-pants-on-fire perspective.


3. Who behaved like an adult?

Mostly the democratic candidate.

The republican candidate pranced around the stage and glared a lot. The democratic candidate mostly sat down when not answering questions and refrained from interrupting. Which the republican candidate did repeatedly.

It's quite telling when one candidate can't keep still long enough to actually listen to what anyone is saying, while refusing to take direction (from the moderators) and defaults to insults when feeling intimidated.

The republican candidate made clear indications towards dictator-like behavior. (Telling the democratic candidate that if he had been president, he would have locked her up.) This remark needs to be seen in light of how the same republican candidate says he would handle the media (take away the 1st Amendment right to a free press) and nations (build a wall around them) who disagrees with him.

This behavior trait during the debate is an extension of his stoking anger among supporters by appealing to their fears. And it's a pretty good indication of how the republican nominee would operate if elected.


4. What about the candidates' relationship with their respective parties?

The democratic candidate has the full support of the party that nominated her.

The republican candidate continues to upset and divide his party's leadership. In fact, prior to the debate, there had been wide-spread reports of a movement within the republican party to get the nominee to quit the race so that the vice-presidential nominee could become the party's standard-bearer. This feeling is shared among major party donors as well.

The republican presidential nominee's response was to lash out at any republican that disagreed with him, promising retaliation, going along with point #3.

Which leads a person to wonder: If the republican party's leadership won't vote for its standard-bearer, why should anyone else?



5. Evangelical Christians no longer have a sufficient reason to endorse the republican candidate.

It might be a good thing to note that God isn't a republican, democrat, independent or libertarian and isn't limited by our political system.

That's a really good thing because the republican candidate, by his own admission, has done some very unchristian things. And the compilation of his statements against Muslims, Mexicans, and women are incriminating. So much so that well-know Christian evangelical women, like Beth Moore, Christine Cain and Sara Groves have come out against him.

In Ava DuVernay's new documentary 13TH (referring to the 13th Amendment, that states there shall be no slavery or involuntary servitude "except as punishment for a crime") DuVernay includes footage of the republican candidate talking about "the good old days..." when protesters would be physically assaulted. Trump is heard encouraging his followers to "punch them (protesters) in the mouth." He is also seen declaring, "I am the law and order candidate."

At one point, earlier in the campaign, the republican candidate said: "My voters are extremely loyal... I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters."

That doesn't sound like loyalty as much as willful ignorance.

Here's a transcript of the second presidential debate, with annotations, from the Washington Post.

Photo credit: www.onenewspage.com









Monday, October 3, 2016

Is being frustrated a sin?



Recently I bumped into a friend at the neighborhood library.

She was walking out as I turned the corner to go in, fresh from a walk around a beautiful park that is directly in back of the library.

In response to her asking: "How are you doing?" I answered: "I'm feeling frustrated."

To which she replied, "Oh, no, that's a sin!"

We went on to chat about a number of things, but her response to hearing that I was frustrated got me to thinking.

Is being frustrated really a sin?

According to Merriam-Webster, frustration is "a feeling of anger or annoyance caused by being unable to do something."

The same source says that being angry is "a strong feeling of being upset or annoyed."

After looking up these definitions, the relationship between frustration and anger became readily apparent.

That frustration could lead to anger should be no surprise. (And I need to make it clear I'm talking about frustration experienced when trying to accomplish something positive, for the common good.)

For instance, when I read or hear about social injustice I can get frustrated. Reading Jim Wallis' books, Values Redefined, God is on Our Side, and America's Original Sin made me frustrated, because Wallis clearly points out some snags in our social fabric in America.

At times, I found myself becoming frustrated at the seeming inability of our country to honestly confess our collective sin of racism and move on to healing.

I would submit that, in this example, frustration is an appropriate response.

To take another example, one of the candidates who is running for president has frequently made extremely negative statements about immigrants. This candidate has claimed that undocumented immigrants are "pouring across our borders..." on their way to committing "great amounts of crime."

In response, this candidate has promised to build a wall across the Mexican border to stop the tide of this illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, according to a Bloomberg View editorial,the facts are quite different. Bloomberg cites the Pew Research Center (and several other research organizations), noting "the number of undocumented immigrants in the US peaked in 2007 before dropping sharply - with more undocumented Mexicans, in particular, leaving the US than entering. Net illegal immigration is flat and has been for years."

This same presidential candidate wants to deport some 11 million undocumented immigrants. (Two thirds of them have been in the US for over a decade and four million live with their children who are US citizens.)

The Center for American Progress estimates this action would cost the US $900 billion in lost revenue over a decade, while reducing our gross domestic product by over $4 trillion. This doesn't include the actual cost of deportation.

The bottom line is that illegal immigrants aren't 'pouring across our borders' and we don't need to build a wall (that could conservatively cost billions of dollars) to stop a floodtide that isn't happening.

When I hear such blatant misinformation being recklessly used to stir up misguided dissent, it makes me frustrated. When I think of the human and fiscal cost of following this ill-conceived plan it makes me frustrated that more people don't see it for the racism that it is.

So, what's the proper response?

The Bible says it's ok to be angry. But it also advises us not to sin. (Psalm 4.4).

Paul, writing to the Ephesians says "Therefore, put away lying. `Let each one of you speak truth with your neighbor,' for we are members of one another." (Ephesians 4.25).

Paul is referencing Zechariah 8.16 here, making the point that we should speak the truth to each other because we're part of the same spiritual family.

There's a connection then between being frustrated and using that frustration to correct a wrong. That's what fuels social progress.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Sylvia Pankhurst, Gandi, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mother Teresa and many others saw injustice and responded with frustration and were motivated to do something positive about it. Jesus also became frustrated at times even as he encouraged his followers to join him in learning to love each other.

The key seems to be found in 'not sinning' while engaging in the work of identifying and advocating for social change. Recognizing that frustration, when properly used, can lead to creative solutions that benefit all of us.

As always, I invite your comments below!

Photo Credit: www.viconsortium.com










Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Pinocchio: Art Credit, Disney If ever there were a time for a national "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" award, it's now. And certai...