Andy made be gone, but his writing lives on. Here’s an archive of Andy’s blogs that he posted on the old website. They were either announcements for upcoming TruthToTell episodes or comments on past shows.
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Susan Eisenberg: WOMEN RUN WORK
Ed. Note: Poet and Author Susan Eisenberg appeared on TruthToTell in February talking about Women in Construction. Her “On Equal Terms” exhibit and talks continue that work.
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As a kid I loved teeter totters –– the playful shift of ups and downs. There’s a rhythm, laughter. Even the meanest tricks on them were pretty harmless. As a grown-up, I can appreciate the hands-on learning. The math and physics kids figure out instinctively: the heavier person moves in so the two are balanced.
Talking about the history and experiences of tradeswomen has the same challenge: finding the balance of delight and routine and terror that feels fair and accurate. My eyes tend to roll backwards when the conversation is limited to successful pilot projects, but not whether they were replicated. Or how many women graduated pre-apprenticeship training, but not whether they were placed in apprenticeships — and fairly trained and graduated to journeylevel careers. Obviously with women only 2.3% of the construction workforce there’s a lot that requires concerned attention and activism.
But the goal is, of course, the satisfaction of skilled work and successful careers being available without discrimination. It’s important to celebrate the experiences that help us see that possibility. So, with the On Equal Terms installation going to New York City this fall (September 22 – October 20, 2013 at the Clemente on Manhattan’s Lower East Side!), I’m adding a new element–– Women Run Work –– to the always-shifting exhibit.
I figure that a lot must have gone right when we see a woman lead the work on a jobsite. She’s being trusted to manage a crew and manage business. Someone believes that she will get the job done right and on budget — enough to take a risk on that. I figure there were people earlier in her career who saw to it that she was well-trained, and mentored her. And maybe a good union rep or lawyer who advocated to make sure she wasn’t unfairly passed over . . . maybe a supervisor or owner who recognized talent . . . or??? Probably different for each woman. But when a woman runs work, it likely represents a lot that’s worth celebrating.
The first responses have been heartening. I found out that high voltage electrician Wanda Davis supervises “two of the hydroelectric generation projects that produce power for Seattle” — how cool is that!!! And I’ve been interested to learn who women credit for their chance.
If you’ve run work, or know a tradeswoman who has, please fill out this form and send it in. I’ll include it in On Equal Terms. I’ll also be adding a Women Run Work page to the blog (as balance to We Remember).
I’d be glad to hear any comments on this. I know some women have told me, No one ever asked me to be foreman. Or, explained why they turned down the offer, when they were asked. And, like Diane Maurer explains in We’ll Call You If We Need You, a woman successfully running a job doesn’t always carry the same benefits as for a man. I’m curious about all that, too. But let’s also celebrate that Women Run Work.
ORIGINAL BLOG POST: Women Run Work! ©2013 Susan Eisenberg
About Susan:
SUSAN EISENBERG
I’m a poet, multi-disciplinary artist and educator. I like to re-imagine the everyday, playing with scale and juxtaposition to investigate issues of power and social policy. I’m drawn to documentary material and found objects; and to the arts as tools for sense-making.
Whatever the content area, I find myself curious about why silence and lies so often seem easier (and safer) than truth. And why it’s so hard not to have some group be the other whom it’s okay to shortchange. Poetry Reading, Lansing, MI, February 1, 2012
Andy’s Blog: Ditch the Electoral College and the Red/Blue Divide!
A well-traveled email came through my computer today pretending to tout the secession of “blue” states from “red” given the propensity of those regions to elect one sort of presidential candidate over another. If the numbers this tidbit cites about which values reside in which states, it would be truly interesting. This stab at nose-thumbing the opposition (red) has been adapted to this last election, substituting a few recent victories, but, it’s the same general pattern as circulated at least four years ago. A little humor, perhaps. The figures are interesting.
Tolerant it’s not, but a real examination of all the states, like 2000, 2004, 2008 and the other night, shows once again that only our Electoral College could yield such a black-white, red-blue divide. In fact, all states are purple to one degree or another, and the margin of victory by either candidate so narrow as to make the Electoral College a joke in terms of how truly reflective it is of political suasion in a winner-take-all system. For one thing, a college should enlighten. This one merely confuses.
Check out some of the “red” states. The margin of popular victory in West Virginia alone was Romney 50.4, Obama 49.5. The state goes red. Never mind the nuance. This happens over and over, despite some states having much wider margins but where counties still went for the other guy. The states themselves are divided by counties with narrow margins.
The Electoral College is an archaic practice with no real relevance anymore, if it ever had any, in an era of technological and demographic reality. It provides none of the balance it was designed to because it disproportionately skews far too much power per capita to low-population states to be fair to the nation’s more populous regions – where needs are amplified by their numbers. Political influence should be proportionate to the need. It redistributes presidential campaigning to places that may need some attention, but certainly not the overwhelming resources poured into them at the expense of so many others who rarely, if ever, get a chance to view and hear the candidates.
Worst of all is the graphic divide imposed by the media-designed red-blue designation a decade or two past now dictating our descriptions of every state’s leanings – not the raw reality. The red/blue blocs are an utterly inaccurate rendering of each state’s own uneven mix of party preferences when the vote is broken down into sub-regions – usually counties. But, it’s all too convenient for us in the media to describe each state as either red or blue. Until we rid ourselves of this unity-destructive device for electing presidents and designating party preferences, we will do little more than reinforce those divisions we claim to abhor.
The Electoral College must go – and quickly, starting now. It does no good to wait another four years to lodge these same complaints over the results of a recent presidential election. The bill should go forward as soon as the next Congress assembles.
Third Parties are NOT Spoilers, They’re Essential to Democracy
For twelve years Democrats have been residing in delusion over the 2000 Presidential Election, needing desperately to place blame for Al Gore’s “defeat” and Bush’s elevation to White House. Instead of placing responsibility where it belongs, too many Democrats found their easy scapegoat in Ralph Nader and his third-party – Green Party – candidacy and the 10,000 votes he assembled in Florida.
The answer to this self-deception should be obvious, but as we approach the threshold of yet another hand-wringing presidential election and the specter of third-party candidacies loom large against the backdrop of yet another tight election, it is important to re-visit 2000 in light of the failure of our Constitutional presidency and the nondemocratic Electoral College’s power to thwart the public will.
Nader did NOT deliver the presidency to Bush in the 2000 Election.
The US Supreme Court delivered the presidency to Bush by a 5-4 vote.
First of all, those voting for Nader would have stayed home instead of voting for Gore, so the vote totals did not reflect a shift from Dem to Green. In fact, all the votes in Florida never were counted; had they been, Gore would have won the Electoral College – just as he did the popular vote. Never in the history of the US has a Presidential election been so manipulated to thwart the will of the majority. Nader’s candidacy brought a higher turnout in states where he was on the ballot. 10,000 Florida votes was not enough to adversely affect the election either way when millions were thrown out or ignored by Republican officeholders in Florida – and the US Supreme Court thumbed its nose at the Florida Supreme Court, which had ordered a complete recount of the presidential ballots. Again, Nader had nothing to do with any of it. Democrats must stop rewriting history by insisting that Nader threw the election W. by his entry in the race and by his garnering 10,000 votes of otherwise disenchanted Democrats.
One other issue regarding third-party candidates: There is no law against third or multiple parties – and there shouldn’t be. Multiple parties are far more reflective of the range of public opinion than any two parties ever could be.
Fact is, the US Constitutional presidency was the major mistake the founders made in constructing our form of government, not creating the far more effective parliamentary system that more successfully governs other democracies.
Parliamentary systems are far better in forcing reconciliation and collaboration between parties of nuanced orientation, is far more accountable by allowing elections to be more frequent if confidence in the current government flags and it forces the lower legislative house majority or coalition to govern the country as well as passing the laws.
One of the worst constructs in governance ever has been the severe separation of powers in governing and the curtailing of multiple parties by shunning “minor” parties and forcing two-party governance between which the lines have blurred over the last 200 years.
Andy’s Blog: The USA Is Its Own Third Reich
Item: The CIA and the Pentagon are carrying out a chilling and illegal “targeted killing” program in which people far from any battlefield are determined to be enemies of the state and killed without charge or trial — and the program is expanding rapidly.
The ACLU has sued top CIA and Pentagon decision-makers to seek accountability for the unlawful killings of three U.S. citizens in Yemen last year. We’ll keep fighting in court for as long as it takes. But you can help end illegal targeted killings now.
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So. How different can this possibly be from the murders and disappearances committed by the German Gestapo, the Israeli Mossad, the East German Stasi or the Russian Secret Police and all other similarly wrought internal secret killers who legally – or illegally, as in our case – prey upon their own citizens with such impunity.
UNDERSTAND THIS: The USA is under no security threat big enough to warrant the targeted killings of American citizens now under way by our CIA and Pentagon death squads. It’s of no consequence that this country may have been attacked by a foreign terror force resulting in 3,000 deaths if what we do in return is 1) murder a million Iraqis, 2) kills thousands of innocent women and children as collateral damage in targeting Taliban or insurgent fighters in other countries, and 3) hunt down right here on US soil and murder any of our US Sisters and brothers unless PROVEN INNOCENT in direct contravention of our way of justice.
These agencies have been granted far too many powers in overreaction to 9-11 – and you’d better believe the internal and external mercenaries – local police included – love this freedom to kill. They love it. They’re in the streets and quiet corners of the country and elsewhere playing God as if granted the divine right to execute on the spot. We must remove this right and clamp down on internal security forces just as the Free French or American revolutionaries or the Italian, Spanish and German undergrounds did in previous wars.
We citizens are at war with our own government, make no mistake. And this includes this president and his Defense Department, and his CIA, and his FBI and his military intelligence apparatus. This is the power that intoxicates, the power to kill, especially to kill with no consequences.
How sad can it be that we must write these things down and urge resistance in the strongest of terms? But we must.
We must.
Andy Driscoll’s Script-As-Blog
Script-As-Blog
Andy Driscoll – April 30, 2012
Now that the so-called Human Services Omnibus bill has passed with some devastating cuts first proposed, then restored, thanks to lobbying and demonstrations – and, perhaps a very dicey election year looming and a clear threat of yet another Dayton veto of a radical GOP bill – some of the disasters in waiting have at least been put off until and if the GOP retains its surprising majorities in next year’s session.
The baffling thing about poverty, like other societal maladies, is that, despite the dry, old statistics showing incredible increases in poverty, the decline in median incomes, the rise in homelessness and the decline in public assistance, the increase in foreclosures and the plunge in property values – the gap widens – and the people in power really don’t seem to give a damn.
What is it going to take short of a complete collapse of our economic infrastructure? Some say it’s already arrived; we’re just hanging on. Are we? For all the hope we keep wanting to generate, is there room for it? How long, if ever, before middle-class suburbanites take up arms against The Man and find themselves in the same place as the poor and people of color have been for decades – on the business end of a police officer’s 9mm Glock or Billy-club, a pepper-spray can or tear-gas canister for their trouble?
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps that will be the only time a march on the banks and politicians will yield some results and policies will change and wealth will be shared.
But, leave us not hold our breath.
Average citizens/residents are feeling the pinch created by people and institutions who literally could care less – because they seem to have no depths to their lack of caring.
Poverty is NOT one of those conditions that will get better by the pulling up of bootstraps. Poverty is a societal disease that needs a major injection and infusion of capital – real capital – money and other resources. Anything else is a punishment inflicted on people who have less than the people making the decisions and who spend much of their legislative or administrative time and capital denying others their fair share of a pie they keep shrinking.
How bad is it? Some statistics to chew on, thanks to several sources:
Nationwide, 46.2 million people were in poverty in 2010. While the poverty rate sits at 15.1 percent, Minnesota ranks 13th lowest in the nation in numbers of those living below the poverty line ($11,344 for an individual or $22,113 household income for a family of four), but the state’s numbers have increased significantly from 2007-2008. The poverty rate then was 9.6 percent. BUT…in 2009-2010, 560,000 Minnesotans lived in poverty, or roughly one out of ten state residents. That represents a 2.1 percentage point increase from 2006-07.
Even more staggering, says the Minnesota Budget Project, the preliminary numbers show that over the last decade, Minnesota’s median household income fell from $65,120 in 1999-2000 to $54,785 in 2009-2010, or by more than $10,000, after adjusting for inflation. Only Michigan experienced a larger decline in median income during the same period. And things aren’t much better out in our rural communities. The economy remains stagnant in all sectors of the state, even though our economy remains more diversified than most states. We simply don’t rely on a single corporation or a single industry, like the Detroit auto economy, for instance.
Today, we try and catch up on the status of poverty and its fallout in Minnesota as the Legislature winds down its work and Minnesotans have a chance to assess the needs of the next decade while statistics continue to rise giving the lie to promises of imminent prosperity – homelessness, especially among families and children and veterans home from the wards; free and reduced lunches among increasing numbers of kids in our schools; unemployment checks coming to an end after too many months seeking jobs and failing. And on and on.
Advocates spend their lives with and lobbying for families, children, homeless Minnesotans and those who need a huge variety of services and take their cases to the halls of the Capitol every session, only to find themselves in the same battles with dispassionate lawmakers year after year, sometimes even when things ought to be better.