Crashing the Gate:Remembering how the Dems matter

This is a good book. For those of us who hang around liberal political blogs like MyDD and DailyKos, a lot of what Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga have to say may seem old news. Yeah, we know that Republicans are smart, determined, fully funded, unscrupulous, corrupt liars who manipulate fundamentalist suckers to gain power, that the bought-off and bought-up mainstream media let them get away with it, that the Democratic Party is in thrall to loser political consultants and Beltway bubble-dwellers. ...Yadayadayada. ... Nothing new to see here. But, of course, there are lots of folks for whom this diagnosis of our political woes, cogently explained, is news. So hooray for Jerome and Markos.

What Crashing the Gate did for me was not so much teach me anything new as remind me of things I've learned in long years of activism. A few follow.

Ordinary politics, power politics, and ideological politics
Ordinary Politics is an unpleasant necessity that many citizens will only stick a toe into in the hope that this will enable them to go back to the real business of living -- family, love and leisure -- enjoying a modicum of peace and security. Ordinary Politics people think those of us who live and breathe activism are nuts, irritating nuts. They are at least 85 percent of everyone in a stable society. It takes something close to disaster to get them engaged; George W. Bush's regime might just do that.

Then there are power politics people. Power politics people love the mechanics of getting and holding power. These days, Karl Rove is the prototypical power politics guy, but a decade ago the guy was Dick Morris or James Carville. Lots of us on the blogs are power politics people. We want to rebuild a Democratic Party and we get our rocks off sticking it to the other side. We enjoy jostling for position in party committees and campaign organizations. Jerome and Markos seem to me to be representative of a new generation of power politics people whose mission at this time is to replace previous generations of Democratic movers and shakers. Goodness knows, it's time for Bob Shrum et al. to go -- give'em a good kick guys. Power politics folks are probably 5-7 percent of everyone, rare birds indeed.

Just as rare, also maybe 5-7 percent of everybody, are ideological politics people. These folks want power, but unlike the power politics people, they focus on what that power is for, often to the detriment of being smart about how to get it. Ideological politics people give the Dems their values. They are the conscience of the party, demanding that it stand for economic, racial and gender equity, that its policies contribute to building international law and planetary sustainability.

To the power politics people, the ideological politics people are often a damn nuisance. Jerome and Markos take this line, labeling them obstructive "special interests." This is over doing it, repeating a staple of right wing spin (something these authors are quick to criticize when others do it.) Women and working people are not "special interests"; along with (and as members of) the racial minority communities, they are the Democratic Party. Some of the policy positions that the institutions of the women's movement and the labor movement elaborated back when Democrats were the party of government may need some reframing to suit current (abysmal) social conditions. But without the progressive ideological orientation brought by the ideological types, there is no good reason for most people to put any energy into the hard struggle to win power from the Republicans. The ideological politics people don't give a damn about the Democratic Party as such, they just want their policy aims enacted. If Democrats aren't there for them, they go home or wander off and become Greens.

(For a cautionary tale of what happens when the power politics people completely remake a formerly progressive party solely to create a vehicle to win and hold power, have a look at Tony Blair and New Labour over in Britain. Sure they keep winning Parliamentary majorities, but to what end? To do away with democracy, civil liberties and the social safety net? To act the part of Bush' poodle? Try reading "Hollowing out of the Labour Party" to get a taste of this.)

Obviously, my sympathies are with the ideological politics folks, though since I actually work in campaigns, I can think of many moments when I wanted wring the necks of my more purist comrades. No, I don't think taking out the recycling is as important as getting the phone bank started. Real world politics is a messy business.

A Democrat by default only
Above all, Crashing the Gate reminded me that I am only a Democrat by necessity. One of the surreal by-products of out current proto-fascist situation is that all oppositionists have had to hang together, the potential cost of wandering apart looking too great to risk. In 2004 we even had antiwar activists working to elect Kerry, while Kerry was prescribing "more troops to Iraq." In the midst of such insanity, it is all too easy to start thinking that the Democratic Party is a real entity to which one has a real allegiance. But that's simply not the case for most of the political actors I just described. The power politics people will usually hold the reins of a big tent outfit like the Dems. But what they value is the reins, not the party itself. The rest of us have other interests.

That's not a bad thing, just a reality. In our current political straits we have no choice but to try to rebuild the Democratic Party as vehicle for change. It is an odd vocation for about 87 percent of us, but there it is. Thanks to CTG for some useful ideas on how to get it done.

They want to go to college

Recently I spend a couple of pleasant hours reading entries in the Save Me a Spot in College contest organized by the Campaign for College Opportunity.

The Campaign, run by my friend Abdi Soltani, wants the public to know that higher education is in trouble. It aims to get the state to recognize that the goal, adopted in the 1960 California Master Plan for Education, of providing a path to college for every qualified student is about to crash off a cliff. Unless something is done, over the next decade 1.8 million young people will be turned away by the state's overburdened higher education system. One million three hundred thousand of those potential students will be locked out of the community colleges that were supposed to accommodate all high school graduates. Already the situation is pretty dire: even if a kid can make or raise the money to pay for tuition, books and fees, she may not be able to get into the classes she needs or even have a chance to meet with an over-booked counselor for help in navigating the maze.

The Campaign seeks to encourage efficiency at the colleges, but, as importantly, asks the legislature for a predictable, reliable funding stream, and the schools for predictable tuition schedules. They trust young people will find a way, but only if given a clear path.

The contest offered students in grades 6-12 a chance to win scholarship money by answering the question, "why should California leaders save you and your peers a spot in college?" Entries could take the form of written work, posters or TV ads. The response was overwhelming: the Campaign received 6000 written entries.

Somebody had to read all these papers -- that's where a cadre of readers, including me, came in. Every entry got at least one full reading. I'm sure the winners will get multiple passes by different readers.

My batch of 50 was fascinating: these kids all believe firmly that college is the way out of poverty and very unpleasant employment, if any. Their picture of the bad job awaiting the chump who doesn't go to college is "flipping burgers." Many speak of wanting to make their parents, often immigrants who didn't have a chance at college, proud of them. They also want not to have to work as hard as their parents -- college is a way to escape the deadening round of multiple, minimum wage jobs that they see the adults in their families working.

Their interest in college seems to be entirely vocational -- only one of the 50 suggested that college would be "fun" and only one suggested that by going to college he'd be able to give more to the state as a citizen. Perhaps my batch was skewed; it seemed to me that a majority of their career plans seemed to be in medical or health related fields. Three wanted to be veterinarians. Three others, one a girl, hoped that college would enable them to become professional soccer players. Apparently we are not raising linebackers and shortstops these days.

Let's hope we adults can give them the opportunities they want so much.

Odds and ends: alternative possibilities

Grandmothers Against the War carry their message to the Oakland federal building, April 17

Despite wars and rumors of wars, all is not lost. This post touches on a few hints at saner potential futures, in the spirit of the little local demonstration pictured above.

• The forced pregnancy forces may have over-reached by passing their abortion ban in South Dakota. In addition to facing a referendum there, the strong negative popular reaction has legislators elsewhere trying to duck the issue. Talk to Action has a round up.

• I'm always interested in juries. I've seen serving on them bring out good stuff in quite ordinary people. A recent study suggests that jurors deliberate more carefully and thoughtfully when the panel contains persons of different races.

  "I think the traditional perception about diversity is that [it] is going to be a good thing because African Americans will bring something novel to the table," said Sam Sommers, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Tufts University and the study's author. Although that's true, he said, "a lot of the results of this study come from white jurors acting differently when they were in diverse groups."
  
  In short, Sommers said, diversity appears to help members of a group think more deeply and clearly.
  
  "I think the argument could be made that in a homogeneous group, where everyone is like us, it's easy to be a little lazier, and take those cognitive shortcuts," he said. "Diversity seems to be one potential way to shake us out of that, and to attend more carefully to our surroundings."

  How's that for a quick way to make people smarter? Stick 'em in with people of other races. I wish the study had also examined how juries with more than two races worked, but hey, not everywhere can yet enjoy the demographic mix we do here on the Left Coast. California, and all the other increasingly diverse states, can be expected to thrive.

• Some may find this obvious, but I hadn't thought of it: Lester R. Brown proposes that, instead of taxing income, we should be taxing environmentally destructive activities, like burning coal and, yes, driving cars. As it stands, we have a very poor understanding of what our current lifestyle actually costs society. If the social cost of smoking were included in the price of cigarettes, a pack would run $7.18. A gallon of gas, taxed so as to cover the social cost of burning it, would run $11. On the other hand, our income taxes would drop dramatically as social burdens would be paid for at the point of consumption. I know -- driving addicts would never stand for it. But opponents should think about this:

  Accounting systems that do not tell the truth can be costly. Faulty corporate accounting systems that leave costs off the books have driven some of the world's largest corporations into bankruptcy. The risk with our faulty global economic accounting system is that it so distorts the economy that it could one day lead to economic decline and collapse.
  
  If we can get the market to tell the truth, then the world can avoid being blindsided by faulty accounting systems that lead to bankruptcy. As Oystein Dahle, former Vice President of Exxon for Norway and the North Sea, has pointed out: "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth."

  Something to think about.

• Meanwhile, our idiot President may be considering nuking Iran's idiot president (and a lot of other people) thereby plunging us all into WWIII, but it is nice to read something moderately sensible about Iranian nuclear plans coming from an Israeli source, Zvi Bar'el in Ha'aretz. According to Bar'el, after a life spent trying to prevent proliferation of nukes, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has concluded it can't be done. Apparently he has concluded that

  nearly any country, of any size, that wants to be a nuclear power can become one.
  
  [ElBaradei proposes] to create a bank of fissionable material that can be internationally monitored and from which "worthy" countries can withdraw what they need for peaceful purposes. ... ElBaradei's proposal is, in effect, "anti-sanctions," and an attempt to encourage cooperation instead of threats. One can almost imagine the finger at the temple, turning in the internationally recognizable sign for a crazy idea. After all, how can one offer Iran "positive incentives" after it has already fired the opening shot in the nuclear arms race, and particularly while it is headed by a "zealous," "illogical," leader who might be crazy and uncontrolled?
  
  The answer to this is simple: The United States has already begun negotiating with Iran about Iraq.... it is not semantic logic that will decide, but rather the understanding that there is nobody right now who can attack Iran, and provide reasonable solutions to the dilemmas that such an attack would awaken.

  I'm not at all sure ANY country ought to be trying to manage "peaceful" fissionable material, but the world does need a way out of the trap its mad men are leaving us into.

Neil Lewis mentions the unmentionable

From the New York Times today:

As the jury considered whether Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to be charged in an American courtroom with the Sept. 11 plot, was involved in it enough to serve as a proxy for the 19 hijackers who died that day, no one mentioned an obvious issue. What about the involvement of those who gave testimony about the plot who are in American custody? Why aren't they on trial?

The answer, not shared with the jury, is that those Qaeda officials, who include another financier and the man who was supposed to be the 20th hijacker, are being held overseas in the Central Intelligence Agency's secret prison system and have been subjected to interrogation techniques that would make it difficult to bring them to trial.

How are "we" any different from "they," if our "legal" rituals permit torture and unverified "evidence"? Not that different, just slower, more punctilious, at least in public.

Earthquake story: Dorothy Day recalled "a great noise that became louder and louder"

Dorothy Day with her daughter, circa 1932. From the Dorothy Day-Catholic Worker Collection at Marquette University .
Dorothy Day (1897-1980), along with Peter Maurin, founded the Catholic Worker movement in 1933. As Laurence Downes recently summarized the tenets of this enduring human experiment in the New York Times:

Members still dedicate themselves to voluntary poverty, nonviolence and hard work. They make soup, give away coats, visit prisoners and the sick, protest against war and publish a newspaper that sells, as it did in the 1930's, for a penny.

Before converting to Catholicism, Dorothy was a journalist and something of a leftist, campaigning against U.S. participation in the great "capitalist war," (World War I) and for women's votes. Her subsequent writings in books and the Catholic Worker newspaper had as a primary aim, always, to share the delight and freedom she found in her encounter with the Christ; what made her such an engaging writer and thinker was that her evangelism was always embodied in vivid descriptions of mundane practicalities.

Dorothy was also the only person I knew well who lived through the 1906 earthquake, in her case as an eight year old in Oakland. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the quake, it seems right to share her story. This autobiographical account appears in The Long Loneliness, still in print and available.

We did not search for God when we were children. We took Him for granted....

[As a young child,] as soon as I closed my eyes at night the blackness of death surrounded me, I believed and yet was afraid of nothingness. What would it be like to sink into that immensity? If I fell asleep God became in my ears a great noise that became louder and louder, and approached nearer and nearer to me until I woke up sweating with fear and shrieking for my mother. ...

Even as I write this, I am wondering if I had these nightmares before the San Francisco earthquake or afterward. The very remembrance of the noise which kept getting louder and louder, and the keen fear of death, makes me think now that it might have been due to the earthquake. And yet we left Oakland almost at once afterward, since my father's newspaper job was gone when the plant went up in flames...I remember these dreams only in connection with California....

Another thing I remember about California was the joy of doing good, of sharing whatever we had with others after the earthquake, an event that threw us out of our complacent happiness into a world of catastrophe.

It happened early in the morning and it lasted two minutes and twenty seconds, as I heard everyone say afterward. My father was a sports editor of one of the San Francisco papers. There was a racetrack near our bungalow and stables where my father kept a horse. He said that the night before had been a sultry one and the horses were restless, neighing and stamping in their stalls, becoming increasingly nervous and panicky.

The earthquake started with a deep rumbling and the convulsions of the earth started afterward, so that the earth became a sea that rocked our house in a most tumultuous manner. There was a large windmill and water tank in back of the house and I can remember the splashing of the water from the tank on the top of the roof.

My father took my brothers from their beds and rushed to the front door, where my mother stood with my sister, whom she had snatched from beside me. I was left in a big brass bed, which rolled back and forth on a polished floor. ...

When the earth settled, the house was a shambles, dishes broken all over the floor, books out of their bookcases, chandeliers down, chimneys fallen, the house cracked from the roof to ground. But there was no fire in Oakland. The flames and cloudbank of smoke could be seen across the bay and all the next day the refugees poured over by ferry and boat. Idora Park and the racetrack made camping grounds for them. All the neighbors joined my mother in serving the homeless. Every stitch of available clothes was given away.

All the day following the disaster there were more tremblings of the earth and there was fear in the air. ...As soon as possible we pulled out for the East.

Dorothy's account of the terror of that shaker does unsettle my complacent expectation that the earth will always sit solidly, doing its job of holding the city upright. One day it may not, but there is no knowing when. I find I can't hold the thought. I'm glad I don't have a professional responsibility for trying to get people to prepare for the unimaginable.

Stations of the Cross From the Castro to the Mission

Many Christians mark Good Friday, the commemoration of the crucifixion of Jesus, by meditating and praying over the events of his last day alive, a ritual referred to as "the stations of the cross." Members of Most Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic Church, St. Francis Lutheran Church, and the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist joined in a "stations" walk yesterday from San Francisco's very gay Castro district to the heavily Latino Mission district. They stopped to pray and give thanks in front of a series of community serving institutions and monuments. It was an interesting walk between cultures.


Across the street from Most Holy Redeemer, Coming Home Hospice opened in 1987 to serve the casualties of the AIDS epidemic when HIV infection was still very much a "gay disease." Though today drug treatments keep many AIDS patients alive longer, the facility still is deeply embedded in the gay community.


The next stop was outside the office of the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center (LYRIC) where we got a salutary reality check. No one had alerted LYRIC that the Christians were coming! Staff emerged nervously, wondering if they were confronting fundamentalist exorcists. Not exactly, in this very gay Christian crowd. Nonetheless, the nervous smiles of the LYRIC staff should not have been a surprise to us, as we LGBT folks do still sometimes have to bear being treated as agents of pollution.

After a few more, cautious, stops in the Castro, we walked downhill into the Mission. Fr. John Kirkley of St. Johns remarked: "now we'll get to where people don't think we have horns."

He was right. I alerted the bored security person, a young Latino guy, at the Women's Building that we would be out front. He didn't bat an eye; processing Christians were fine with him. There was a time when our reception might not have been so casual. In the 1980s, someone threatened by the founding of a women's building bombed the front entrance.


Soon we worked our way down Valencia Street, past the Mission police station, Centro Del Pueblo, and the new Valencia Gardens housing project, finishing at St. Johns. Here, a Good Friday procession might look odd to the young Anglo migrants who flock to the cheap housing. But to the homeless, we were just some plausible potential marks to panhandle. And to local Latinos steeped in the observances of Semana Santa, we were simply an appropriate sign of spring.

Aliens on the land

We asked the young man carrying the cross at the immigrant march last Monday who the person named on it was. He explained softly: "Marco Antonio Villaseñor died crossing the desert."

Although no one really knows for sure, the LA Times reports that the toll of persons dying out there keeps rising. Militarization of the border does not stem the flow of people, but it does increase the human and monetary cost to migrants.

The cost of a coyote, or human smuggler, to bring people into the U.S. has risen from $143 in 1993 to more than $2,000 today. Deaths during crossings soared to a record 460 last year.

Meanwhile, the number of Mexican-born residents living in the U.S. jumped sharply after the border buildup began, census data show.

Felix Lopez's experience shows why. The Phoenix construction worker easily entered the United States illegally in 1995, and didn't go back to Mexico until his mother died last year. After a harrowing three-day crossing through the Arizona desert — during which he said he heard voices of people who had died on earlier treks — he vowed never to return to Mexico. "I'm not doing it again," Lopez said of the journey.

And so militarization accomplishes the contradictory result of forcing persons who might go back to Mexico to stay in the U.S.

In Tucson, the religious and humanitarian campaign No More Deaths is concluding a 40 day Lenten and Passover fast for justice "in remembrance of the lives claimed along our border and in protest of the policies that cause these deaths."

Two No More Deaths volunteers, Daniel Strauss and Shanti Sellz, are being prosecuted by the U.S. Border Patrol for medically evacuating 3 people in critical condition from the 105-degree Arizona desert in July 2005.
***
During this Holy Week, I am reading The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, a day by day account of Jesus' final days. It is a wonderful book -- a reminder of how radically subversive Jesus' good news is for us, and for all principalities and powers.

But in today's context, the authors' reference to a Hebrew bible text jumped out at me. In Leviticus 25:23, God says:

...for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.

How dare we who merely have short term tenancy on some of the land deny it to others who are also aliens along with us?

Family seder

A commenter at Street Prophets observed that the Passover seder is a ritual of "freedom, family, and food." That seems a good concise description of this celebration of the journey from slavery to liberation.

Last night I once again had the privilege of attending a seder with much of my lesbian family. We're a pretty mixed bag in some ways -- and in other ways not mixed at all. We're all white, middle aged, economically comfortable. Though a majority are Jewish, only a bare majority grew up with much religious practice in their homes. Several of us are Christians, but we too are family.

Our opening song, sung to the tune of "Take me out to the ballgame," sets a rollicking tone.

Take me out to the Seder
Take me out with the crowd.
Feed me on matzah and chicken legs,
I don't care for the hard-boiled eggs....
And lets, root, root, root for the leader
That [s]he will finish [her] spiel
So we can nosh, nosh, nosh and by-gosh
Let's eat the meal!!!

But the seder is also a serious matter. Some of our members are among the brave women who have worked long and hard to move an appreciation of women's full equality into more mainstream Jewish practice. They are comfortable mixing old and new. The new rituals are there, including an orange placed on the seder plate and setting out Miriam's cup as well as Elijah's.

The elements of the tradition are also there: the lighting of the candles, the Hebrew blessings of the symbolic foods and drink, the retelling of the Exodus story: how God, through Moses, led the Hebrews out of Egypt and out of slavery. This group of women knows we've experienced more liberation ourselves than we once imagined possible -- and we try to remember that the struggle for freedom is never altogether won. The Haggadah reminds us:

Of the generation who left Egypt, only two of them lived to enter the land of Israel. The process of liberation takes time -- we are still working on it.

Not only was it necessary to take the Jews out of Egypt; it was also necessary to take Egypt out of the Jews.

Rabbi Hanoch of Alexandria said:
The real exile of Israel in Egypt was that they learned to endure it.

We are conscious of the many who still languish in various forms of bondage, this week especially immigrant workers in our land. For many of us, the most poignant moment of this ritual is when we remember the women, family, friends and mentors, who have come before us.

And then to food and drink; this crowd is amicably split between California red wine imbibers, Manischewitz traditionalists, and grape juice fanciers.

Good riddance

Sign at immigration march, April 10, 2006

In all the excitement about the immigrant marches in the U.S. cities this week, there has often been no clear statement of what was wrong with the "reform" legislation that died in the Senate last Friday. The House bill, HR4437, is clearly a punitive nativist wet dream, criminalizing all the undocumented and even those who assist them. But the Senate bill was a more complicated animal.

Harold Meyerson describes the Senate effort succinctly in the Washington Post:

Indeed, the deterioration last week of the workable and balanced bill that emerged from the Senate Judiciary Committee was so rapid that it left the immigrant, business and labor groups that had supported the committee's bill confused and divided over how to proceed. Where the committee's bill had established a clear path to legalization for America's undocumented, the bill that was coming to a vote on the floor was unworkable and nearly incomprehensible. Illegal immigrants here for more than five years could stay and become citizens; those in the States for between two and five years would have to return to a designated border checkpoint to be recertified and readmitted by the Citizenship and Immigration Services; those here for less than two years would have to go.

For this system to work, immigrants would have to produce employment records from employers many of whom hired them partly to avoid having to keep employment records. They would have to produce utility bills for apartments they shared with a dozen co-workers. And the CIS would have to perform at a level of efficiency it has never even contemplated. In the end, millions of immigrants now underground would remain underground....

If these guys had written the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they would have tried to preserve segregation.

That is, the bill was becoming a recipe for going from bad to worse, creating incomprehensible and unenforceable multiple tiers of "legality," and very likely leading to more intimidation and exploitation of workers. It deserved to die and let's hope Ted Kennedy does not help resurrect some terrible "compromise."

Commonalities

On the march for immigrant rights and dignity, April 10, 2006

"A community that had essentially been trying to remain invisible suddenly concluded that their invisibility was only making them more vulnerable."

Frank Sharry
Executive director of the National Immigration Forum, April 8, 2006

***

"We have Arab men disappearing from the neighborhoods of Brooklyn. No one hears from them. No one hears about them. They're arrested and they disappear. Is it secret evidence? Whose secret is this? Why? What's going on? We'd like to know."

Samia Halaby
from Al-Awda (Palestinian Right to Return Coalition), 2001

***
"Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches. Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you've lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn't happening to them. They're walking the streets as though we weren't living through some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the screams of the people who are dying and their cries for help. No one else seems to be noticing."

Vito Russo
ACT-UP co-founder, 1988

***
"It was a theme repeated often by marchers and speakers at the afternoon parade and rally, which capped weeks of dialogue and vehement opposition to the march.

Parade organizers estimated the crowd at about 10,000, although others said that the crowd looked significantly smaller. About 25 protesters showed up at the end of the parade route, still in their Sunday church clothes. As they chanted 'Repent' and waved Bibles high in the air, the marchers chanted back:

'We're here. We're queer. Get used to it.'"

Winston Salem Journal, 1996

***
"A boisterous, mostly Hispanic crowd of almost 400 added Mount Vernon to the list of cities nationwide where people rallied Monday against proposed immigration reforms.

'Aqui estamos y no nos vamos!' the crowd chanted in Spanish at passing traffic on the corner of Kincaid and S. Third streets, in front of the Skagit County administrative campus.

Translated, it means, 'Here we are, and we're not leaving!'"

The Herald, Washington State April 11, 2006

Also marching for immigrant rights and dignity, April 10, 2006

Immigrant Unity Press Conference, San Francisco

Today at noon, while so many thousands marched in other cities, the Deporten La Migra Coalition invited the press to 24th and Mission, the heart of immigrant San Francisco. Our march is tonight, after work. Meanwhile, the folks who led the immigrant hunger strike against HR4437 had a message: UNITY.

• Unity in opposition to any partial legalization legislation that would create different tiers of rights for immigrants.

• Unity in demanding a path to citizenship for all who want it and the same rights and protections enjoyed by anyone else in the country.

• Unity between the various communities of immigrants.

The various communities were certainly represented.






The need for unity is great. N.C. Aizenman wrote a perceptive article in the Sunday Washington Post on the emerging immigrant civil rights movement that raised some important issues:

They face the challenge of appealing to a population that is divided economically, racially and by national origin, a fact that has perplexed marketing and political strategists alike....

[Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum] said activism could be undermined if legislation similar to the Senate proposal ever finds its way into law. "I suspect a lot people will start busying themselves with getting on the path to legal permanent residence, and that could take the political momentum out of [the movement]." ...

"Without a Dr. King-like figure, we lack the capacity to create that personal connection, not just within our own community but with folks on the outside," said Cecilia Munoz, vice president of policy for National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group. "Someone with that kind of visibility is really useful in terms of educating people."...

Although there is no identifiable leader to reconcile the inevitable fractures that have emerged as so many groups try to harmonize their activities, [Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles] said the decentralized nature of the movement also has an advantage.

"There's no one leader who could disappear and affect the movement," she said. "Instead, you have all these local communities with their own independent local leaders."

Today's press conference certainly showcased the local leadership and diversity of local Bay Area immigrant communities. The speakers pictured above were Latino, Filipino, Palestinian, African-descended, and European (Dutch).

U.S. citizens who have been here awhile can forget what newcomers bring with them: the ones who come are tough survivors. They are often quite sophisticated members of their home societies. Many have experience of hard, dangerous political struggle under authoritarian regimes. We are enriched, over and over, by their determination and moral clarity.

And as the speakers today reminded any who could hear: the young people of these communities are our future.

Phone banking's futureUsing an online database to call voters

The other night I was talking with someone I mentored into election work. I was bloviating about how web-hosted databases were going to change all of what we do field campaigns, how the lists would be much more accurate (having been cross-referenced with commercial data) and we'd do our phone banks from lists on computer screens. Why we might be able to use volunteers from home....

"Have you done it?" she asked.

"Well, no..." So this afternoon I spent a short time phoning for Francine Busby, a Democrat running for Congress in a special election in southern California, via MoveOn.org Political Action.

This technology requires uninterrupted web access (almost certainly broadband) and the concurrent ability to dial phone numbers.

I signed up online with Move-On to make 15 calls and immediately got a confirmation email. (Click on any of these images to see a large screen shot.)


When I "clicked to start calling" I arrived at a script training screen on which I could pretend that I had made the call and click through the various options so I knew what to do if the phone number was wrong, if there was an answering machine, or (hip hip hooray!) I "reached a voter."

I also had access to an online video of someone using the script (didn't watch it) and a full written page of instructions:



Although Move-On's recruitment had been for GOTV calls to identified Busby supporters, those easy calls had all been done, so the phoning had reverted to ID calls to voters whose preference was unknown. That is, we were trying to find more Busby voters so they could be reminded to turn out on Tuesday.

The first call screen provided a number to call -- and a lot of options if you didn't reach the voter (the normal experience in most election phoning). I've obscured voter identities on these screen shots.


If I reached a voter, I saw this:


If the voter's choice was anyone but Busby or they had already voted, I was to thank them and end the call.

If the person reached was a Busby voter, I clicked to this screen:


After holding the conversation, I was to give the voter their polling place information


I made my 15 calls very quickly -- it helps to have long ago learned that if you don't ever put the receiver down, you get through faster. Somewhat to my astonishment, I had only one definite wrong number and one answering machine that led me to believe I had another. I made 5 actual contacts and found 1 Busby voter, 1 Roach voter, 2 already voted, 1 decline to state. These voters must not be experiencing a deluge of phone calls; they didn't seem annoyed and replied to my politeness with their politeness.

Another, clickable Move-On screen let me know how we phoners were doing:


At the end, Move-On signed me out by trying to sign me up for another shift and collecting my demographics: sex, age, and race.

It was a very pleasant experience. I particularly liked that every screen gave me the easily read name of the person I was talking with; that can get to be a problem for punch-drunk callers using paper lists. I'm sure I'll be doing something very like it again, not as a test of the technology, but in the heat of a campaign battle.

Marin Headlands Walk Wildflowers are blooming

Considering that the terrain is breathtaking, the Marin Headlands are surprisingly unphotogenic. Rocky hillsides covered with heather offer few contrasts. But the flowers are out!


The state flower shows its face.


More flamboyant blooms


Once in a while, there was a bank of color beside the trail...


...then something more delicate.

A good day for immigration policy

Various attempts to write a "compromise" immigration reform from the Senate are apparently dead. Why is this good? Because anything they passed, no matter how apparently fair, would have to be taken to conference with the "build a wall and name 'em all felons" bill passed by the House. By the time the "reform" came out of a Republican dominated conference, we can be sure that provisions protecting immigrants as workers would be gone and probably most of the legalization path. So this has been a good day.

The immigration policy debate has stimulated some interesting oped pieces in the last few days.

One in the New York Times by Douglas S. Massey is going to get walled off soon, so I'll quote extensively from it.

The Mexican-American border is not now and never has been out of control. The rate of undocumented migration, adjusted for population growth, to the United States has not increased in 20 years. That is, from 1980 to 2004 the annual likelihood that a Mexican will make his first illegal trip to the United States has remained at about 1 in 100.

What has changed are the locations and visibility of border crossings. And that shift, more than anything, has given the public undue fears about waves of Mexican workers trying to flood into America.

Until the 1990's, the vast majority of undocumented Mexicans entered through either El Paso or San Diego. El Paso has around 700,000 residents and is 78 percent Hispanic, whereas San Diego County has three million residents and is 27 percent Hispanic. Thus the daily passage of even thousands of Mexicans through these metropolitan areas was not very visible or disruptive.

This all changed in 1992 when the Border Patrol built a steel fence south of San Diego from the Pacific Ocean to the port of entry at San Ysidro, Calif., where Interstate 5 crosses into Mexico. This fence, and the stationing of officers and equipment behind it, blocked one of the busiest illicit crossing routes and channeled migrants toward the San Ysidro entry station, where their numbers rapidly built up to impossible levels.

Every day the same episode unfolded: the crowd swelled to a critical threshold, whereupon many migrants made what the local press called "banzai runs" into the United States, darting through traffic on the Interstate and clambering over cars.

Waiting nearby were Border Patrol officers, there not to arrest the migrants but to capture the mayhem on video, which was later edited into an agency documentary. Although nothing had changed except the site of border crossings, the video gave the impression that the border was overwhelmed by a rising tide of undocumented migrants.

Massey goes on to describe how fence building in California pushed immigrants to the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. More people died, but more actually got into the U.S. as the probability of getting picked up dropped from 33 percent to 10 percent. And with more fences, going home to Mexico got harder, so there is more incentive to dig in and simply stay in the U.S., losing ties with home and family.

Massey concludes: "The only thing we have to show for two decades of border militarization is a larger undocumented population than we would otherwise have, a rising number of Mexicans dying while trying to cross, and a growing burden on taxpayers for enforcement that is counterproductive."

Not to be out done, the Washington Post has printed three quite good immigration columns as well. Ruth Marcus recounted how North Dakota, not usually a progressive bellwether, decided that giving in-state tuition to undocumented graduates of state high schools was simply a good investment. Being a place that is losing population, North Dakotans know the score:

As one state senator, a rural Republican, told a GOP colleague who's running for Congress, "You wouldn't have a seat to run for if it wasn't for immigration."

Usually Fareed Zakaria is not someone I expect to agree with. He's editor of Newsweek International, Yale and Harvard educated, and conservative, the kind of immigrant (Indian-born) intellectual who gives "race cover" to our right winger's mad hegemonic dreams. Though he has questioned how it has been carried out, he has supported the Neocon's Iraq war. But he said a lot of sensible things this week, contrasting the U.S.'s relatively open immigration with Europe's inability to absorb people who are genuinely different. He urged:

These people [immigrants] must have some hope, some reasonable path to becoming Americans. Otherwise we are sending a signal that there are groups of people who are somehow unfit to be Americans, that these newcomers are not really welcome and that what we want are workers, not potential citizens. And we will end up with immigrants who have similarly cold feelings about America.

Finally, African American columnist Eugene Robinson visited Phoenix to take the temperature on the issue. He nails the story:

This confident, laid-back city is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Immigration reform is more than a political issue here -- it's an acute psychosis.

State legislator Alfredo Gutierrez explained to Robinon what drives immigrant protests.

• "His childhood was an experience of a 'perhaps more benign' form of the apartheid that African Americans had to suffer in the South. Mexicans were allowed to use the municipal swimming pool only on Sundays, after which the pool was drained and refilled every Monday, he says. ...The idea back then was forced assimilation. 'The teacher would put a piece of tape on your mouth if you spoke Spanish instead of English,' he recalls."

• "Within his own extended family, Gutierrez says, he counts immigrants who are American citizens, others who are permanent residents with green cards and still others who are here illegally. That is why there are no simple solutions: If you draw a sharp line between those who have proper documents and those who don't, you break up families."

The undocumented are here. Any "reform" can only acknowledge that reality. Find a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice event to join in your area and say so loud and clear.

South Dakota abortion banVote it down?

South Dakota Healthy Families hopes to put the state's new abortion ban on the ballot in the November election. When I was asked for money for this effort, I wanted to know more both generally and about prospects, strategy and tactics. Neither the proponents of the referendum, nor the national pro-choice outfits had much on their websites, so in the interest of reducing my ignorance about South Dakota, I did some research. Here is what I found out:

Referendums are not new.
It comes as a small surprise here in initiative-mad California, to learn that South Dakota was the first state (1898) to adopt initiatives and referenda. As in most places, putting measures to direct vote was a populist, vaguely progressive effort to overcome the power of entrenched interests. As in most states, the power was relatively little used until the 1970s but has become common since. The Aberdeen News reports that 42 laws passed by SD legislators have been put to referendum, and 83 percent were rejected by voters. Sounds good for pro-choice campaigners, who must gather 16,728 signatures (5 percent of registered voters) by June 19 to force the vote.

Dueling polls
So I wondered, has anybody done the polling to find out how a vote might go? Of course, yes. In mid- March, Focus: South Dakota, a Democratic group which employed Robinson and Muenster Associates of Sioux Falls, interviewed 630 voters. They reported:

Sixty-two percent said the legislation is too extreme, 33 percent said they support the bill and the rest were undecided.

When people were asked if they thought the abortion ban should be put on the November ballot, 72 percent answered yes. Pollsters found that 79 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of independents, and 65 percent of Republicans favor a statewide vote on the issue.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled said they would then vote to override the proposal, 36 percent would keep the ban and the rest were undecided about the measure.

Anti-abortion leaders scoffed at the results, claiming 64 percent of South Dakotans are "pro-life."

Probably all results on this highly charged issue depend on how the question is asked. In early March, the reputable, Republican-oriented Rasmussen Reports surveyed South Dakotans and found them absolutely evenly divided on the ban, 45 percent in favor, 45 percent opposed. Interestingly, "the poll also found that most South Dakota voters (55 percent) know someone who has had an abortion. Sixty percent (60 percent) say abortion is morally wrong most of the time."

Campaign messages
The Focus: South Dakota poll certainly point to the right message for South Dakota Healthy Families: The legislature's ban goes too far. The lack of exceptions for rape, incest, or the mental health of the potential mother moves this particular law over into wacko-land for most voters. That "goes too far" message is pretty much the universal message in negative initiative and referendum campaigns, playing well everywhere to majorities of citizens who oppose any measure that can be stigmatized as "extreme."

An interesting potential sub-theme that could play a lot of ways will also be at work. I'm sure that most South Dakotans don't want their state branded as a wacko place, by either side. This referendum will undoubtedly get huge amounts of national attention and money from all concerned groups. The ban does have national implications so there is nothing wrong with that, but South Dakotans can expect to feel somewhat invaded. A local blog, Moderates from South Dakota predicts what is coming:

We as South Dakotan's should start preparing for a media blitz from both sides that if taken too far could have far reaching effects on the final outcome of the vote.

Though what happens in our sparsely populated state rarely matters to those living outside of South Dakota, we can expect national attention and outside intervention the likes we haven't seen since the 2004 Thune/Daschle Senate race with both pro-choice and pro-life groups mobilizing nationwide. ...

Nationally, both groups see this as the latest battle ground for their agenda so you can expect a lot of outside interest and money thrown into a media blitz that could get quite ugly. This campaign, if taken too far by either side, could easily turn off the residents of our state and backfire on either group by making the media campaign the focus rather than the issue itself. If you thought Thune vs Daschle was bad, just wait for the images of unborn babies, aborted fetuses, comments from mothers whom have had abortions, and debates over when life begins that will be coming to a TV near you soon.

I'd predict that the side which convinces more residents that it actually gives a damn about South Dakota will win the vote.

So how does this play on the ground?
Some pro-choice South Dakotans didn't want to take the issue to a referendum. Todd Epp warned on the blog SDWatch that the referendum would take the focus off progressive efforts to replace the right wing governor and legislators. "The problem is Pierre [the capitol.]" He also warned that there is an anti-gay marriage measure on the November ballot, so the abortion ban vote will unavoidably be complicated by the general right wing sexuality panic. That seems darn unpersuasive to me: can we afford to let them veto anything we want to do by hauling out the usual queer bashing? But the presence of the issue on the ballot will certainly increase the already super-heated temperature of the election.

Now that the referendum petition drive is going forward, some reports suggest that South Dakota Democrats have been energized, "contesting far more races than in past years. In fact, the Democratic Party has candidates in nearly 20 more seats than it did two years ago," though still leaving many Republicans unopposed. Republican Governor Mike Rounds who signed the ban saw his approval plummet from 72 to 58 percent.

One exciting member of the new crop of Democratic State Senate candidates is Charon Asetoyer, the Executive Director of the Native Women's Health Education Resource Center. Like Sioux tribal president Cecilia Fire Thunder a supporter of a woman's right to choose. According to the Nation blog, Asetoyer has also long worked to prevent violence against women.

So to donate from afar, or not donate to South Dakota Healthy Families' referendum campaign? I come down on the YES side and I hope anyone following this long post will as well. We can help South Dakotans find a way to advertise their state as a sensible place, a state that refuses to go out on a limb for a minority's obsessions.

South Dakota abortion banA Sioux tribal president's wisdom

Pro-choice demonstrators, San Francisco, 2006

Yesterday I got a fund appeal. That's not extraordinary; it happens every day. A friend asked me to contribute to South Dakota Healthy Families, a coalition aiming to put the state's new abortion ban on the ballot in the November election.

Somehow, I'd missed the campaign to put a stake in this thing by popular vote. That sounds like a good idea. But that's not what I want to write about tonight -- that's a matter of tactics and strategy, worth pondering. But first I thought I'd research a bit more about South Dakota and the folks involved.

Though I'm not an enthusiast for abortions, I come to this believing that no woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy should be governed by a tangle of laws and moral injunctions framed in male-defined societies. Maybe when women have been considered fully human by everyone (including ourselves) for a few millennia, we'll have more perspective on the right relationship between a woman and the fertilized egg she can carry. Meanwhile, I believe each woman has to be free to figure this out through whatever means of moral discernment is her own.

One response to the abortion ban has gotten a lot of press: Cecilia Fire Thunder, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, has offered sovereign native land as a site for a clinic to make abortion available within South Dakota. This seems a brave and generous offer. According to Indian Country, she has a lot to say about the issues in abortion decisions:

''I have very strong opinions of what happened. These are a bunch of white guys determining what a woman should do with her body,'' Fire Thunder said. Fire Thunder was a nurse and has worked with women who were traumatized by rape....

American Indian women will be impacted, if the law takes effect, in greater numbers than any other group. According to national statistics, American Indian women are sexually assaulted at a rate 3.5 times higher than all other racial groups. That means there are seven rapes per 1,000 American Indian women....

''If they are going to outlaw abortions [they should] put more money into sex education and pregnancy prevention. It's fine to tell people to abstain from sex. Adult people in our country expect young people to abstain when they don't abstain,'' she said.

''It's my personal opinion that it's a woman's choice. She makes the decision and the only person she is going to be accountable to is the Creator and the spirit of that child,'' Fire Thunder said. ...

''The Creator gave every human being [the right] to make choices for yourself. Another person may not think that is the right choice and a lot of people have made bad choices in their lives, but it's their choice....We have to honor the gift the Creator gave us; one of the greatest gifts is to choose for ourselves.''

One of the core insults that forced pregnancy crusaders throw at women is that we take abortion lightly, that we haven't thought the issues through. Cecilia Fire Thunder obviously has -- she can speak for me on this one.

Tomorrow I'll write about what I learned about the political context and potential of the South Dakota Healthy Families campaign.

"Between the devil and the deep blue sea..."

That's how a Belizean primary school principal describes the discovery of oil in her Caribbean country. Oil is going to change things, that is for sure.

Belize (British Honduras before independence in 1981) has long served as a supplier of desirable exotic goods to wealthy foreign countries. But sugarcane, citrus and bananas don't thrust you into the eye of the storm the way black gold priced at over $60 a barrel does.

Annual per capita income in Belize is $3940. Less than in Mexico ($9600); ahead of neighboring Honduras ($2800). Certainly not affluent.

Aside from its agricultural exports, Belize's main source of income has been tourism, especially ecotourism. (Yes, that's how I came to take the picture above.) Belizean's are proud of their own efforts to preserve and display their natural environment. The national Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) explains:

Belize has become one of the world's most biologically diverse nations with the integrity of its natural resources still very much intact. It boasts 93% of its land under forest covers, the largest coral reef in the western hemisphere (second only to Australia's), the largest cave system in Central America, over 500 species of birds, thousands of Maya archaeological temples and the only jaguar reserve in the world. With only 8, 867 square miles (22,960 sq.. km) and 250,000 people, the population density is the lowest in the Central American region and one of the lowest in the world. The only country in Central America with English as its official language, Belize also boasts a rich mix of ethnicities including Creole, Maya, Mestizo, East Indian, Chinese, Garifuna and Mennonite.

The people of Belize have for years monitored its rate of economic development, agricultural expansion and tourism growth in particular. A conservation consciousness has emerged that challenges the government, private sector, investors and the public at large to balance development with conservation of its natural resources. Consequently, to date Belize has 42% of its land under some form of legal protected status.

Now it is easy to wonder whether there may be a little more talk than walk in PACT's description. Much of the coral in the barrier reef is dying, victim of global warming and too many cruise ships. Demand for hydropower has led to dam construction that intruded on protected forests. But, all in all, Belize has remained out of the maelstrom of international development politics, a slightly sleepy, somewhat protected backwater.

Not anymore.

Because the nation lacks a refinery, pipelines or other basic petroleum infrastructure, the oil must be moved by tanker trucks along narrow, pitted roads to the docks in the southern city of Big Creek for export.

"We simply aren't prepared," said Godsman Ellis, president of the Belize Institute of Environmental Law and Policy, who says that spills and other disasters are inevitable.

Nonetheless, this is about undreamed of wealth in a very poor place. "Minister of Natural Resources John Briceno calculates that at current prices, the government's take from even modest oil production of around 60,000 barrels a day would cover the entire national budget."

Belize is a lovely country. Let's hope oil makes most Belizeans' lives better, rather than destroying a difficult, but sustainable, way of life.

Send a message

This is great. Now you can buy real, honest to goodness, working postage stamps (licensed by the USPS!) with an antiwar message. And the proceeds go to help groups working to bring the troops home.

The stamp features the symbol of the growing "Bring 'Em Home Now!" movement – a yellow ribbon transposed over a peace sign – providing millions of Americans with a unique way to show their support for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq....

All proceeds from the sale of the stamps ... benefit citizen groups working hard to end the war and bring our troops safely home, including Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Veterans for Peace.

By participating, you proudly say: "I support the troops. Let's bring them home now! And let's take care of them when they get here."

You'll pay extra to send your mail. The stamps are $20 for a sheet of 20. But since you are already paying for the war, how about something for the peace?

Hat tip to Melanie.

Disaster preparedness

Bird flu. I'm not going to pretend I know a thing about whether it is going to make the leap and become a human pandemic, disrupting societies worldwide and killing millions. I can imagine it might. On the other hand, I can imagine our anxious flu vigil might turn out to be one of the many frightening phantoms we all feel hanging over us. Our species is modifying our global ecosystem so rapidly that we've come to distrust its very predictability.

We'd all be smart to visit the FluWiki and learn more.

But it is interesting to think about what we know about how people respond in a crisis. Since Hurricane Katrina, we're frequently lectured by various government bodies on how we should be prepared to take care of ourselves for 72 hours. Good idea I guess (and one of these days maybe I should get in some supplies.)

But what really cheers me up are stories of how very well ordinary people do when confronted with the impossible. Effect Measure shared a nice, light, story recently of British firefighters who cut through some prospective flu foolishness.

Firefighters in the West Midlands said today they had been told to stop attending incidents involving birds as fears grew over avian flu....

Deputy chief fire officer Vijith Randeniya told staff in the leaked memo: "We are not to attend any calls to stranded or distressed birds even if requested by the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals]."

The move could mean crews refusing to attend fires at pet shops and farms and homes with aviaries and pigeon lofts....

One firefighter said: "We normally attend all incidents involving animals if asked to by the RSPCA. It's utter nonsense and completely unworkable. What happens if we go to a house fire if they've got a pet budgie or aviary?

"Do we say 'sorry mate, we can't put out your fire because we might catch bird flu'?"

No nonsense there.

This accords with what disaster experts say about ordinary human response to unthinkable catastrophe: we tend to be more sensible than the authorities anticipate. Reuters Alertnet posts a "TIPSHEET: Aid experts debunk post-disaster myths." Number One on their list:

MYTH: Disaster-hit people are too dazed and shocked to take responsibility for helping themselves and others. ...

But according to the 2004 World Disasters Report, published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, in-depth reports from sudden disasters ranging from earthquakes to the collapse of New York's twin towers show survivors rushing to save people from under the rubble -- with their bare hands if necessary.

Adeel Jafferi, media officer for Islamic Relief, described such proactivity in the immediate aftermath of Pakistan's earthquake in October 2005:

..."On the day it happened, ordinary people were rushing to aid victims, despite the shock they felt themselves. I saw people on the street who were completely out of their minds with fear, and yet when they saw the need to help people and heard the screams from under buildings, they ran immediately and started helping."

It seems likely that one reason our species has lasted this long is that helping save others helps us get a grip when confronted with catastrophe.

The additional five myths on the Alertnet Tipsheet are also well worth pondering. They are

• MYTH: The best international response is to send in rescue teams immediately.

• MYTH: Dead bodies should be buried quickly to avoid disease.

• MYTH: Survivors have lost everything except the clothes they stand up in. The best response is to give them second-hand clothes.

• MYTH: The best way Westerners can help children who have been orphaned in a disaster is to adopt them.

• MYTH: The best way to help survivors is to put them in temporary settlements.

Check out the whole story.

What are we going to do about it?

Anna Politkovskaya writes from Moscow:

Recently two young college students from the Chechen capital of Grozny -- Musa Lomayev and Mikhail Vladovskikh -- were accused by the police and the prosecutor's office of all small, previously unsolved acts of terrorism that had occurred about six months before in one of Grozny's residential areas. As a result, Vladovskikh is now severely disabled: Both his legs were broken under torture; his kneecaps were shattered; his kidneys badly damaged by beating; his genitalia mutilated; his eyesight lost; his eardrums torn; and all of his front teeth sawed off. That is how he appeared before the court. ...

Russia continues to be infected by Stalinism. But it seems to me that the rest of the world has been infected along with it, a world shrunken and frightened before the threat of terrorism.

One has to ask why anyone is giving any credence to the purported deposition in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an "Al Qaeda official and terrorist mastermind" as the Christian Science Monitor characterizes the man. It is not as if he had appeared in court, been cross-examined, his testimony subjected to corroboration. The judge simply allowed the CIA to produce this document that has the world abuzz. Maybe it is true. Maybe it is partially true and embellished (perhaps to make the CIA look better?) Is there really such a person? Was he tortured? Mainstream media has reported that he was "waterboarded."

Politkovskaya lays out where this practice leads. How soon will such methods "blowback" here? Have they already? And what are we going to do about it?

Sonoma County walk

"It rained and it rained and it rained." According to the Winnie-the-Pooh FAQ, the terrible flood "in which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water" and needs rescue by C. Robin and Pooh lasted five days.

Piglet wouldn't have made it in Northern California this winter. This March saw more rain than all but one previous March since settlers started keeping records.

Ordinarily the color of California is brown. Right now it is vibrant green. Here are a few photos from a hike in Sonoma County during a brief pause in the precipitation over the weekend.



Some residents are very happy in the sea of green.


For a moment the clouds seemed ready to part.


The clouds' return only made the landscape more surreal.