לשנה תובה

This morning I am thinking about fire and flood, earthquake and hurricane, war and genocide, impunity and extrajudicial murder.

The new moon rose here in New York at 6:56 this morning. The fall equinox is Friday afternoon at 4:02. Today is the 29th of Elul on the Hebrew calendar, so tonight is Rosh HaShanah: new year 5778.
I take a moment to wish my friends and relations a happy and healthy year, but I am stuck on the horrors facing the people of Burma, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, St. Louis, California, Texas, Florida, the Virgin Islands, and so many other places.

On Rosh HaShanah, we recite the liturgical poem Unetanneh Tokef, which says that everyone of us passes before God on this day.  That, like sheep before the shepherd, we are counted and evaluated and our destinies are determined. The poem says our fates are written in a book:

Who will live and who will die? 

Who will live a long life and who will die before their time?

Who will perish by fire and who by water?

Who by sword and who by beast?

Who by famine and who by thirst?

Who by earthquake and who by epidemic?

Who by strangling and who by stoning?

Who will rest and who will wander?

Who will live in harmony and who will be harassed?

Who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer?

The prayer concludes: "But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity Avert the Severe Decree!"

I think not. I think we can resist official impunity and police murder. I think we can resist the selfishness that denies global warming. I think we can resist xenophobia and homophobia and white supremacy and misogyny. I think we can even resist earthquakes by fighting against fracking.

The world is much bigger than we. Hurricanes will continue. So will tectonic movement. But we can look out for each other instead of ignoring each other's suffering.

L'Shanah Tovah.

The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends!

Act II of the Rogers and Hammerstein 1943 classic Oklahoma! opens with the song "The Farmer and the Cowman."  The song highlights the adversarial relations which, in the imaginative Oklahoma of the play, constitute the full spectrum of human difference.  In the universe of this musical, everyone -- with the sole exception of the Syrian pedlar Ali Hakim -- is white.  I wrote in a previous post about the many seemingly exclusive Oklahomas we encounter in art.  John Steinbeck, Ralph Ellison, Woody Guthrie, S.E. Hinton, Lynn Riggs, Fus Fixico, Will Rogers... encountering their works one after another would lead the audience to think Oklahoma is not one place at all.

I remembered the song only last week.  It reminded me again that this monster success (over 2000 Broadway performances) isn't just a story.  It purports to be the story.  Consider these lyrics:

Territory folks should stick together,

Territory folks should all be pals.

Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,

Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals.

One would be forgiven for thinking these white people were the people of the "territory."

Oklahoma was admitted to statehood in 1907. The play takes place just before that. The first thing to note is that the town of Claremore, where the action takes place, was not in the Oklahoma Territory.  Claremore was in the Indian Territory, which was merged with the Oklahoma Territory to form the state of Oklahoma.  Claremore is the seat of Rogers County, which straddled the line between the Cherokee and Creek Nations. So where are all the Native people in Oklahoma!?

Congress called for a special census for the new state, so we actually have population figures for Claremore, Oklahoma in 1907.  There were 2064 residents, of whom 16% were Native American and 10% were African American.  Where were all the Black people in Oklahoma!?

This is what academics like to call "erasure." It doesn't just take place in imaginative works, either.  Between 1890 and 1907, in the Creek Nation alone, the white population went from 40,674 to 144,457! Overwhelming the Creek people with white emigrants, legislatively privatizing Creek land through individual allotments so that the surplus could be sold, and then stealing the allotments themselves all constitute erasure in fact. By all means, check out Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann or And Still the Waters Run by Angie Debo.

The farmer and the cowman? How about the banker, the real estate dealer and the murderer? They were friends.

Speaker Ryan, do your job!

Sixteen years ago, in the weeks before 9/11, the Dream Act was introduced to give immigrant youth who had grown up in the US the opportunities to pursue higher education and military service without fear of deportation.  From its conception the Dream Act was a bipartisan bill with both Democratic and Republican support.

Why hasn’t Congress passed it? Why isn’t it a law yet? Why are we relying on Donald Trump to renew an executive order by Barack Obama to create the DACA policy in the absence of any activity by Congress on this subject?

Our youth have been held hostage by politics. Nativist senators filibustered, frightened by the possibility that opponents to their right would mount primary challenges, accusing them of giving “amnesty” to “illegals.”* Also, President Obama’s existence on this earth led Republican leadership to follow a policy of opposing everything he favored, often hesitating to express opinions on new issues until he had taken a stand they could disagree with!

Now President Trump is on the verge of setting a six-month deadline for dismantling DACA. This would throw the question of immigrant youth back into Congress where it has always belonged. Speaker Ryan is begging him not to do it.  It would force Speaker Ryan to actually do his job and entertain bipartisan debate on a critical issue of public policy.

I believe the votes exist to pass the Dream Act.  I believe our immigrant youth deserve the opportunity to live their lives in public — outside the shadows — and to contribute to the wellbeing of all of us. I believe our youth shouldn’t have to worry that their careers are dependent on the next shift in the political winds. I believe Congress should do its job and legislate.

Speaker Ryan! Senator McConnell! You wanted the title of leader? Do your jobs and lead.  Stop equivocating about what the president should or should not do. Pass the Dream Act. 

*(The coinage “illegal” as a noun to describe a person has been a particularly effective way to demonize and criminalize immigrants, including those with green cards. But I don’t get how “amnesty,” which was one of the cornerstones of Ronald Reagan’s immigration reform, became such a scary word. Don’t public libraries offer amnesties?)