Capitalism: It’s just not that into you

We went to see Capitalism: A Love Story Thursday night. As far as I’m concerned, Michael Moore is a national treasure. This particular film wasn’t his best effort (I especially loved Sicko, even as it enraged me by triggering memories of bill collectors and hoop jumping for services), but I’m glad he’s still using his bully pulpit to represent the rest of us. People who groan about “polemic” and “oversentimentality” and such aren’t getting it. This is straight-up preaching to the choir. Like a rousing speech at the union hall or a picket-line chant, this is all about getting asses off the seats and into gear.

The film opens with bank robbery—a visual play on the theme of who’s committing the real grand theft. And then…three foreclosures. Three families being kicked to the curb. I notice the expression on my daughter’s face changing as she realizes this is a documentary. We’re watching a woman appeal to the carpenter boarding up Anthony King’s home in Detroit: “You’re a working-class person! I’m just sayin’….couldn’t you make a different choice?!”

“Mama? Is this real?”
“Yeah hon, it’s real. This is going on all over the nation. People are losing their jobs and their homes. Everything they’ve worked for.”

By the time we’re watching the Hacker family lose their Peoria farmstead that goes back four generations due to the perfect storm of ballooning mortgage payments and Randy Hacker’s jobsite injury on the railroad (eventually landing him on permanent disability)….
my daughter is really blanching. She notices this is fairly close to home. Her godmother lives not too far from Peoria.

“Is this going to happen to us?”
“I sure the hell hope not, kid.”

Mixing cuts of schlocky educational films on capitalism produced for high school students in the 50s with home movies and other documentary footage, the tagline of the film (“A Love Story”) is brought to light. But this isn’t just any love story. No, it’s a made-for-Lifetime television saga: a tale of epic dysfunction, enabling, excuses, and let’s just go ahead and say it….abuse. “This is Capitalism, a system of taking and giving. Mostly taking.” Moore traces the “courtship” period of his childhood, pointing out the steady benefits of the boom-time of no competition on the world stage (the competition having been bombed into oblivion in WWII), and frankly, no competition for white people in the good jobs (Moore phrases it, “as long as we were willing to put up with a little of this (shots of civil rights activists being beaten by the police and/or having firehoses and dogs turned on them), and a little of that (war footage).” Home movies from Moore’s childhood show his father as the happy, robust patriarch in the swimming pool; Life is Good. Later, Moore takes his father on a walk through the Flint of today—desolate, boarded up houses, factories reduced to rubble, looking much like the remnants of war footage interspersed throughout the film. His father is slender in his old age, stooped posture, eyes searching, trying to conjure the image of the building where he worked while he and his son gaze through a chain-link fence at the empty, weed-strewn lot that once housed a factory that provided thousands with paychecks. Flint isn’t alone; it’s what most of the rust belt looks like.

We meet Peter Zalewski of Condo Vultures, a brokerage company that dives into the wreckage of the Florida housing market, the debris of what once were people’s lives. He frankly describes what his company does and how the name was derived—what vultures do in the ecosphere, swooping in after the carcass that others have conveniently already killed…even down to the properties of vulture vomit. Moore asks him what are the differences between him and actual vultures. “Well,” says Zalewski, “I don’t vomit on myself.” Condo Vultures threw a party for themselves on opening night of the film as a promotional opportunity.

Moore interviews some priests for their opinions on whether capitalism is compatible with Christianity. Seems as if these priests take liberation theology seriously; Father Dick Preston bluntly states, “Capitalism is evil, immoral, and contrary to the teachings of Jesus.” Father Peter Dougherty puts it in stronger terms, “Capitalism is radically evil.” Bishop James Alan Wilkowski showed up to support and offer communion to the workers conducting a sit-down strike at Republic Windows and Doors, talking about growing up the son of a steelworker on Chicago’s southeast side. Moore wickedly overdubbed an old movie on Jesus; when the sick man was brought for a healing, Jesus refused to help, blithely saying something about a “pre-existing condition”.

“Dead Peasant” insurance (the name given in the industry) is the practice of taking out a life insurance policy on a worker with the hope of benefiting from his or her death—like a lottery ticket on the life of an employee. Irma Johnson learned about this practice when her husband died of brain cancer. Her husband’s employer was the beneficiary of the policy that she knew nothing about. A widower who worked for Wal-Mart was devastated to learn his wife—a part-time cake decorator—was insured by the company for their own benefit. While he was left with nothing to pay the hundreds of thousands in medical bills from his wife’s asthma attack, coma, and death, Wal-Mart pocketed the change.

We never did get a concise definition of what a derivative is, although we did find out that if we could accurately explain one, we would probably be offered jobs on Wall Street. (from what I could gather, a derivative sounds like a combination of playing the horses and the shell game, but hey, whadd’a I know?)

Moore didn’t pull punches on either political party—both corrupt Dems and corrupt Rethugs got the ax swung at ‘em. Senator Chris Dodd was especially noted for being a “Friend of Angelo” (Mozilo, head of Countrywide Financial, who offered sweetheart deals for his “friends”). Legal-to-the-letter or no, the concept “appearance of impropriety” didn’t seem to mean much to this crowd.

There were heroics, too. The workers at Republic Windows and Doors won. Sheriff Warren Evans halted the sales of foreclosed homes in light of bank bailouts until relief came through for homeowners, too. Community organizers in Florida re-occupy houses for displaced families living in vehicles or on the street.

There’s a lot to unpack with a subject this large. Capitalism is a Leviathan, and I excuse Moore for the disconnected flow of the film. That leaping from subject to subject, story to story, and method of telling speaks to the difficulty of trying to escape the Titanic, rather than rearrange the deck chairs. I imagine this was a rushed project—an attempt to get the word out, to motivate, strike while the iron is hot. Yeah, he isn’t above cheap stunts like the crime scene tape around Wall Street….

“That’s a crime scene? That’s where they stole the money?”
“You fuckin’ A, kid. That’s the crime scene, baby.“

….but dammit, other media outlets are too afraid, too mealymouthed to take sides. Whatever else may be said about our era (Moore describes it at the start of the film by juxtaposing old movies about ancient Rome with scenes from the present), this is definitely a time for declaring where we stand.

To be real: the commentary that my daughter and I raised back-and-forth with one another throughout the film? That’s how I was raised, too. Old-school labor union democratic socialism, the kind referenced in the film as FDR’s Second Bill of Rights. As is pointed out in the film, other nations enjoy this “second bill of rights” while people in the United States did and do not. While I was raised with an ethic of solidarity, the outside world, the world that feared unionism treading in its space, taught that capitalism is “human nature”. That looking out for “number one” was the way of the world. That people were fundamentally selfish and lazy, and that given any opportunity to cut corners or abandon others, they would. The philosophy of the gabbillotu, the overseer. Another legacy of the U.S. history of slavery; the recognition that oppressed people would resist in any way possible, no matter how limited their means to do so—but this time, extended to reference the entire character of people at large.

Unreferenced in this capitalistic worldview is the call to Craftsmanship. Creativity. The will toward artistry, imagination, virtuosity as a province of the common people. Capitalism holds that these qualities are rare. I disagree. Seeking craftsmanship, taking pride and ownership in one’s work, is as human as language…and as widespread. And that’ll be the subject of the next post—mastery, without masters. Assabenedica.

Whose Day Is It, Anyway?

I’ll be MIA for the next several days on this blog, so I’ll just leave you with this poem by the incomparable Diane DiPrima, from the book Avanti Popolo! Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus.

Whose Day Is It, Anyway?

Pola Negri Day?
Joe DiMaggio Day?
Sacco and Vanzetti Day!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day?
Tina Modotti Day?
Sacco and Vanzetti Day!

Carlo Tresca Day?
Gregory Corso Day?
Sacco and Vanzetti Day!

Tony Bennett Day!
Phil Rizzuto Day
Sacco and Vanzetti Day!

Domenico Mallozzi Day!
Sal Maglie Day
Sacco and Vanzetti Day!

Al Pacino Day.
Frank Sinatra Day.
Sacco and Vanzetti Day!

Francis Coppola Day.
Chick Correa Day.
Sacco and Vanzetti Day!

Robert DiNiro Day
Guy Lombardo Day
Sacco and Vanzetti Day.

Joseph Stella Day
Frank Stella Day

Philip Lamantia Day
Tina Modotti Day

Frankie Laine Day
Mario Lanza Day
Riker’s Island Day

Joe Pesci
Brian De Palma
Sacco and Vanzetti Day

Frank Capra of Happy Endings & Leftist Leanings Day!
That’s one we could use.

Il Giorno di Leslie Scalapino!
Il Giorno di Ben Gazzara!
Il Giorno di Sacco e Vanzetti!

Il Giorno di Martino Scorsese.
Il Giorno di Tomaso Centalella
Tutti giorni sono giorni di Sacco e Vanzetti

Is it your day, Rocky Graziano,
idol of my teen years
with your thick voice on the radio
“It was a good fight
I was in good condition
Hello, Ma”
(I got your autograph at a grocery store on Spring St)

Madonna?
Madonna Mia or as we used to say
“Marron!”

Back in the Day
It was Connie Francis Day

Then a few years later it was
Julie Bovasso Day
Julie doing “The Maids”
in a tiny downtown theatre,
turning gender & theatre around/1952

Whose day is it anyway?
Maybe we could rename it
every year–

Then maybe today would be
Tony La Russa Day?
Carpe Diem, Tony!
You never know, you know?

Joe Montana
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
Phil Cavaretta
Ani Di Franco
Vick Damone
Jimmy Giuffre
Whose Day is it?
Alan Alda
Joe Lovano

Judy Canova Day
Her loud voice on the big wooden radio

Jimmy Durante
“Good night, Mrs. Calabash–
(or whatever that name was he said
week after week
I never figured it out–)
Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash
wherever you are”
And the grown-ups would turn off the radio
and we’d go to bed

O It’s Louis Prima Day, for sure!
We gotta have one of those!
Or wait

Who knew it could be
Frank Zappa Day
Was he actually born on this planet?

Aha! I’ve got it–
Yogi Berra Day
Yogi Berra Day

Yogi Berra Day
Tina Modotti Day

Yogi Berra Day
Sacco and Vanzetti Day
Yogi Berra Day

Sacco and Vanzetti Day
Yogi Berra Day
Sacco and Vanzetti Day

You choose

******
(Have a happy Sacco e Vanzetti Day, a Tina Modotti Day, a Joe Ettor Day, a Philip Lamantia Day, a Carlo Tresca Day, and a Leo Martello Day! —Lubu)

Creating a Culture of Belonging: Riffs on Time, Place, and Co-creating Space (cross-posted at Feministe)

This whole post is going to be a freestyle; inspired by bell hooks and her book Belonging: A Culture of Place and Little Light’s amazing post on vulnerability. In fact, I’ll just say now that one of the reasons I don’t post more often is because I’m self-conscious about always having to “get it right”—wordsmithing in just the right way, organizing my thoughts into some kinda coherent blend that others can understand, all on the cold, hard ground of the typewritten landscape, unmodified by hands/eyes/lips/tongue/posture/tone/breath/physicality of any sort. It ain’t easy. Well, not for me. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the belief that I have to come correct; be twice/three/x times as good just to be worthy of the written page. And against a cultural background that doesn’t condone showing weakness or vulnerability of any kind; especially not revealing oneself or one’s family. Don’t speak of something bad/it will happen. Don’t speak of something good/it won’t happen. Keep your own counsel. Keep to your family. Keep within.

The time I was reading Belonging, I was also reading and being inspired by the Rethinking Walking series, and saw a lot of it in the light of…walking as a spiritual practice, of re/discovering the pleasure of contemplative movement, re/experiencing nature as freedom, a center of healing, a center of a power greater than that of the oppressor, a contrast to dominator culture, witnessing symbiosis, integration, diversity…….and that led me back into the themes bell hooks explored in her book: choosing to stay, to build/upon, to deeply, intimately entwine yourself with a place despite the pain because….wherever you go, there you are. The pain comes with you. Rootedness has a power, too. Which is a strange statement to be coming from someone who says, …carry home in my heart, not under my feet…. But there you go.

Hooks quotes this definition of a culture of belonging from Carol Lee Flinders’ book Rebalancing the World”:

“…intimate connection with the land to which one belongs, empathic relationship to animals, self-restraint, custodial conservation, deliberateness, balance, expressiveness, generosity, egalitarianism, mutuality, affinity for alternative modes of knowing, playfulness, inclusiveness, nonviolent conflict resolution and openness to spirit.”

That’s a big contrast to life-as-usual from where I stand, with covering, protection, adrenaline-heightened senses, focusing on the nitty-gritty of daily survival in an alternately anonymous/hostile background. Hooks mentioned being influenced by the “nature worshipping ecstatic mystical spirituality of the backwoods”, in contrast with the doctrinal fundamentalism of formal church services….just from growing up in, experiencing the freedom of childhood in the woods.

That brought to mind Vine DeLoria’s God Is Red and his critiques of the spiritual bankruptcy of modern U.S. christian worship that he traced in large part to the divorce between land and belonging. Brought to mind Barbara Ehrenreich’s Dancing in the Streets and the female-directed worship of Dionysius that encouraged women to drop everything—all the daily grind of household responsibilities—to play music and dance in the woods. Both the pagan and christian patriarchs had this in common: they knew the power of nature to speak to us, with us….and they did their best to limit this rapport lest its influence lead to disobedience.

Obedience. There’s the rub. So much of running from belonging is active resistance to a dysfunctional obedience. An obedience not borne of power-within but power-over. In Belonging, hooks spoke frankly and at length about what drove her from Kentucky: racism, separatism, white supremacist violence, classism, sexism. But also of what kept whispering to her from back “home”, salvaged her spirit amidst the culture shock of leaving to attend school in California; how she kept braided tobacco and her grandmother’s quilt as talismans of home. Of belonging.

Culture of belonging. Interbeing. Fancy way of saying what the labor movement still calls Solidarity when we’ve remembered our voice. That an injury to one is an injury to all. That we’re all in this together, like it or not. That a certain mutuality exists independent of our individual needs or desires. That reciprocity is inherent to life. We can acknowledge it, act on it, but can’t escape it no matter how far we go.

One of the things that has always drawn me to the labor movement is the frank admission of this mutuality. This ‘all for one and one for all’. I find it absent from mainstream feminism, with its (seeming, to me anyway) emphasis on individuality, individual solutions, individual choices, individual options, all the focus on the self, as if we exist apart from one another, spring forth fully formed out of our own heads. I think: “but we don’t all have the same power to fight against the wall of institutions by ourselves. we don’t have the same range of choices. our choices don’t happen in a vacuum. they come from who we are, where we came from, how we move in this world. we come from ancestries, cultures, histories, generations. we contain multitudes.” Where mainstream feminism leaves me cold is the emphasis on this individuality; the (seeming, to me anyway) assumption that individuality is freedom. Mierda! I’m a single mother. An only child. One of few women in a trade of men. Everything I fucking do I do alone. You know? And all this holding up the world on my solitary shoulders feels like a burden to me. I’m supposed to be excited about a movement that tells me (metaphorically), “yeah! stand on your own two feet some more, sister!” Bah! I get tired of running point. I want a movement comprised of others standing shoulder-to-shoulder shouting “we shall not be moved.”

Which brings me to Little Light’s next fabulous post. And I’m trying to do the exercise, and I can’t. Oh, I can think of things I want, but not without focusing a whole lot of energy and description on the shit I want to lose. Like: “I want a wholistic life, an even pace, space to breathe, space to be….NOT moving frantically from one crisis to the other and being worn out/ground down/beat to a fucking pulp and still coming up for more…” It’s really difficult. In the daily grind, I don’t have much time to carve out space to breathe. Space for myself, where I don’t have to get anything done. Space where I can revel in the joy of being alive. That’s key. It’s something my mother never had. And now she’s….the cancer has really spread in her liver, and she’s off the experimental chemo, and we’re taking a family trip to Chicago next month so my daughter can be a tourist—my mom wants to share some of her favorite places in Chicago with her granddaughter, while she still can. My mom, who spent her whole life being one of the women who let the good clothes hang in the closet, the good china stay in the cabinet (the china she bought on time as a young woman), the good cologne stay on the dresser…you get the idea.

I want everyone in the world to see with the eyes of an artist. To see beauty in this imperfect world.

I want everyone in the world to be loved, valued, cherished, supported. To have their talents developed. Their thoughts and emotions valued, not one over the other, but valued and recognized in conjunction.

I want a wholistic life, where all aspects feed into and nurture all the parts of my being in one coherent whole.

I want to feel free enough to not censure or edit everything I say or do. I want everyone to feel that freedom.

I want everyone to go to sleep with a full stomach in a warm, safe bed.

I want a nurturing community, a web of life, a place to lay our burdens down. I want many hands to make light work.

I want a culture of belonging. Solidarity that affirms our similarities and our differences.