Laila Lalami

As you may have heard, the historian and activist Howard Zinn passed away last night in Santa Monica. You can read the AP obituary on the NPR website, which of course mentions his A People’s History of the United States.

Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, A People’s History was — fittingly — a people’s best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003. Although Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion editions were published, including Voices of a People’s History, a volume for young people and a graphic novel

At a time when few politicians dared even call themselves liberal, A People’s History told an openly left-wing story. Zinn charged Christopher Columbus and other explorers with genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.

I believe his last published piece is this contribution to a Nation forum on Obama’s first year. He did not sound optimistic in the least.

Recently when I read about the rioting by African immigrants in the southern Italian town of Rosarno, I assumed it had something to do with their precarious situation under the law. But in an opinion piece Roberto Saviano (the author of Gomorrah) says he thinks the riots were a revolt against the rule of the Calabrian mafia, which controls all sorts of economic activity.

An immigrant who lands in France or Britain knows he’ll have to abide by the law, but he also knows he’ll have real and tangible rights. That’s not how it is in Italy, where bureaucracy and corruption make it seem as if the only guarantees are prohibitions and mafia rule, under which rights are nonexistent. The mafias let the African immigrants live and work in their territories because they make a profit off them. The mafias exploit them, but also grant them living space in abandoned areas outside of town, and they keep the police from running too many checks or repatriating them.

The immigrants are temporarily willing to accept peanut wages, slave hours and poor living conditions. They’ve already handed over all they owned, risked all they had, just to get to Italy. But they came to make a better life for themselves — and they’re not about to let anyone take the possibility of that life away.

The last line of the piece, especially, is very moving.

Photo: Marco di Lauro/NYT

I am well aware of the fact that I am the kind of voter no elected politician wants to hear from, particularly not after an election. I’m in favor of bank regulation, gun control, and the public option; I’m against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the continuing occupation of Palestinian lands, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the use of torture; I support the right to marriage for all and I also don’t want anybody telling women what to wear or what to do with their bodies. In this country, such views are liable to get you labeled a godless socialist. But I will still say what I think.

I was excited about Barack Obama’s election and I really wanted him to succeed. I still do. But after one year in office, I don’t think he has delivered any significant change on the major issues facing the United States. He allowed major banks to receive taxpayer money, but did not demand accountability in return. His work on the public option was so anemic from the start that it was no surprise at all when the option wasn’t included in the Senate version of the health care bill. He expanded the war in Afghanistan, which he’d pledged he would do, but he hasn’t imposed a definite timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, despite his promise. It is now possible that some of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners will stay in detention forever, without trial. He hasn’t categorically outlawed torture. He has completely ignored the rights of gay citizens and he hasn’t stood up for women’s reproductive rights during the health care debate.

Many people still think that Americans are better off with Obama. Usually this means “better off than with George W. Bush, or John McCain, or Sarah Palin.” This is true, of course, but are we supposed to be happy that the country is not run by an idiot, a megalomaniac, and another idiot? They point out that Obama banned water-boarding, or that America’s image abroad has improved, or that he helped nullify Ledbetter v. Goodyear. Those are all good things, but they don’t weigh enough in the balance after one year. And this voter, at least, feels she has the right to expect more.

I’ve been busy over the last week with all manner of academic work (preparing for classes, committee meetings, applications to our graduate program, etc.) and haven’t had a chance to update the blog, but I did want to pop in here after I heard the news about the horrific earthquake in Haiti. I am sure many of you want to donate money, so I wanted to post a link to this very interesting article on how to choose a charity.

What do you need to know? First and foremost, is your favorite charity already working in Haiti? Have they had personnel there for years, with contacts in affected areas? Do the really know the country and the local leaders who will help deliver aid quickly and equitably to those who need it most?

If an organization isn’t already set up and ready to go in Haiti, your donations are going to go to help them build an infrastructure, set up offices, and hire staff. It makes more sense to donate to an organization that already has these elements in place. This might seem obvious, but in the aftermath of the destruction caused by the tsunami of 2004, organizations who had never worked on the ground in affected areas raised hundreds of millions of dollars, much of which never reached its intended recipients and succeeded only in bolstering the stature of the organizations.

As for me, I donated to Doctors without Borders, who seem to have a decent record in Haiti. Please give, if you can.

A propos of Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the always incisive Mr. Fish had this cartoon.

Cartoon Credit: Mr. Fish at Truthdig

It has been disappointing to see so many of our leading artists and writers line up in defense of Roman Polanski. Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher who once said that the Muslim veil was “an invitation to rape,” has now been confronted with an actual case of rape, but appears to think there should be an exception for genius filmmakers. Levy has drafted a petition in defense of Polanski. It is true that Levy has fought against rape—but in regions like Darfur and Bosnia. Now that the perpetrator is in his own backyard, he talks of his outrage as seeing Polanski “apprehended like a common terrorist.”

The October 8 issue of the New York Review of Books includes this short piece by Gary Wills, a damning account of how little Barack Obama has done to restore the system of checks and balances:

George W. Bush left the White House unpopular and disgraced. His successor promised change, and it was clear where change was needed. Illegal acts should cease—torture and indefinite detention, denial of habeas corpus and legal representation, unilateral canceling of treaties, defiance of Congress and the Constitution, nullification of laws by signing statements. Powers attributed to the president by the theory of the unitary executive should not be exercised. Judges who are willing to give the president any power he asks for should not be confirmed.

But the momentum of accumulating powers in the executive is not easily reversed, checked, or even slowed. It was not created by the Bush administration. The whole history of America since World War II caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch. The monopoly on use of nuclear weaponry, the cult of the commander in chief, the worldwide network of military bases to maintain nuclear alert and supremacy, the secret intelligence agencies, the entire national security state, the classification and clearance systems, the expansion of state secrets, the withholding of evidence and information, the permanent emergency that has melded World War II with the cold war and the cold war with the “war on terror”—all these make a vast and intricate structure that may not yield to effort at dismantling it. Sixty-eight straight years of war emergency powers (1941–2009) have made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order.

The truth of this was borne out in the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency. At his confirmation hearing to be head of the CIA, Leon Panetta said that “extraordinary rendition”—the practice of sending prisoners to foreign countries—was a tool he meant to retain. Obama’s nominee for solicitor general, Elena Kagan, told Congress that she agreed with John Yoo’s claim that a terrorist captured anywhere should be subject to “battlefield law.” On the first opportunity to abort trial proceedings by invoking “state secrets”—the policy based on the faulty Reynolds case—Obama’s attorney gen- eral, Eric Holder, did so. Obama refused to release photographs of “enhanced interrogation.” The CIA had earlier (illegally) destroyed ninety-two videotapes of such interrogations—and Obama refused to release documents describing the tapes.

You can read it all here.

At one of those dinners that can happen only in Los Angeles, I found myself seated at a table with an American community organizer, an Australian banker, an Israeli model/actress, an Iraqi human rights activist, a French businessman, and an Indian TV producer. Against all better judgment, the topic of Israel/Palestine was brought up. The banker turned to me and said, “I know you and [the Iraqi human rights activist] would disagree with me, but I support AIPAC. So does [the Israeli actress]. I think they’re doing a great job.”

The Iraqi activist and I exchanged a glance, wondering which one of us would open that particular can of worms. I cleared my throat. “Have you heard of J Street?” I began. “It’s a …”

The banker interrupted me. “Yeah, I’ve heard of those guys. They’re a bunch of well-meaning American Jews who don’t know what it’s like on the ground.”

As I said, this gentleman was neither an Israeli nor a Palestinian, so I imagine that whatever he knew about “what it was like on the ground” must have been at second hand. Still, the whole conversation made me realize how entrenched AIPAC was, and how much work an upstart like J Street has to do.

This weekend, the New York Times Magazine ran a rather long article by James Traub about J-Street. The lobbying group’s positions are summarized about halfway through the piece:

According to its “statement of principles,” [J Street] favors “creation of a viable Palestinian state as part of a negotiated two-state solution, based on the 1967 borders with agreed reciprocal land swaps” — the formula envisioned by the Clinton administration in its 2000 negotiations with Yasir Arafat and Ehud Barak. Ben-Ami says he also favors Jerusalem as the shared capital of the two states. On the question of talks with Hamas, classed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, J Street takes the cautious view that while we should not speak directly with officials, we should engage through intermediaries with the goal of finding interlocutors willing to live in peace with Israel.

This isn’t exactly earth-shattering. In fact, from where I stand, this doesn’t go nearly far enough. So to think that this group (which, let’s remember, is probably closer to representing the views of American citizens than those of a foreign nation) is having such a hard time being heard is really kind of depressing. In the end, as with so much else, it all has to do with passion:

J Street specializes in mounting campaigns that may appeal to the 92 percent [of American Jews] who care about other causes more than they do about Israel. Last September, the organization asked supporters to sign a petition demanding that sponsors revoke an invitation to Sarah Palin to speak at an otherwise nonpartisan rally on Iran. J Street says that more than 25,000 people signed it in 24 hours. [...]

This in turn raises a question about J Street’s prospects. As a lobbying group, would you rather represent the passionate few or the dispassionate many? The National Rifle Association knows the answer to that question. One administration official involved with the Middle East points out that Aipac cultivates single-issue partisans. Wielding the other 92 percent into a potent political force, he notes, will be “a major, long-term and uphill task.” He adds, “I’m not sure it can be done.”

You can read the entire article here.

Last night, when President Obama was delivering his speech on health care reform to Congress, I thought that there was something wrong with my ears. (Something that, as my friend A. pointed out, my health care provider would not be pleased about; they’re liable to re-classify it as a pre-existing condition.) I thought perhaps I had imagined the guy who heckled the President from the floor. But no, I hadn’t. There really is a Congressman Joe Wilson, he’s a Republican from South Carolina, and he really did scream “You lie!” while the President was describing his plan. Why is it so impossible to have an adult, reasonable conversation about health care reform in this country?

Gary Younge lays out a few possible reasons in a short piece that appeared in The Nation this morning. Here is how it begins:

Spare a thought, and maybe even a dime, for Kenneth Gladney. In August he and other members of the right-wing St. Louis Tea Party arrived at a town-hall meeting organized by Missouri Democrat Russ Carnahan to lobby against universal healthcare. In the spirit of this fraught summer, a fight broke out, ending in six arrests.

Who threw the first punch depends on whom you ask. But who got the worst of it was fairly clear. Gladney was taken to the emergency room with injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face and ended up in a wheelchair. His troubles were just beginning. Recently laid off, this particular anti-health reform protester, it turned out, had no health insurance. Last heard, he was still accepting donations for his medical expenses.

It’s not difficult to ridicule the American right. Its peculiar blend of paranoia, mania, fantasy and misanthropy has been given full rein these past few months. Those who demanded in July to see Obama’s birth certificate (which does exist) ended August invoking the British healthcare system’s “death panels” (which do not). That most of their claims were verifiably false was of little consequence–to them at least. At one point they insisted that if scientist Stephen Hawking were British and subject to the National Health Service, he would be dead, even though Hawking is British, alive and grateful to the NHS for his care.

You can read the rest here. As for Obama’s plan, I really urge you to watch what Dennis Kucinich has to say about it. We need the public option. Now.

On this day forty years ago, a twenty-seven year old colonel named Muammar al-Gaddafi overthrew King Idris of Libya in a bloodless coup. It seems to me that coverage of Gaddafi is broadly limited to two topics: his social antics (e.g. the tent he set up in the garden of the Hotel Marigny, his all-female bodyguard corps, his ridiculous outfits, and so on) and the Lockerbie bombing. One rarely hears about all the political prisoners who have been rotting in his jails for several decades.

A couple of years ago, the novelist Hisham Matar wrote a very moving piece about his father, Jaballa Matar, who was allegedly kidnapped by Egyptian security forces in March 1990 and then rendered to Libya. He has not been seen in nineteen years, and has not been heard from in ten.

How does one remain free from becoming a symbol or a victim? How do we remain whole and free from hate, yet truthful to our memory?

Life attempts to teach us about loss: that one can still find peace in the finality of death. And yet, my loss gives no peace. My father is not incarcerated, yet he is not free; he is not dead, yet he is not alive either. My loss is self-renewing, insistent and incomplete.

I was always told to expect to lose my father. Many Libyan political dissidents have been assassinated or kidnapped. But now I know that I had no comprehension of the danger he was in. If I had, I would have held on to him with all I could, or tried harder to persuade him not to engage in political dissent, perhaps. Regret is the cruellest companion for those of us who are left behind.

I did try to persuade him to leave his political work, because I loved my father more than I loved my country; or, to put it another way, I had learned by then to live without my country, but not without my father.

When Father was taken, the world did feel empty. For the first couple of years, our ship was lost, then we recovered our bearings and learnt that the speed by which one resumes living is no indication of the depth of one’s grief.

You can read the full essay here. More recently, the Guardian asked Matar about the release of the terminally-ill Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. “I think of [my father] listening to the celebrations of the prison guards at the news of al-Megrahi’s return,” he wrote. “The prisoners might have been given presents to mark the occasion. Then I think of al-Megrahi’s children welcoming him home.”