By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

We are so frequently exposed to violence in the United States, most of us probably figure that, like pornography, we know violence when we see it. Enemies go to war, and we watch the carnage live on TV’s 24-hour news cycle. People physically harm each other on our streets and in our homes, and we tally their numbers with the rest of the tidy crime statistics. We replicate violent imagery in film and television, in music and video games, and eagerly consume it as entertainment. Yes, violence is pervasive, and most of us probably figure we have it pegged. But we’d be wrong.

Violence is not solely a physical act committed by one person on another, by one group on another, by one armed force on another. Violence ranges from the “Well, duh!” of, say, campus police brutality to the “WTF’s violent about that?” of, say, public budget cutting that abandons marginalized people to destitution. But we’d be wrong not to see the latter as violence. And if you have any affinity for the Occupy movement, a quick lesson in violence might be worth your while — a lesson set in the context of California’s two public university systems, Cal State University (CSU) and University of California (UC).

Let’s start with something relatively easy. This is the now infamous 18 November 2011 video shot at UC Davis, when a small group of students was pepper-sprayed directly in the face as the students were attempting to peacefully “occupy” the campus quad in solidarity with the Occupy movement and in protest of tuition fee increases.

Although the video reveals that no one struck a blow, students and their families, faculty, staff, journalists, the broader community, and even the university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, recognized the situation as a violent scene. It was also an unsettling one, because the perpetrators of the violence were agents of the state: two campus police officers who did their dirty deed with disturbing nonchalance, a nonchalance that indicated their actions were anticipated and approved by a higher authority, at least in general terms if not specifically for this event. In fact, someone in the university administration thought it was appropriate to send police to a nonviolent political protest armored and armed with paramilitary gear and weapons, including the canisters of pepper spray. Come to think of it, someone in the university administration thought the purchase of paramilitary gear and weapons was an appropriate expenditure for a public university, a public university that has increased student fees by more than 50% percent in the last three years. And it was, again, increased fees that in part motivated the students to assemble and seek redress of their grievances to begin with.

The UC Davis police action is a typical example of state violence, violence that is perpetrated by the state, or an institution or some other social structure, against the people the state serves. To help explain this concept, there is a handy sociological definition of state violence, originated by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, that lends some meaning to the Davis scene. He defined violence as the cause of the difference between a person’s potential state of being and a person’s actual state of being. For example, Somalis have the potential to be well fed; instead, due primarily to failed national and global governance (the state) and secondarily to global climate change (arguably the result of the same failed governance), the actual condition for many Somalis at the moment is starvation. State violence creates that difference between the potential and the actual, it can increase the difference, and it can prevent the difference from decreasing. State violence, then, encompasses the ways that the state prevents people from achieving their potential.

If you apply this to the UC Davis scenario, you’ll find that, in the short term, the students’ potential to exercise their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress of their grievances was not realized: Police violence prevented them from achieving that potential. And the pepper spray (a nasty form of nonlethal crowd control that forcibly silences free speech until the symptoms wear off) increased the difference between the students’ potential state of comfortably enjoying a moment of peaceful protest and their actual state of temporary blindness, searing pain in their ears, eyes, noses, mouths, and airways, inflamed tissue, gagging and coughing, and difficulty breathing. This is state violence.

In the long term, all but the privileged elite among the students will inevitably be harmed by the student fee increases, the issue that was lost in the pepper spray debacle and an issue that brings us to something that might be less recognizable as violence: economics.

In this case, the rapid, repeated increase of public university tuition fees at CSU and UC is harming some students and risking harm to others — particularly those who are low-income, working-class and middleclass — by postponing and, in some cases, preventing them from achieving their academic potential and, consequently, their professional and personal development potential.

The fee increases also reflect a related type of economic violence: inequity in the distribution of public education funds, which compounds the existing inequitable access to public higher education and all the ramifications thereof. Students who suffer from the inequity and subsequent lack of education are more likely to experience greater degrees of under- and unemployment, lower quality housing and community amenities, and less access to the public and private social, economic, political and cultural benefits of U.S. residency and citizenship. Hence, these students are disproportionately hindered or prevented by CSU and UC from reaching their potential, compared to privileged students.

We could chalk this up to the troubling economic times, but we’d be wrong.

While CSU and UC leaderships have raised student fees by more than 50% in the last three years, they have also seen fit — in just the last year — to jack up management costs. Cal State San Marcos created four brand spanking new administrative positions. The UC system increased some administrative salaries by as much as 23%. And CSU voted to increase the San Diego State president’s salary by more than $100,000 at the same meeting during which they voted in a 12% tuition increase for students. All of this is growing the systems’ non-teaching management at the expense — literally — of the students it is the universities’ mission to serve. This is state violence.

And those are only two examples in higher education, two among countless examples. With the amount of violence we consume on a daily basis, we should be connoisseurs, but we are not, and this void in our understanding contributes to the state’s ability to perpetrate violence against us because we too often fail to recognize it as such; hence, we do not challenge it. But gradually people are gaining awareness. The Occupy movement is testament to this. The movement is helping turn the baffled “WTF?” into a declarative “OMG — that’s, like, violence!” People are beginning to see that the state is a ready and eager perpetrator: burdening the people with debt to fund unwarranted wars and rescue multinational corporations; failing to effectively muster emergency services to rescue low-income urban residents from natural disasters; pricing public education out of reach of the non-privileged public; and assaulting those who peacefully protest such state violence.

We might imagine that the state will never abandon using violence against the people it is intended to serve — and we can hope that we’d be wrong.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at Ocean Beach Rag.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(My thanks to Brian Brown and the National Organization for Marriage for providing the majority of this fable’s dialogue and a significant amount of the narrative — from the last four year’s of NOM emails, media releases and website content, for example, click here …)

In 2010, California Federal Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. He determined that the ballot measure, which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman, violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Leaders of the anti-same-sex marriage lobby were crushed by the decision, although they continued to tilt at homophobic windmills until the final legal blow to their cause smote them impotent, along with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). But as time passed, they saw that traditional marriages were not, after all, diminished by same-sex marriages. Realizing the error of their rationale, they all trotted off to happier pursuits. All but one, that is. Brian Brown, ill-equipped for mainstream employment, struggled to redefine NOM’s mission, to reframe his marriage message, a message that would support a new cause and his continued income. And so, one day, he was found doggedly pursuing his mission along the streets of Fallbrook the Friendly Village. …

One blustery Wednesday afternoon, in a burst of unprecedented rejection, Brian Brown, president of NOM, struck down the request of a senior citizen who was seeking assistance to cross Elder Street in Fallbrook, California

“I only asked him for an arm to lean on, to step down from the curb,” said Rose Kaminski to the chubby Eagle Scout who came to her rescue. The petite octogenarian wore a mint-green polyester pantsuit and sneaks, the balls of her Peds, a perfectly matching hue. She knew she looked just lovely. “It’s a special day for me, so I’m trying to look my best. But my, oh my, that young man nearly jumped out of his skin when I asked for his help — I just had to pick up my marriage license, oy! The little nebbish, I guess he’s not used to folks being friendly. Between us, Bubele — shush, now, you didn’t hear this from me — he favors the Pillsbury Dough Boy, don’t you know.” She chuckled as she tucked a Macy’s shopping bag under one green arm and with the other hand clasped the Eagle Scout’s elbow. The poor boychick, she noticed, was devastated by pronounced acne. A little chicken soup, maybe? she wondered, as together they toddled across the street.

Meanwhile, pedestrians waylaid by Brown’s boorishness gave witness to a growing crowd that his unthinkable behavior did in fact happen, as wrong and outrageous as it was: an openly Christian man, throwing a little old lady’s harmless request into a dustbin like so many pieces of dirty paper, declaring his imperial will should trump her plea. Although, as the people chatted among themselves, no one was quite sure what that will was.

“Why would he do it?” they murmured to one another. “How could he?” And then, “Brian, Brian!” they called to him. “You must explain yourself, Brian!”

Brian considered turning tail and running like hell to his “Autumn for Marriage 2011: One Man, One Woman of Child-Bearing Age” tour bus, but he took so long to consider his exit that he was surrounded before his legs got pumping. And by then, the group was rapidly expanding, thanks to the residents of Shady Oaks Rest Home who had hit the street for their daily power walk.

Brian eyed the fomenting mass, whispered a prayer, rolled up his sleeves and said, “I’ll take your questions now.”

“How could you refuse such a benign request, Brian?” asked Cecil Adams, an adjunct professor of philosophy at Palomar Community College; although at the moment, he was moonlighting as a skateboarding pizza delivery person, a pragmatic move he would soon abandon with a modicum of nostalgia, as spring enrollment increased at the school. “All that sweet old gal wanted was a hand down the curb, Brian. And on her wedding day! Where’s your soul? Don’t you aspire to a higher plane? What gives, man?”

Brian put his right hand to his heart, NOM’s polling having indicated that 67 percent of respondents interpreted the gesture as strongly positive.

“Now, let me just preface this with my absolute assurance that I bear no ill will toward senior citizens,” Brian intoned. “I harbor no prejudice in my heart. I have senior citizens who are friends and family! Nonetheless, that woman is headed to meet her partner at Town Hall and apply for a marriage license, and that jeopardizes the definition of marriage across this great nation of ours. Senior-citizen marriage is threatening to strip millions of Americans of our core definition of marriage — of our right to traditional marriage!”

“Oh, yeah?” the philosophic pizza person asked as he passed out slices to the agitated crowd. “How so?”

“Senior-citizen marriage will undermine the institution of marriage as we’ve known it for millennia. That’s why I’m — we’re — on this bus tour — to make it clear that the people of this country will not be silenced and that activist judges who try to defend senior-citizen marriage do not have the right to impose their views on the people of this country. We need to make it clear to the Supreme Court and we need to make it clear to the out-of-control Congress. Senior-citizen marriage conflicts with marriage’s central purpose — of procreation!”

“Well, yep, she looked a bit old to have a bun in the oven.” Cecil twirled an empty pizza box on one finger and the audience politely applauded. “But you haven’t answered my question: How is senior-citizen marriage threatening to strip millions of Americans of our right to traditional marriage? That smacks of a non sequitur, man.”

“Advocates for senior-citizen marriages are threatening the definition of marriage as we know it. The sheer audacity of senior citizens, wanting to redefine marriage for everyone else, as though it’s their civil right to do so! The sheer ego mania of it is startling to the core, the ah, the very definition of marriage that is the basis of our nation, the procreational purpose that marriage is intended for, one husband, one wife, ah — procreating. You know what I mean.”

“Brian, are you speaking in tongues, man? You’re not making one iota of sense, dude.” Cecil sucked some pizza sauce from the COEXIST tie his former wife had given him for Co-parents Day.

“I know, but our polling indicates that 79 percent of respondents have a very strong positive reaction to statements about protecting their right to traditional marriage, so I’m supposed to say it whenever I get a chance — because you, too, have the right to traditional marriage and your right deserves to be protected from special interests who are trying to redefine it.”

“You take direction well, Brian. Gotta give you credit where credit is due, man. But I’m divorced, and you know senior-citizen marriages don’t hurt anyone else’s. How can you justify all this effort to oppose a problem that doesn’t exist? How can you try to stop seniors from being married? Come on now, guy! They might be a little shriveled, and there is that oldster talcum powder smell, but they’re still human beings. Don’t they deserve the same rights as the rest of us?”

“Yeah, that!” the crowd chimed in.

Brian eyed the riled folks and his sweat glands gushed. “We’re not trying to ban senior-citizen marriage, but we are against redefining marriage. And those people have civil unions at their disposal. Traditional marriage is the exclusive right of a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation. It’s what’s best for children, for families, for the nation!” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stopped the salty flow at his chin. “It is an abomination to redefine marriage as anything else. It’s just wrong. Very wrong. And we will fight back! And we will win! Because senior citizens don’t have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us. And, and they are too old for, you know, procreation!”

The assembly, comprising a goodly number of senior citizens, drew a collective gasp and stepped back from Brian — that he was imagining them in flagrante was grossing them out. “Damn voyeur,” they whispered, exchanging winks.

“Brian, Brian, Brian!” Cecil said. “Get your mind out of the gutter! Don’t you pay attention to the stats? We are an aging population. Don’t mess with the dominant demographic’s sexuality! The Baby Boomers, man — they might be cruising into their golden years, but they’re still having plenty of nookie.”

Brian shuddered. “Eeuwwww! It’s unthinkable — senior citizens — the death knell of traditional marriage — how can they? — marriage is for pro– procreation! — unthinkable — but when I do think — Sweet, Baby Jesus! — Grams and Granny going at — you know — gyuhhcchhh! — God almighty, it’s — disgusting!!”

A low rumble burbled from the depths of the throng, and Cecil, an intuitive philosopher, leapt back from its center just as the people swarmed Brian, who disappeared amid blazing knock-off purses, rolled newspapers and well-aimed Shady Oaks water bottles.

Cecil thought about stepping into the fray to intervene, but decided to let natural law run its course. Besides, he had to get back to Pizza Hut and explain the disappearance of four extra-larges.

As he skated out of sight, the mob quickly thinned, and Rose returned with a hefty man on her arm. “Did we miss something?” she asked the stragglers.

“Not much,” said Rod “The Rod” Robertson, a retired professional wrestler and occasional birthday party clown. “Just took care of some pipsqueak senior citizenphobe.”

“That nebbish who wouldn’t help me across the street? I told you about him, Bruno. His poor mother, what a disappointment he must’ve been, what a heartache.” She patted her fiancé’s arm. “Not like my Bruno.”

“Yes, Sweetie.” Bruno gave her a reciprocal pat.

“You look just lovely today, Rose,” The Rod said, silently mourning Bruno’s success.

“Thank you, Rod. Aren’t you a mensch. See you at lunch!” Rose waved as she and Bruno strolled up the walk to Shady Oaks. “Well, it takes all kinds, don’t you know, but between us, Bubele — shush, now, you didn’t hear this from me — that young man favors the Pillsbury Dough Boy.”

“Yes, Sweetie, I’d wager he does.” Bruno had heard the story twice before, but he knew how to make an old gal feel good. He gave her a love pinch and said, “Rosie, would you like to take a little nap before the wedding, Sweetie?”

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Note: A different version of this piece was published in 2010.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

On October 17, a group of Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM) students, faculty and staff sent an unusual letter to CSUSM President Karen Haynes and the Cal State system board of trustees. The letter requested that Haynes and the trustees break their unproductive silence and take action to ameliorate the hostile educational and work environment created by The Koala, a private, for-profit hate tabloid distributed at CSUSM since January 2011.

You can learn more about The Koala and its three editions (CSUSM, San Diego State, and University of California San Diego), owner George Lee Liddle III, and some of the student staff and advocates of the hate tabloid at www.CallOutTheKoala.com.

On October 20, Haynes distributed a blog post to the CSUSM community, seemingly in response to our letter and our Change.org petition. The petition reiterates our demands and delivers, with each petition signature, a copy of the letter into the president’s and trustees’ email inboxes.

One of our stalwart supporters wrote in response to Haynes’ post:

Wahoo! Just saw Karen Haynes posted a statement about “civility” and DID NOT NAME THE KOALA!!! Does she think this is enough? Cuz it aint!!! We will not back down! Occupy the koala! Stay strong! We will keep fighting the good fight!

Ditto.

Then there’s the little problem with the CSUSM resources to which Haynes’ blog post directs those students who’d like support from the university to feel safe on campus:

University Police: They can’t do anything, unless they can prove one of the Koalans has committed a crime.

The Dean of Students Office: Dean Blanshan can’t do anything, because the university believes that the white, male Koalans’ right to free speech deserves greater protection than the students of color, LGBTQ students and female students’ right to an educational environment free from hostility and harassment. Or, hmmm, maybe it’s that the university believes the privileged white, male Koalans are more likely to come up with the resources to file a lawsuit against the school than are the students of color, LGBTQ students and female students.

Student Health & Counseling Services: They can’t do anything, because they’re underfunded (maybe my allotted eight counseling sessions per semester went toward paying for CSUSM’s three new deans?) and appointments are backed up by months.

The ASI LGBTQ Pride Center: Interesting choice, given that they are victims of The Koala‘s hate!

The ASI Women’s Center: They’re also victims of The Koala‘s hate!

The Cross Cultural Center: And they, too, are victims of The Koala’s hate!

Office of the Associate Vice President for Diversity & Equity/Ombudsperson: Haven’t yet checked this one out. Shall we hold our collective breath?

CSUSM’s new Civility Campaign: Could President Haynes possibly believe that men who think rape is a joke and knocking out the teeth of a 10-year-old pedophilia victim is funny — because the idiots think they’ll grow back — are going to suddenly put on Civility t-shirts and make nice?

No, probably not. But apparently she does believe that platitudes and impotent resources restricted by tushy-covering legal counsel are an adequate response to the bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, obscenity and glorification of violence spread across the CSUSM campus via The Koala.

There is an interesting juxtaposition, though, of Haynes’ new post with her previous one, which describes what she believes makes a good CSUSM leader:

Walk the talk. The difference between positional authority and real power comes from honesty and building relationships. It is easy to talk about a set of values and institutional principles, but it is far more difficult to examine whether you adhere to them on a daily operational basis (emphasis mine).

Our leader is not walking the talk. Our leader has stumbled.

Thankfully, you can give her a helping hand by signing our petition.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at East County Magazine and San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Note: Photo from the CSUSM website.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

On Wednesday, April 13, campuses across the California State University system (CSU) hosted demonstrations — dubbed Take Class Action Day — to protest budget cuts to the Cal State system. The rally was the first time, since landing at CSU San Marcos in January, that I sensed that protest high of my otherwise misspent youth. As I approached the gathering, shades of rhythmic rebellion synced with my beating heart as students, staff and faculty sang the praises of the inexorable right to higher education; of the state’s primal responsibility for equitable, affordable access; of rolling coins in a desperate attempt to pay steadily-increasing fees as the dastardly CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and legislators shirk that responsibility. The specter of additional budget cuts wafted over the crowd in cloudy tones of gray, and you could almost hear Reed and California’s elected Tea Partyniks muttering behind closed doors that if their almighty god had wanted working class kids to be educated he would have made sure they were born into well-to-do families.

Nonetheless, the event’s enthusiasm was catching. The fluid crowd maxed at about 500 as students dedicated their lunch hour to political discourse and then trotted back to class. Of course, the local paper downsized the group to 200, a classic institutional ploy to diminish the effects of dissent, reminding me of the Equal Rights Amendment ratification extension march in 1978. We had one hundred thousand women and about a dozen portable toilets in the nation’s capital (OK, maybe it was a baker’s dozen), sending waves of us wading into the Washington Monument reflecting pool for relief.

Of course, at my age, thinking about peeing inevitably results in the urge to pee, so I headed home, made my toilet and settled back at my computer, where, lo and behold, I found an email message from Emily Cutrer, CSU San Marcos provost and vice president for academic affairs, inviting the university community to meet the final candidates for several new dean positions.

Aside from the socially inept timing — inviting folks to an executive tea party as the workers are waxing poetic about the increasingly restricted access to quality brain food — the practical question of the cost of hiring four new deans in the midst of a prolonged economic crisis reared its persnickety head and I couldn’t stop myself: I responded to the message, ever so politely, asking how much this would cost the university (and me, a longtime taxpayer).

The university’s response extended into seven days of fancy avoidance footwork — engagement and retreat, feint and riposte — at which point I forsook fencing etiquette and dropped off a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) letter of request for the salary range for the dean positions, information that public records law and a very pleasant employee wrested from the administration’s withholding grasp on the eighth day.

And here’s the bottom line:

$300,000: The school contracted with an executive search firm (Storbeck/Pimentel and Associates) to recruit four new deans at approximately $75,000 per search.

$600,000: The positions are classified as Administrator IV, with a salary range of $89,844 to $258,168. The current average Admin IV salary at San Marcos is about $146,690. Based on precedent and the search fee, it’s a good bet that the administration is expecting the new deans to land in the $150,000 range, at least.

$222,000: 37 percent of each salary is contributed to a CSU pool from which all employees’ benefits are paid.

$1,122,000: This is the approximate grand total.

Sure, $1.12 million doesn’t seem too bad for four new executives, from a corporate perspective. But think about it from another perspective, say, that of a student or faculty member. (Just don’t think about it from the perspective of CSUSM President Karen Haynes, who, last autumn, decided that a major “college restructuring” would best be conducted in the middle of the state’s fiscal crisis and would require the rapid deployment of four new deans, a decision made behind yet more closed doors — and didn’t that annoy those members of her team who actually believe in the university’s stated commitment to a “shared governance” style of decision-making by administration and faculty!)

But let’s put Haynes’ bulldozer on idle and think about this:

CSU student fees have risen 242 percent since 2002, including a 10 percent increase scheduled for 2011/2012. If the state legislature fails to resolve the current budget crisis, that pending increase could grow.

In the last two years, more than 2,500 CSU faculty and staff positions have been cut, and CSU personnel are still licking their financial wounds from the two-day per month furlough — essentially a 10 percent pay cut — that ended last June. (Click here for a little furlough humor.)

More than 10,000 CSU courses have been cut over the last two years, compounding the critical problem students already had getting into required courses and extending even further the amount of time and money students must invest in acquiring their degrees.

According to Don Barrett, CSUSM associate professor and California Faculty Association chapter president, “The CSU has no problem spending money on consultants even when we’re cutting everything else. We’re currently in bargaining for a new contract with the faculty. The CSU is using a consultant for it, while they have people on staff designated for bargaining. … [A search] consultant receives half of the dean’s salary for each position, which amounts to about $300,000 for these searches. Three hundred thousand [could] go into sections to provide students more courses. At $6,500 per section, that’s almost 50 sections we could add.”

On top of that, summer courses have been shifted to “Extended Learning,” a handy euphemism for revenue producer. Unlike the flat fee per semester that is subsidized by state funds ($2,220 for Spring 2011), Extended Learning classes must be self-supporting. And at $275 per unit, with an approximate class size of 20 students, each section will produce about $16,500, compared to the section cost of $6,500, which looks pretty darn self-supporting.

Now, producing revenue is generally considered a good thing, but doing so on the backs of public university students who can least afford it results in a failure to honor the CSU instructional mission: Of the 11 students I asked about the summer session, eight of them said the courses are too expensive, that they can’t afford to take summer classes.

As Barrett said, “You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. You’re cutting off the ability to have future workers who pay taxes, by excluding those people who have had to extend their education, rather than enter the workforce. … To have a[n economic] rebound, we have to have an educated workforce. It does no good to delay the creation of that workforce.”

And, shifting courses to Extended Learning is tantamount to sneaking in an unapproved student fee increase, which is damn dishonest.

This makes me wonder just where that $10,000 is actually going. … Hmmm, that would surely require another FOIA request, but I have to focus on making it through the last three weeks of the semester. Besides, I cannot be that polite again, not for a while.

But if you feel moved to do something, contact CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and your elected representatives and ask them to honor CSU’s mission by protecting the system from further cuts — and to maybe hold off on hiring new executives until the economy recovers. Just try to be more polite than I.

Love,
K-B

Chancellor’s office: 562-951-4000

Click here to search by your home address for your state legislators.

And boycott the Koch Industries companies that support Tea Party candidates.

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

One recent evening, in the cool aftermath of scorching midterm elections, I listened to a writer read his poetry to a haphazard group of Fallbrookians.

We were gathered at the Café des Artistes. Not the erstwhile Upper West Side watering hole of Manhattan’s creative aesthetes — those aficionados of dining amid the bare-nekid nymphs of Howard Chandler Christy — but the Café’s loving replica, brought to Main Street Fallbrook by the charmingly snarky Michael, himself a Brooklyn baby.

Now, Fallbrook is one of those bucolic towns most folks in San Diego have heard of, maybe, but they think it might be out in the backcountry, not abutting the north end of the county’s inland freeway. Up here, groves and chaparral vie for scarce water and battle encroaching development. Fallbrook catches the tailwinds of the unstaunched stream of commuters flowing between the city and countless cookie-cutter communities that ripple farther and farther from the sea.

But in Fallbrook, the landscape precludes any such sprawl, hemming us in with canyons and nature reserves and Camp Pendleton, home to the Marine Corps’ largest amphibious assault training facility and seventeen miles of undeveloped shoreline — potentially instructive juxtapositions that are lost on those compelled to spray their scent on expanding territories. With no new lands to mark, and with imported water ever more expensive, Fallbrook is gradually abandoning our agricultural tradition. We raze our groves, scrape the sage and mustard from our rolling hills, boot our pickers from their encampments, and infill the spaces with housing … when the economy allows.

And we are contrarians in other ways.

Fallbrook’s collective conservative vote stands in opposition to our progressive state that gave all but one statewide office to the Dems. And, since Election Day, the most diehard of rightwingers have taken regular breaks from stomping the damn snails and griping about the damn illegals to hopefully check the state website for who is ahead in the attorney general vote tally: Steve Cooley, the Republican would-be Prop. 8 defender from Southern California or Kamala Harris, the damn liberal from the north. Of course, not quite as many diehard liberals have been doing the same, just as eager for their Democratic defender of equality to win out over the damn bigot from the south.

Other than that race, Fallbrook remains relatively unscathed by the elections that shifted control of the House of Representatives from Democrats to Republicans. Besides, economy-driven voters are already suggesting they don’t expect much of anything different from the new majority. And in Fallbrook, politics is mostly, well, local, as in all about me local.

We barely notice the persistent rounds of musical chairs played by our rightwing representatives, bounced every few years by term limits. And, to be frank, most of us don’t even know the names of the folks running for our little Fallbrook advisory committees — unless one of them is a neighbor or coaches the kids’ soccer team or plays Bunco with the wife. We’re too busy sharing pocket gopher eradication techniques and passing flasks at the holiday parade, if we’re not in it.

Sure, we don’t care much for the other party, but for most of us all the wrangling pretty much balances out in the end — or wherever we are at the moment — and we simply live with our differences.

Some of us hope for a new quarry’s approval and the jobs we think it will bring, and some of us tenaciously fight it, for the unwanted things it will bring to our environment.

Some of us welcome back a county supervisor who will continue to swap our votes for grants for things foundational and things frivolous, and some wish we could have our new library without him.

Some of us weep when our gay children are denied a club on our high school campus, and some of us are fearfully relieved.

Some of us are grateful we can make the short trip from here to the coast for an abortion, and some try to talk us out of it.

Some of us wonder if we’ll be jerked from our families and dumped back across the border, and some of us don’t understand why it hasn’t already happened.

Some of us settle before the TV, eager for Survivor or CSI or The Office, and some of us stumble into the Café des Artistes, eager for hope, for enlightenment, for camaraderie. There, we might find a novelist who tells us of the river of weapons that floods the U.S.-Mexican border just an hour away or a professor who wraps tales of her dog around the seeping sorrow of a lost mate or the memoirist who traded a lovingly handcrafted boat for the book he wanted more.

And on this recent evening, we — we romantics and racists, we faithful, atheists and agnostics, we veterans and peace demonstrators, we Republicans and Democrats and American Independent Party members who thought it was the same as being “independent,” so we really need to reregister! — we entered the Café and found the Buddhist poet physicist. He had us look at life with all its suffering and helped us laugh at it, because “Real Zen students don’t have TVs,” even though most of us do.

For all our prejudices and peculiarities, I sometimes wish Congress could make nice at least as well as Fallbrook. But if I understand Zen Buddhism correctly, that bumps me out of the here and now. So maybe I’ll just watch some TV.

Love,
K-B

Note: Thanks to poet and author Jon Wesick for the inspiration.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

The Howard Chandler Christy mural image is from The Berkshire Review.

California’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina died Saturday when her Retire Boxer Money Bomb exploded prematurely, killing Fiorina immediately and injuring a campaign aide. Fiorina, the infamously fired CEO of computer giant Hewlett Packard, was 56.

Distraught and slightly singed campaign manager, Marty Wilson, stood outside Fiorina’s Sacramento campaign headquarters as firefighters extinguished a small fire caused by the explosion.

“We don’t know what happened,” Wilson said. “Carly was getting ready to launch the money bomb email. She’d just put another million bucks into the campaign, but that was it; she wasn’t going to risk any more of her own money, so we really needed contributions. Anyway, the fuse must have been faulty. The thing went off in Carly’s face. It’s gotta be [U.S. Senator Barbara] Boxer’s fault. Or [President Barack] Obama’s. We demand an immediate investigation and an apology to Carly and the California voters, not only for this deliberate assault but for Boxer’s refusal to have an honest and serious debate about the issues during this crucial time for our nation!”

Paramedics treated Wilson on the scene for a minor head injury and first-degree burns.

The deadly explosion followed another life-threatening incident just two weeks ago at the Republican Party’s Hispanic 100 Awards Gala in Newport Beach. According to an event volunteer, Fiorina had been “slamming down tequila shots, trilling her tongue and shouting ‘Andale!’ in this really pathetic accent. Then she passed out. We thought she was dead at first. But, nope, she barfed and got up to dance.”

Republican Party insiders had purportedly been concerned about Fiorina’s “self-sabotaging behaviors” since she became an economic advisor to the 2008 McCain-Palin presidential campaign, which made Wall Street and CEO compensation reform key platform issues. Skydiving into a campaign event, Fiorina had become entangled in the lines of her golden parachute, preventing the chute from fully opening. Skydive experts at the time said she would have plunged to her death had she not had the presence of mind to pull the cord on her bonus chute. Still, she made a hard landing when she said Sarah Palin was unqualified to run a corporation, and the campaign fired her from the media circuit.

Although Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett Packard was longer lived than her time on McCain’s campaign, she suffered a more devastating crash from HP and was eventually ranked by Portfolio magazine as one of the 20 worst CEOs ever:

“A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005. THE STAT: HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.”

Despite her very public HP failure — or perhaps because of it — Fiorina was determined to prove herself in the public arena, and Boxer’s senate seat became her next target. She reconciled with Palin, who endorsed her in the primary, when Fiorina depended on the conservative Republican vote to topple moderate Republican Tom Campbell.

But just last weekend, noting Palin’s sagging polling numbers, Fiorina declined to appear with her at a Republican event in California. Palin’s husband, Todd, subsequently leaked a scathing email:

“Sarah put her ass on the line for you, Curly [sic]. She thought you were the real deal. But you and me both know you’re no Joe Sixpack. All that crap about starting as a secretary. You pulled yourself up with your family’s gold plated bootstraps. And now you can’t answer a simple invitation with a yes? Please explain how this endorsement stuff works, is it to be completely one sided, cuz if so, you don’t have a wolf’s chance in Wasilla of getting a cabinet seat in Sarah’s administration. You think you can throw a punch, but my Sarah can take you out in one shot! From a helicopter!”

Fiorina’s past job performance was not her only weakness on the campaign trail. She was A-rated pro-life in a pro-choice state. She supported offshore drilling in an anti-drilling state. She supported Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law in a state where 71 percent of Latino voters oppose it. And, in her op-ed piece announcing her campaign she highlighted her failure to exercise her right to vote: “Admittedly, I have not always been engaged in the electoral process, and I should have been.”

One of the few votes Fiorina reported casting was for California’s anti-same-sex marriage ballot measure, Proposition 8. That revelation, apparently intended to woo conservative voters, attracted the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay lobbying organization, which invested in anti-gay, pro-Fiorina advertising targeting Latino voters.

“Wouldn’t you know it!” said Juan Bautista, an independent gay voter, who was passing by Fiorina headquarters when the money bomb exploded. “One of the few times Fiorina bothered to vote, and it was for Prop. 8. What a poop she is, er, was. And the NOM ad, have you seen it? It’s pure manipulation. At least it’s not as bad as that pissy Sharron Angle ad telling Arizona Latinos not to vote at all. ¡Pendejos racistas!”

Most daunting of all Fiorina’s political challenges was her claim to be a jobs champion, which was contradicted by her corporate experience, noted for mass layoffs and outsourcing jobs overseas, strategies that have not been forgotten by California’s workforce.

Pedicab driver Bobby Sneed, who dropped off a fare just before the explosion, had little faith in Fiorina’s commitment to creating jobs for Californians.

“She laid me off from HP, shipped thousands of jobs overseas, and got a $45 million boot out the door. Now I’m essentially unemployed, she’s worth $120 million, and she was asking voters to give her money? Good lord! She wanted the senate badly enough, she should’ve just sucked it up and bought it, like Meg Whitman. Look, Fiorina soared to the corporate heights by whatever means she had at her disposal — and her dad’s telling her she’d never amount to anything surely motivated her — but she lacked the ability to translate her personal ambitions into a vision that captured the voter’s heart. And, I know it’s petty, but I couldn’t get beyond that snarl she was always trying to hide.”

Perhaps feminist activist Gloria Steinem captured the tormented essence of Carly Fiorina best, after Fiorina committed a live microphone faux pas in June:

“We had the prospective joy of two powerful women competing for a U.S. Senate seat. And in a moment of unintended, unedited honesty, what did we get from Fiorina? A pearl of wisdom? A poignant revelation? No. We got a snarky comment about Senator Boxer’s hair. That, Sweetie, is not feminism.”

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at The Progressive Post.

Note: Carly Fiorina image from Carly for California campaign ad; Carly punch, from Californians Opposed to Carly Fiorina Facebook page; Carly Out of Control from Carly for CA website.

California gubernatorial candidate, billionaire and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman was killed Saturday in a gruesome accident at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park during a campaign event, bringing to an end a tough campaign and a tough corporate executive-turned-politician. She was 54.

The Republican candidate was torn asunder when she became entangled in the tether lines of two animals, an African elephant and a domestic donkey. The animals had been positioned for a photo opportunity at a Whitman rally that had attracted hundreds of gun rights and anti-illegal immigration activists, and a smattering of Chanel-clad businesswomen.

Park employee Juanita Calderon, a shaved-ice vendor and college student, recounted the horrific incident.

“Whitman is telling this crowd of white people that she doesn’t own a gun, but if she did, gun control fanatics would have to take it out of her cold, dead hands. And then all these people cheer, and some NRA nut — he’s wearing a t-shirt that says ‘You name it, I hunt it’ — he fires a shot in the air, and the elephant and the donkey go crazy! And Whitman is trying to placate them, but she’s caught in their ropes. And then, well, it was just horrible, really gross! And as security is carting the shooter off, he’s yelling, ‘It wasn’t me! It’s the gun’s fault — hair trigger! — the gun did it!’ And then the paramedics show up, but they just stand around kicking the Astroturf, because there’s really nothing they can do, because she’s, like, in pieces.”

The sudden end to Whitman’s campaign has left California Democrats stunned and relieved. Charles Garnier, a spokesperson for Jerry Brown, Democratic gubernatorial nominee and former Jesuit seminarian, said by phone that Brown was not available for comment, but offered the candidate’s condolences.

“He’s at church making a novena for her soul, and he sends his heartfelt condolences to her family and campaign staff. … Guess she won’t be a whore for the unions anymore, cutting deals for endorsements. Uh, hey! Am I still on the call? Oh, shi—! Hey man, don’t print that! What’s the real story here: Whitman’s swapping endorsements with unions to save their fat pensions while she cuts everyone else’s or my sexist comment? Well? Well? Oh, you guys’ll just go for the juice, but the union pension deals are the story. It’s the pension deals, you whores! But, no, Whitman won’t talk about that. She’ll just play the victim, like she’s never used the word herself. Whore, whore, whore! Oh, but, yeah, she’s dead. Never mind. Bye.”

As news of Whitman’s death reached the public, reactions revealed mixed opinions of her, her candidacy and her legacy — even at an impromptu memorial Saturday evening, outside her home in exclusive Atherton, California.

There, a consultant to California’s troubled Republican Party, who spoke on condition of anonymity from behind a hedgerow of oleanders, suggested Whitman’s faulty campaign was symbolic of the party’s schism between extreme conservatives and moderates.

“Meg didn’t understand how to finesse the duality of the party or of independent voters — she needed them most. But she tried to placate our loonies by opposing gay marriage, while she supported gay adoptions. She wanted to put limits on abortions, but she supported public funding. She hit her Republican primary opponent for supporting Democrats but she contributed to Senator Barbara Boxer and endorsed her in ’03. Meg was kind of bipolar, but voters are more schizophrenic, and she ended up antagonizing everyone. We all play to the factions, but she jumped in before she understood her target base. That kind of naïveté is as toxic as these oleanders. And, wow, quartered by an elephant and a donkey; it’s grotesquely poetic.”

Mourner and eBay Distinguished Engineer Mortimer Snerd begrudgingly acknowledged Whitman’s business acumen, but took issue with her forceful style.

“Yep, yep, she was a pretty good corporate leader type — except for the outsourcing and shady stock deals — sure enough. But she was always pushing people with her big CEO shove as though we were her puppets. May as well have tried putting a dictator in the governor’s seat. Yep, always pushing — just like Elaine on Seinfeld, except more hostile, and Meg danced pretty weird, too. Anyway, I guess someone finally pushed back, yep. Or, in this case, it was pulled back. That’d be Karma, for sure.”

Despite her critics, Whitman was widely recognized for her keen ability to acknowledge mistakes while shifting gears mid-spin. Her campaign staff began referring to her as the “Non Sequitur Nabob” when she became plagued with questions about her repeated failure to vote in public elections.

“I’m not proud of my voting record, and I have apologized for it, and tonight I apologize to everyone in California. It was not the right thing to do and no one is more embarrassed by it than me, and if I could change history, I would. But what I can do is tell voters about how I believe we can turn this state around. This state is in an enormous mess. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results.”

It is not yet clear if Whitman’s death will bring an end to the tenth-hour attack from publicist and attorney Gloria Allred, targeting Whitman’s illegal hiring and inopportune firing of an undocumented immigrant housekeeper. According to The Bay Citizen, a “very informal survey” of the “average Jo” on the street, conducted before Whitman’s death, revealed that “few people” had heard about the MegsMaidGate scandal — a very informal response rate that matched the number of respondents who had actually heard of Whitman, despite her substantial investment in her campaign.

Indeed, of the $138 million in expenditures reported by the campaign, $119 million came from Whitman’s personal fortune, a figure that seems to belie her statement at the September 28 debate between Whitman and Brown.

“I don’t think you can buy elections. I think Californians are too smart.”

Whatever Whitman’s ultimate legacy, her final gesture was one of generosity. A rumor that half of Whitman’s billion-dollar fortune will go to a new shelter for Atherton’s battered spouses and household employees was confirmed late last night by Atherton Mayor Kathy McKlite.

“You’d be surprised how much domestic violence our little community sees,” McKlite said by phone. “Abuse occurs in every socioeconomic category, but we really can’t expect our people to head to a shelter in Menlo Park! This bequest is a fitting legacy for Meg, given, well, things it’s not seemly to mention. Nonetheless, it’s wonderful to see some of Meg’s money go to a truly worthy cause!”

Love,
K-B

Note: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And you can help.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Crossposted at San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

The catsup and voting record photos are from Meg 2010 Facebook page; the debate photo is from the UC Davis debate website.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“My son was murdered.
He was murdered.
He was murdered.
He was murdered.
My son was murdered!”

– Wanda Johnson, mother of Oscar J. Grant III, shooting victim

I thought it was my Taser, not my gun
not my gun
not my gun
not my gun
I thought it was my Taser, not my gun!

– A confused rapid transit police officer

We’d have decided the same for a black officer
a black officer
a black officer
a black officer
We’d have decided the same for a black officer!

– A jury with no blacks

It was just a mistake, but we’ll pay
but we’ll pay
but we’ll pay
but we’ll pay
It was just a mistake, but we’ll pay!

– A public agency facing a wrongful death suit

Oakland mayor asked the people for calm in the streets
calm in the streets
calm in the streets
calm in the streets
Oakland mayor asked the people for calm in the streets!

– A black man who knows the outrage of police behaving stupidly

“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”
“You shot me!”

– Oscar J. Grant III

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

This piece is crossposted at The Progressive Post.

On Tuesday’s election

We got so many calls from Steve Poizner [Republican gubernatorial candidate], I figured he was having an affair with someone in the house. But my husband said it wasn’t him.

The four San Diego County candidates who ran for judge because God told them to must have misinterpreted him — they all lost. It’s one of those Fundamentalists are from Mars, God is from Venus sort of things.

Over martinis: Don’t you know any single Marines? I need to be ravaged.

Mother: Last night, after eating pig snouts and sauerkraut, I watched a dwarf in a medieval costume hawk ale to the college students outside my hotel. Oddly cynical.
Daughter: That might be the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

The volume of campaign collateral littering my mailbox confirms that Tuesday 08 June is indeed California’s primary election: I’m buried in the noxious stuff. So far, our mixed-party household has received fifty-eight pieces of propaganda from candidates, special-interest ballot measure sponsors and for-profit slate-mailing scoundrels who promote whichever campaigns are willing to pay (one of the truly heinous banes of democracy … as are many candidates). And every piece of the dogmatic toilet paper is urging us to vote as its propagators see fit.

For your disgus— ah, entertainment, I’ve selected a few choice examples.

Let’s start with Joel Anderson. A seated assemblyman, Joel wants to fill Fallbrook’s termed-out State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth’s homophobic shoes. The candidate sent us nine pieces of propaganda explaining why “Liberals Hate Joel Anderson.” He apparently considers this a stellar endorsement.

Yet, I’m a liberal and I don’t know enough about him to hate him. Yet.

I reviewed his pieces for some redeeming virtue and read that he “took the fight to terrorists.”

“Cool,” I thought, “he’s a vet, just like my dear husband!” But I searched and searched, and Joel reports neither military service nor battlefield contractor status, which means he in fact did not see the armed conflict most reasonable people would have interpreted his message as suggesting.

I feel jilted, Joel. You try to woo me to your camp and then you spurn me with deception. I hope no one who really did take the fight to the terrorists gets her or his battle-hardened hands within reach of your wannabe-warrior neck. But, because I’m not such a bad person for a liberal, I’ll help you out a little by hiding your misleading brochures from my infantryman husband. After that, you’re on your own, buster. Time to atone.

Oh — there is a clincher: Joel quotes Glen Beck, whom he mistakenly identifies as a talk show host, but who is actually an alien televangelist fleeing scandal in a galaxy far, far away. Glen says of Joel, “I wish there were more people like you. Thank you, sir, for getting it.” I wonder who got what from whom. …

As for us, we got plenty of propaganda from Proposition 16 sponsors — enough to paper the powder room. At first glance it seems an easy “Yes.” Who wouldn’t want to “Protect Our Right to Vote” — the propaganda’s claim?

The power industry, that’s who. The very manipulators who brought us the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the perpetrators of ever-increasing utility rates exceeded only by their profits, want voters to believe that they are trying to help us.

But, if you read the teensy print — that plain-black stuff they bury at the bottom of their star-spangled propaganda so folks won’t notice it — you’ll see that Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is financing Prop 16. This is because PG&E wants to prevent public utility providers (as in “nonprofits”) from competing with them (as in “profit pigs”).

What is most gross about Prop 16 is that PG&E is usurping our citizen ballot initiative process to protect their monopoly from public utilities. That is, this huge honking corporation is using the very tool the voters adopted in 1911 to stop big business from controlling our state, and PG&E’s Prop 16 would amend our California Constitution to require a two-thirds vote for public entities, such as municipalities, to become energy providers.

And there’s one more dirty trick PG&E pulled: They slapped a bunch of Democratic candidates’ mugs on a slate-mailer endorsing Prop 16, which the Democrats oppose. Although it happens every election cycle, this is really bad form, buckos. PG&E, you are dirty rotten mendacious bastards! And even I am surprised by who agrees with me — check out this list!

Next to PG&E’s cynicism, the slate of four Christian attorneys who want to be judges seems almost mainstream: Craig Candelore, Harold Coleman Jr., Larry “Jake” Kincaid and Bill Trask are on a mission from God to run for San Diego County Superior Court judgeships.

Under the red-white-and-blue banner of BetterCourtsNow.com, the four candidates seem, well, red-white-and-blue. What they fail to reveal to site visitors is that God told them to run. You’d think with an endorsement like that, they’d be blasting it to the heavens.

Could it be they are suffering a crisis of faith? But sins of omission are still sins, so we can only hope they let God out of the closet before Tuesday. Or maybe they’ll call on their backer, El Cajon Gun Exchange, to nudge voters out to the polls.

There are a couple other little agenda items they also fail to share on the website, including their ultimate goal of a Christian takeover of government at every level and their opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

That’s a hell of an agenda, boys, but I have to warn you: My invisible friend told me not to vote for you all.

We’ll have to wait until Tuesday night to see whose deity wins. In the meantime, I can at least be thankful for the free TP.

Love,
K-B

The League of Women Voters operates a great searchable source of nonpartisan candidate and ballot measure information: SmartVoter.org.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt