(Kennedy Airport, Tuesday evening) I’m flying business class for the first time in my life, thanks to the good people in Spain. The Business Lounge in Terminal 7 is quite a scene. There’s a bar, a marble fountain, a spa, a bank of free computers, a counter with free snacks, a conference room, and on the walls, the “British Airways Collection” of original drawings by the likes of Sol Lewitt and Christo. I guess if you’re rich, you don’t have to pay for things like food and Internet access. Also, we are invited to leave our bags unattended in a side room. I guess rich people don’t steal stuff. I got in here through a separate security checkpoint where the line was short and–maybe it was my imagination, but the Transportation Security Agency people sure seemed deferential. I guess if you’re rich, even the government offers you efficient and friendly service.
Author Archives: Peter Levine
CIRCLE research competition opens
Today, CIRCLE (which is my organization) has released a research Request for Proposals (RFP). Thanks to Carnegie Corporation of New York, we have $500,000 to fund research projects on the civic development of high-school-age youth.
Meanwhile, I’m on my way to Spain today, for an education conference. I’m not sure whether I’ll post from there; I may. I’ll be back in the USA on November 7.
autumn
Autumn, at least in cultures influenced by Europe, is supposed to be the final season in the annual cycle, an elegaic time in which we savor the last warmth and last color before winter’s death and spring’s rebirth. If fall has any advantage, it is only Shelley’s “deep, autumnal tone / Sweet though in sadness.”
But not for me. I think of fall as the first season, the time of rebirth and renewal, when the annual cycle starts anew with its fresh faces, when careers (academic, judicial, athletic, and political) are launched, and when the sticky mid-Atlantic heat finally dissipates so that we can venture out of air conditioning, quicken our pace, clear our heads.
Rosa Parks: two thoughts
1. Until Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, public transportation systems in the South bolstered white supremacy through de jure segregation. Today, Montgomery runs 16 integrated buses, but the larger Alabama city of Birmingham has no public transportation system at all. Those facts exemplify a more general trend. In the 1950s, we had a fairly robust public sector and substantial economic equality, although African Americans were excluded and, in institutions like the Alabama bus systems, flagrantly denigrated by the state itself. Today the government is mostly careful not to discriminate on the basis of race. But it provides totally inadequate public goods for everyone.
2. The following is pretty well known but bears repeating: Rosa Parks was not just a nice lady who was tired one day and suddenly refused to give up her seat. She was also a skilled activist for social justice. The evening that she defied Jim Crow, she was on her way home to mail materials about the local NAACP election. Membership in an Alabama chapter of the NAACP was a radical step that required physical courage. Moreover, Parks had gone to the Highlander Folk School to study nonviolent social change with an interracial group. Highlander was then directed by Miles Horton, a great radical American who, as Nick Longo shows (pdf), was a direct disciple of Jane Addams. Addams, in turn, had learned politics from her father, an associate of Abe Lincoln. Parks’ political lineage could equally well be traced back to W.E.B DuBois and the other founders of the NAACP.
Dr. King said that Rosa Parks provided a good example for the desegregration struggle because she was recognized as “one of the finest citizens of Montgomery–not one of the finest Negro citizens–but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery.” It is important to notice what “citizen” meant in this case. Parks was not just a volunteer, a member of civic associations, and someone who wanted to vote. She was a self-conscious and sophisticated political activist who belonged to a powerful political network with a long history. Thus the story of Rosa Parks is not only about individual acts of courage and principle; it is also about organization, theory, and tradition.
[In an earlier version of this post, I implied that Rosa Parks’ civil disobedience occurred in Birmingham, which is not the case.]
criminalizing policy
I don’t know how many people agree with the following letter in yesterday’s New York Times, but it expresses just the view that worries me most right now:
This investigation [of the Plame case] is not simply about the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. operative or politics as usual. It involves the lies and deceit of an administration in taking this country into a war of incredibly stupid proportions in which the mainstream media, including your newspaper, played an important role.
The writer wants to make the criminal investigation of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby (and perhaps others) into a literal prosecution of the Bush Administration for its conduct in the Iraq war. Of course, I realize that the invasion was an enormously consequential decision: consider the 2,000 American dead and the more than 25,000 dead Iraqi civilians. At least in retrospect, it looks like a terrible choice. I also realize that the administration was dishonest in the prewar argument. However, politics is generally a serious business. Whether we provide military aid to Colombia, whether we permit or ban abortion, whether we prohibit or legalize cocaine, even where we set Medicaid reimbursement levels–these are decisions with life-and-death consequences. Moreover, participants in these debates quite routinely lie. It is crucial that we handle even the most consequential (and even the worst) of these decisions democratically, by arguing for one side and trying to mobilize popular opinion. Bringing criminal charges is a way of evading the democratic process.
Furthermore, I reject the diagnosis that we had a poorly informed national deliberation about whether to invade Iraq because some administration officials resorted to malicious leaks and general dishonesty. That’s true, but it’s far from the whole story. Even given the advantages that an incumbent administration holds in debates about foreign policy, the Bush team could have been challenged by the Pentagon, Congress, the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton and alumni of his administration, the Blair Government, academic experts, the press, and average citizens. The failure of almost all these groups to mount a challenge is evidence that we have a deep and widespread problem. Prosecuting people in the Plame case will do nothing to fix it.
I am not arguing that Patrick Fitzgerald should refrain from indicting anyone. He may conclude that laws were broken, and then the rule of law requires accountability. What I object to is the interpretation that the Plame investigation has put the Bush administration on trial for the whole Iraq war. That would be a dangerously undemocratic development–not to mention an excellent way for everyone else to dodge responsibility.