#827 – Dick Bernard: The 50th Anniversary of the "War on Poverty" Speech by Lyndon Johnson

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It came as a surprise to learn that today is the 50th anniversary of the speech that brought the words “War on Poverty” into the national conversation.
A lot of the national chatter in the last day or two is summarized here.
Back then, in early January, 1964, I had no clue about the speech, nor a clue that we were entering the world of poverty, of bare survival even though, at the time, I was fully employed.
Ours is an easy story to tell.
January 8, 1964, was a Wednesday, I was a young school teacher, in my first year of employment as a teacher, in far northwestern Minnesota. My wife and I lived in a tiny upstairs apartment a block from the school. She, too, had been a teacher – all of two months in the fall of 1963 – until she had to resign due to a kidney problem which ultimately led to her death two years later.
The tipping point from “normal” to “poverty” for us came unexpectedly but inexorably, and we went from normal early career pennies to less than nothing between 1963 and 1965.
In February, 1982, I wrote a family history for our son on the occasion of his 18th birthday, and here is what I said when our downward economic drift began in January, 1964:
“Late at night on January 6, 1964, Barb began to hemorrhage, and I drove her to St. Michael hospital in Grand Forks [ND]. I remember that it was an awful night to drive – very foggy. And we were scared, with good reason. But we made the 75 mile trip OK. Little did we know that Barb would not come back to Hallock again until March 6, 1964, and then would be only home for a week before going back into the hospital from March 14 to April 1. (Most of the time in Grand Forks she was in the hospital. For about two weeks, from February 11-24, she lived in a motel room to save money. That had to be an awful existence for her, since I had to work in Hallock, 75 miles away.”
(Son Tom was born February 26, 1964…50 is looming….”)
From then on, till her death July 24, 1965, our lives were constantly on edge, from day to day, literally, and any time I hear or see someone taking shots at the undeserving “poor”, I think back to those two years when our priority had to be day-to-day survival, rather than watching the stock market, or considering whether or not to buy a new garage door…the kinds of things the reasonably prosperous can do in this country.
Back then, the first several months after her death I had to struggle with avoiding bankruptcy due to uninsured medical bills which then seemed immense (public welfare saved my financial life that fall), but in today’s terms were relatively small.
The next few days, perhaps, the ‘chattering class’ and politicians especially will be figuring out how to position on what the War meant, or should mean, or doesn’t mean….
But today the people in poverty will again be struggling to simply survive the next 24 hours, with no interest in the fine points of law and policy that can grip my attention…and yours.
A few days ago, I did a piece on “The Homeless Guy” and at the end included a link to the most profound talk I ever heard about the poor, given in early May, 1982, by Monsignor Jerome Boxleitner, then-Director of Twin Cities Catholic Charities.
His words, Mgsr Boxleitner 1982001, are worth real reflection on this cold day in January 2014, the 50th anniversary of a speech about the “War on Poverty”.
POSTNOTES:
Once I’ve written something, I often ponder “missing pieces” that might go unsaid in what (hopefully) are relatively short musings.
In this one, I need to differentiate between normal poverty for people like myself, including young people just starting out; and the kind of poverty that afflicts people longer term.
In our case, back in 1963-65, I was employed as a teacher, without any insurance. We were both employed as teachers for only about a two week time period that first year, so for all intents and purposes, ours was a single income household.
Like many young people, then and now, we experienced less than ideal conditions, but with the prospect that down the road things would improve.
That is normal kind of poverty for the kind of people who have the luxury of reading this blog….
The crisis poverty, which preoccupied us from the Fall of 1963 till after Barbara’s death in 1965 is another thing entirely. There is no semblance of “control”. Anything unusual that happens, an unexpected cost connected with an automobile, a hospitalization without insurance, and on and on and on, creates an almost daily sense of hopelessness, rendering the victim incapable of doing so-called rational things, like looking at the bright side; or going out to look for a second job; or on and on.
The War on Poverty, then and now, is for people for whom daily life is a struggle, and will be a struggle for the long term, and is not easily insurmountable.

#826 – Dick Bernard: The American unCivil War of 2009 – ?. The Off-Year Elections of 2010 and 2014. The Wages of Rages, and Thoughts for Change.

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(click to enlarge any photo)

Nov 4, 2010, Woodbury MN

Nov 4, 2010, Woodbury MN


Ten months from today, a few more than 300 days, November 4, 2014, Americans will go to the polls to elect the entire U.S. Congress, a fair number of U.S. Senators, loads of State legislators, Governors and other officials.
As in all elections, there is a great deal at stake in this upcoming election. But non-Presidential years, as 2014 is, engage relatively few voters and less public energy and interest. This can carry huge long-term consequences. Too many citizens just don’t seem to get it.
Some years down the road, with the clarity provided by hindsight, historians will analyze the rubble of America’s 21st Century Civil War.
Decisions will be made as to when to officially begin the history of this war, “the first shot”, as it were, though wars don’t just erupt; they evolve. What happened, and why, will be among the questions to be explored.
We know that elections do have consequences. Take the November 2, 2010 election, the most recent non-Presidential-year election in the United States.
That election day I was an afternoon-evening election judge in an affluent section of my town.
I wrote three successive posts about that election, ending with this one, November 4, which includes links to the other two, for Nov. 2 & 3, 2010.
I don’t think I could be accused of over-dramatizing if I said that the 2010 election, overall, was a train wreck for Democrats and Progressives; and an overwhelming triumph for an energized Tea Party (which essentially took over the existing Republican Party).
Angry and fearful Tea Party voters turned out in droves at the polls Nov 2, 2010; The other side, the great numbers who had voted for President Obama the year before, simply stayed home.
And the results gave us the last three years and who knows how many more (with the Tea Party attitude in control of the country and, often, states).
In my opinion, the big winner in 2010 was Anger (“Rages”). Victory was propelled by an extremely unlikely set of allies.
The Tea Party Right was energized by anger. I don’t think I need to define the kinds of anger exhibited by these folks, culminating with their appearance at the polls November 2, 2010.
The Progressive Left was also energized by active anger, but rather than getting out to the polls, far too many sat on their hands during the crucial months before the election, and many didn’t even bother to vote at the time of the election. Theirs was sullen anger. It had an equal effect on the election, but opposite results for them.
In Minnesota, always among the top ranking states in voting, turnout in 2010 was 5% lower than the turnout in 2006 – 56% versus 61%*.
In the United States, the total turnout in 2010 was only about 67% (two-thirds) of the record turnout in the Presidential year of 2008. And it was many of the very same people who voted for President Obama in 2008 (and voted for him again in 2012) who apparently stayed home in the off-year of 2010.
Thus, “Rages” as plural, rather than singular in the title.
There have been consequences, with the 2010 takeover of Congress and state legislatures and Governors offices.
From this election comes the disastrous redistricting of the United States in the wake of the census; a deliberate balkanization of the U.S. set up on partisan political considerations. It was the candidates who won in 2010 who drew the legislative district lines for the rest of the decade, and who in many places, including Minnesota, spent a great amount of time working to make it more difficult for opposition people to vote, and to win in the future. It has been a shameful but very real scenario in many places.
We have all helped create what has become a do nothing Congress which almost nobody respects; on the other hand most incumbents who run will likely be reelected in November…. We deserve the representation we elect.
Nov. 5, 2008, Woodbury MN

Nov. 5, 2008, Woodbury MN


My theory about 2010 and the years since:
The Tea Party speaks for itself; on the other hand, far too many on the Progressive Left stay angry and minimally engaged because President Obama hasn’t done enough of this or that: the Affordable Care Act is not good enough; Guantanamo isn’t closed; wars have not been stopped….
Of course, on the right, the very fact that there was an Affordable Care Act, and an African-American President, and we seemed to be winding down our war effort made Tea Party types very angry and afraid, and it was leveraged into a heavy Tea Party vote.
On the left: “We elected him President. Now it’s his problem. Don’t ask us to help.” It was inaction with consequences. Most government policy comes through the legislative process, not from the White House.
Nov. 3, 2012 Woodbury MN

Nov. 3, 2012 Woodbury MN


So, what about 2014, 10 months, 300 plus days from now? No one knows.
The old saying “what goes around, comes around” could well be in play. The history for winners who demolish their enemies is not a pretty one…for winners.
Wars of all sorts for all times are fought by zealots with big dreams.
Those who fantasized about the (Tea Party) “permanent Republican Majority” a few years ago, or, for that matter, “A New American Century” that led to a debacle in Iraq, could have considered the disastrous Nazi dream of a “Thousand Year Reich” that had a run of roughly six years, ending in rubble in 1945 (here’s a powerful and unusual seven minute capsule of WWII in Europe, the Soviet Union and North Africa, beginning Sep 1939).
But it’s not only winners who need to learn from the past.
Those who feel they lost, or those who consider themselves somehow above political engagement, need to learn lessons too.
If “liberals” have learned their lesson, they will not sit on their hands these next ten months; they will engage with more “middle of the road” people with genuine respect and come to grips with the reality that they cannot win even small parts of their own agenda by declaring “my way or the highway”. They need to learn what compromise means in a political sense.
The left is stuck with what it helped to create in 2010, and there is a lot of time between now and November IF, and this is a big IF, the decision is made to get engaged in things like caucuses, to encourage people to register to vote, and to take time to understand and appreciate and truly respect the massive middle that will be the ones who make the final decisions in November.
2010 was a disaster for our country, in my opinion. We are not a “Tea Party Nation”. It is time to move on.
Nov. 6, 2012 Woodbury MN

Nov. 6, 2012 Woodbury MN


POSTNOTES:
* Minnesota voter turnouts in successive election years:
2006: 61%
2008: 78% (Presidential year)
2010: 56%
2012: 76% (Presidential year)
More data than you’ll ever want: about Minnesota and about the United States.
An excellent article in The Washington Spectator that just came in our mail, yesterday: The Politics of Faith and Fusion about political takeover and the future in North Carolina. I’ve subscribed to this newsletter for years. It is an excellent and always thought provoking publication.
As for Money and Politics: money is needed for political campaigns. Unfettered war chests from people and corporate entities who can pay millions is not necessary but a reality for now.
An uncomfortable truth which still exists in this country: there is still almost universal franchise for persons over 18 years of age. No matter the roadblocks which can be put up to deter voters, there is still the right to vote.
A piece of advice: Each one reach two…or many more
You have about 300 days….
Post-election 2012 Woodbury MN

Post-election 2012 Woodbury MN


Comments:
from Joyce D Jan 7: I, too, was an election judge in 2010 in an affluent Woodbury district. As I was signing voters in, I was appalled at the number of people who asked, “do I need to show you my ID?” Clearly, the tea party voters had been instructed to ask that; it could not have been a coincidence that the vast majority of voters in the district asked the same thing, nor could it have been a coincidence that they all replied angrily to my response that no, an ID was not required, “Well, it should be.”
The right wing is very well organized; I often think of W. Bush’s SOTU [State of the Union] speech after the first elections in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, when ALL the Republicans started waving fingers tipped with purple ink. Democrats are never that organized; I certainly would not want us all to walk in lock step like the Republicans, but we could certainly stand to do a better job of working together rather than working against each other, for example, when we vote for third party candidates who help put Republicans in office with a plurality rather than a majority of the vote.

#824 – Dick Bernard: "Christmas" Mail; thinking ahead as the New Year begins.

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This is a very long post, and includes very divergent opinions from several people. I pass it along because I think it is interesting, and of current interest and concern. I invite comments. I muse about how to break the ideological polarity that is slowly strangling us as a country. For those readers who do not know me: I was born in 1940, born and reared amongst the so-called greatest generation which survived the Great Depression and WWII, and is now most departed. I am a military veteran (Army 1962-63) from a family full of military veterans, documented at least as far back as 1862-63.
Among ample “Christmas” mail, were two e-items from people I know. The “forward” is printed in its entirety at the end of this post. Following it is an impassioned more personal letter from a friend I’ve known for most of my life.
A third comment, below, is a letter to the editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, written by a long-time neighbor two houses over from us, who’s a great guy, mid-80s, who if asked about us would say we’re great neighbors too, though it probably didn’t compute with him that he was, in effect, writing about us in his rant to the world, as we are “liberal” Democrats and active Catholics who might actually agree with portions of his letter. We never have we talked “politics” with him – one picks ones battles. The contents of his letter are not surprising, though it was surprising to see he’d actually written the letter. He and his wife are very nice folks, good to share a neighborhood with, as are we…. [Carol responds to this letter later in this post, before the “forward”.]
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Letter to Editor Dec 15, 2013

Letter to Editor Dec 15, 2013


I never decline the angry “forwards” – there are a few who send them regularly. I reply to them; most are false either in fact or implication, most are from people in my generation (older, social security and medicare recipients) and all are in one way or another seething with anger, resentment and full of fear.
But they’re worth looking at (at least so I think) and worth responding to. These folks are an ever smaller minority in this country, but they vote, and they are useful tools for those whose agenda is against their own selfish interests….
In the below instance, I sent the “forward” (“The typical U.S. household” one) to a number of friends, and got some interesting responses, which are passed along as received. I didn’t ask for responses, and I didn’t edit, or remove any. These are people sharing back their own feelings.
As for the folks who send along the angry and false stuff, I feel badly for them, but they simply energize me to do more to make sure their attitude does not result in the kind of “Tea Party Nation” we almost dissolved into between 2010 and 2014.
This is an election year, and if we want positive change, be aware of what happens when greed and anger prevail…. Become aware of the issues, register and vote.
My introduction to the “forward” as I passed it on: The guy who sent this to me is somebody whose Dad was an immigrant. He spent many years in the military, enlisted and civilian, and he’s in a network out west which seems to be heavily military oriented.
I might respond to the [originator] guy though, as with [my friend], who sent it to me, it is wasted words.
This is the bitter, angry, old fringe that still has a lot of power, fueled by anger and, as is said, money.
They believe their own propaganda. You know people like them, certainly.
The only antidote is to work like you’ve never worked to elect some viable alternative. I emphasize “viable”.
The responses to the “forward”, unedited:
from Joyce, a quote from Charles Pierce: “The Scary Liberal is still a formidable bogeyman to people terrified of their own best interests.”
from Jeff: I just delete this stuff… I am not sure what one can honestly say to it. If you posted a point by point rebuttal with reasoned thought, they would only delete it too. No generation deems worship… life goes on.
from Carol: There are no links to these guys, but could you pass this on??
I also am an “old geezer,” I guess (female variety). I voted for Obama. Twice. I don’t understand your reference to “tasting socialism.” As far as “seeing evil face to face,” yes – most any time we watch the news or pick up the newspaper. Evil has been around longer than you or I. I don’t happen to think “evil” resides in the White House (or in a President who happens to be of a different color than I am). I don’t choose to blame the Obama administration for the problems that started before he was even in office. Or those created by a greedy Wall Street.
People like you (and yes, it’s almost always old white men) make me sad. You deserve our nation’s greatest thanks for your military service/sacrifices. You deserve credit for your hard work, raising good families, and for voting. You do not deserve credit for your paranoia or racism. The world changes – with or without your approval. Your bitterness only serves to make people avoid you (trust me, I had angry old uncles…) Those outdoor biffies (my family had one) are gone – along with your “white bread” world. (Back then my German immigrant ancestors were treated with suspicion and persecuted here, by the way. There’s always somebody around we can find who’s scary, and to whom we can feel superior – if we choose.)
Adjust. It’s really not your/my world anymore. You act like “mostly the young people of this nation” had no right to vote for Obama – or maybe to vote at all, without your permission? Befriend someone who doesn’t look exactly like you (maybe one of those feared “immigrants”). You may get a whole new outlook on the life you have left.
from Peter (see also additional response in “responses” section): I’m always a little puzzled when you talk about “viable” candidates. There are several reasons for this. I understand that in your life you have worked in a domain where cooler heads were essential to progress, and moderation could actually work. At the national politics level, however, I don’t think anything works as designed anymore; it has been broken, maybe purposefully, so that now (as your correspondent below believes) money is key. So it boils down to this: money equals viability as a candidate. But we can’t win that game by trying to out-spend the opposition, especially when the opposition is not confined to party lines in the least. We’re playing tennis, while they play football.
That situation is so antithetical to democracy that until it is resolved I don’t consider that we have any vestigial shadow of the thing left to us. It is decades beyond time for national strikes and massive demonstrations, and these have been forestalled, so far, largely by convincing people that they are futile, and the rest by the simple expedient of news blackout. How many of the massive turnouts on the DC Mall this year reached the ears and eyes of, say, 20% of Americans?
What I think we disagree on here is that I believe working to elect a candidate who is “viable” is a dead end, that Obama is doing pretty good for a guy who certainly wouldn’t survive a full term if he stood up to the banksters and the fanatics, but a President is not the real power in the country, nor is Congress, any more. We are now non-voting shareholders in a wholly-owned subsidiary of what Jane Stillwater calls “War Street.” We all need to catch up to this, or we will continue in the downward spiral we see unfolding now. Under that scenario, when enough of us have died off from poverty and pandemic disease that the climate can stabilize, humanity may yet survive. In some very stunted form.
“They don’t think it be like it is but it do.”
Dick’s response to Peter about “viable”: Since 1787, the U.S. has been governed by people elected by rules in place at the time. In order to make any difference at all, you need to be elected, which means you need a majority of the people who vote, to vote for you. There is no alternative. The Tea Party types got in more because more reasonable people didn’t go to the polls in 2010. We got the bitter, anger, selfish folks we deserve, and we’ve seen the results – the Congress with the lowest approval ratings ever in 2013.
I always remember the advice I gave my sister when she was elected to a school board years ago. She would be the only liberal on what sounded like a very conservative board: “remember, that to get anything accomplished, you first need to find someone to second your motion; and then you need to find two more members who will also vote with you”. It’s simple common sense. And she ended up serving two successful terms. Governing by influence of money and raw power is how things work now. We are the ones who have to change that.
from Bob: Actually, it’s worse than “bitter and angry,” it’s downright stupid! It’s really too bad that some that close to the military is so ignorant. Apparently, when he listed his studies, it noticeably did not include civics, and his history teacher failed miserably. He hasn’t a clue what socialism is.
Then he says the very people who aren’t interested in voting actually elected Obama. And those are the same people traitors like him are trying to suppress in the voting process. He also has to understand the Constitution before he starts spouting off about patriotism.
Then he laments “No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less freedom,” most of which have been caused by the Bush/Cheney crowd who I assume he adores.
To put it mildly, this writer is a moron. I’m a “geezer,” but I’m sure not a friend of his.
from Howie: I am not sure why either you or Dick are forwarding this message to anyone. In doing so, you run the risk of putting it into the hands of other crackpots who are teetering on thinking in the same way. I get from one to several of this kind of rant every week. Some I critique and return to the person who sent it to me as a way of cauterizing the infection. Others go right into my “trash” file. I suggest you do one of the same. There is no need to tell others that there are crazies out there. We know. Ten minutes of Fox News accomplishes that goal.
from Carol: Dick- Sometimes I think it’s amusing/amazing to google a line from things like that “old geezer” rant you sent out. This one is all over the place – inc. versions with some interesting edits (below). But check out the end for part of a long online rebuttal… 🙂
from Carol, Jan 4, 2014, responding to Letter to Editor above: Interesting that your (really nice) neighbor blames the “degenerate liberal culture” and Democrats for the law since the state senate voted for it unanimously. And he’s pretty paranoid about it being targeted only against the Catholic Church – not the Boy Scouts, etc.
That “local attorney” has been filing these types of cases for like 30 years (the law firm where I worked was involved in the huge “Father Porter” case). If becoming rich were his goal, he probably arrived there long ago.
I see it’s everybody’s fault but the Catholic Church.
******
“There are those who want to destroy and change this land we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent and allow them to do it without a big time bloody fight.
This land does not belong to the Marxist puppet in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
We didn’t fight for the Socialist Communist States of America, we fought for the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”
on-line response from someone from “Youth Fix-it Brigade”
“So, Gray-Haired Geezer, please don’t stampede to the polls with your walker and your equally delusional friends. As noble as you think your sentiments are, we know they aren’t true. You’ll keep on voting to extend Social Security, to keep Medicaid around so I can subsidize the continuation of your artificially preserved life and you’ll keep sending back the same losers you’ve been sending to congress for the past 50 years. And, you’ll either cause an accident on your way to the polls or drive so slow getting there that you’ll prevent five members of my generation from getting to the ballot box on time to cast their more informed votes.”
* * * * * *
The “forward”, received January 2, 2014 from Robert, via Steve, via who knows how many others:
“The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. If all of us “old farts” have all of the money, then let us try to elect someone who might be near honest and not be after feathering their own nests.
They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are “Baby Boomers” getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We have worked hard, raised our children, worshiped our God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration.
In school we studied English, history, math, and science which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. Most of us remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience.
We remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25 cent gasoline, and milk and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don’t know what an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators. A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived those days.
We are probably considered old fashioned and out-dated by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Viet Nam. We can quote The Pledge of Allegiance, and know where to place our hand while doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends on the battlefield.
We didn’t fight for the Socialist States of America; we fought for the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag. We know the words to the Star Spangled Banner, America , and America the Beautiful by heart, and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We have lived what many of you have only read in history books and we feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America.
Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured, we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country, fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is our country and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent.
It was mostly the young people of this nation who elected Obama and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the “Hope and Change” which in reality was nothing but “Hype and Lies.”
You have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face, and have found you don’t like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or “Climbing the Social Ladder” to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the “Great Lie” in 2008 are now having buyer’s remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn’t have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the ‘Kool-Aid.’ Now you’re paying the price and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less freedom.
This is what you voted for and this is what you got. We entrusted you with the Torch of Liberty and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy house.
Well, don’t worry youngsters, the Grey-Haired Brigade is here, and in 2014 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like but we get where we’re going, and in 2014 we’re going to the polls by the millions.
This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It belongs to “We the People” and “We the People” plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren. So the next time you have the chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, Stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God for the old geezers of the “Grey-Haired Brigade.”
Footnote:
This is spot on. I am another Gray-Haired Geezer signing on. I will circulate this to other Gray-Haired Geezers all over this once great county.
Can you feel the ground shaking???
It’s not an earthquake, it is a STAMPEDE.

Dec 17 letter from someone I’ll call Jim, who I’ve known near 70 years, who is fond of sending “forwards”, mostly false, but this time, spoke personally to me:
“Mr. Bernard . You call yourself a catholic and you support the democrats and Obama. They support abortions even late term abortions. They also support gay marriage. Gay men have anal sex.(Sodomy) and call it love. Sodomy is one of the capitol sins that calls to heaven for vengance . And Obama says after his speech God bless America. I don’t think God listens to him. Israel is under the protection of God. How else could they have won all those wars with the Arabs when they were greatly outnumbered and out gunned. God has said if you support my people I will bless you and if you are against my people I will curse you. Israel can not be taken. Its under the protection of God. Things in our country are getting worse and worse since we took God out of our schools and public places. If kids don’t know the laws of God they will not keep the laws of men. Obama care is a joke and will not work. Hopefully the democrats will loose control of the senate in the elections coming up. Your are not getting any younger you better change your way of thinking before its too late. The last pope said to the Europeans you need to straighten out your moral house or your financial house will never get better. I think this applys to our country also. I suppose you say happy holiday instead of merry christmas.”
I responded, respectfully.
Haven’t heard from him since, but chances are in the near future will come a new batch of “forwards”, churned out wherever such things are churned out, most likely false or so put together as to be false.

#820 – Dick Bernard: The Homeless Guy

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UPDATE: This commentary has several comments. They can be found both in the Responses section of this post, as well as directly below the content of the originating post. One of the last updates, from myself, includes a few paragraph comment made in in 1982 by the then-Director of Catholic Charities of St.Paul-Minneapolis, Monsignor Jerome Boxleitner. It is an especially power commentary on the issue of the homeless and society at large. You can read it here: Mgsr Boxleitner 1982001
We’re accustomed to street folks at Basilica of St. Mary, so when I saw the guy standing in the parking area this morning, it was nothing unusual. What was unusual was that he was standing in the line of traffic into the church. He had a cardboard sign that said “Homeless”. I had to pass by him going into the church, and I said “good morning”, and didn’t leave a dollar.
I rarely do.
It was cold, zero degrees at church time, but sunshiny and calm, and this man was dressed for the weather.
This was not a desperate time for him.
I walked on towards the church, and the guy caught up with me and passed by muttering something about going to jail, which seemed directed at me, but he just walked on, catching up with some other guy with a backpack and the two disappeared towards nearby downtown Minneapolis.
There was a little twinge of guilt, but, honestly, not much. Basilica has a very active social justice ministry with a broad range of programs to assist the disadvantaged in many ways, and this man was within a block, or less, of a sandwich and a cup of coffee at the rectory, or coffee and donuts in the lower level of the church, and he wouldn’t be considered a nuisance, in fact he’d be welcomed. And the downtown Minneapolis Branch of Catholic Charities, that deals pretty specifically with homeless is three short blocks away. And we contribute a lot to both the Church and Catholic Charities.
Basilica is very heavily involved in helping those “down on their luck”.
Inside the Church, it was the Feast of the Holy Family, and the celebrant, Fr. Graham, preached a most meaningful homily about Mary, Joseph and the baby in the manger at Bethlehem 2000 years ago.
Most everyone, Christian or not, knows this story. Today, Fr. Graham put the scene in clearer context talking about what society was like back then: hierarchical and male dominated, women and children exceedingly vulnerable, an entire people essentially subjects of an alien government, nobody safe and secure. Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a smelly barn, as it were, surrounded by barn smells. No room in the Bethlehem “Holiday Inn”….
Fr. Graham didn’t know what I had experienced a half hour or so earlier.
The two experiences caused me to think a lot, today, about this entire issue of people and society.
At Basilica, it is recommended NOT to give money to the occasional panhandlers outside. It might seem a surprising position, but apparently is shared by other churches similarly situated: to give is to in effect enable unproductive behavior by such entrepreneurs as the man who I’d passed by. Charity is easily available, and given without question or judgement, but the movement to justice for such folks is not helped along by encouraging a career of begging, or so I remember the surprising column in our Church newsletter some months earlier. [NOTE JAN 2, 2014 see comment and link from Janice Andersen, and my comment, at end of this post]
But this day, my thoughts were also impacted by the sermon about the old days of 2000 years ago, augmented by the news of the previous day, announcing the cutoff of long term unemployment benefits by the Congressional Budget Agreement in Washington.
Was Basilica’s recommendation the same as the policy of Congress? How did these fit with the norms of the harsh society of 2000 years ago?
The man who was cadging me would have been pleased to get a buck. I don’t know if he was “homeless” – all I know is that he had a sign so announcing – an advertisement as it were. I also knew that he knew something about marketing, where to set up his temporary business for greatest likelihood of success.
How did he differ from other entrepreneurs, including those who’ll make a billion dollars this year alone?
Probably no difference at all: just a matter of number of zeroes following the $1.
Will we ever end the problem of stark inequity? Probably not.
Should we stop trying? Certainly not.
Is there a legitimate need for a social safety net broader than simply the man’s family? Of course, there is. Children and women are most often the victims of disequity; Vets, addicts, mentally Ill often fall through the cracks. And that’s where government, the private sector, and institutions like churches and ourselves come in. All are needed on the team.
Did I act appropriately, not giving the guy a buck? I don’t know. I think I pay for this guys care in other ways and I can understand and appreciate the Church’s position on the matter of discouraging panhandling.
But maybe I’m wrong.
Thoughts?
POSTNOTE Jan. 2, 2014:
from Janice Andersen of Basilica of St. Mary: Attached (Janice Andersen Sep 16, 2012) is something that was published in September 2012. I am not sure if this is what you were referring to in your note. This basically states the guidelines that the Downtown Congregations to End Homelessness agreed upon.
I would put a stress on the preamble, which invites people to follow their heart and conscience. There is no black and whit in this, for sure. Also, I put a stress on the first point, which encourages relationship.
Thanks for your thoughtful communication and dialogue!
Peace, Janice
Dick to Janice: The attachment is what I referred to. Thank you. Very helpful. This is a vexing issue, as can be noted by the additional comments. Lurking not far in the background for any Christian, of course, is the message that the divine manifests in the sick, the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, etc. Then the issue becomes how best to help, when you know that some (many?) are simply masquerades?
It has been a good dialogue, and I hope it continues.
UPDATES:
In addition to the following, there are comments made directly to this post. Click responses tab at the end of the post to see those.
I have not yet found the originating commentary from the Basilica Sunday newsletter, but did find an e-mail I wrote about a meeting I had attended at Basilica nearly five years ago which speaks for itself. You can read it here: JaniceAndersen022209 (Janice Andersen, who authored the commentary I speak of above, directs the social ministries at Basilica of St. Mary. She is a Saint, highly respected. “Families Moving Forward”, referred to in my letter, gives emergency housing to homeless families, and is a shared venture between about a dozen Minneapolis downtown churches.
from Carol T: Interesting, Dick. I understand how you felt. My son and family live in So. Minneapolis, and we take the Cedar exit. There’s almost always someone standing at the bottom of the ramp with The Sign. You don’t know my son, but honestly, he and his wife are some of the kindest people I know (and what a warm feeling to be able to say that 🙂 Both of them work in senior care, and are involved in more neighborhood helping projects than I know about. So I was as surprised as you were about your church’s position when my son lectured me long ago NOT to give to those on the ramp. He claimed that if you do, and then watch, they just head across the street to the nearest bar.
I think it was last winter when I was on my way to their house and it was below zero. There was actually a woman standing at the bottom of the ramp. Big sucker me – I stopped and gave her a little money. When I told my son and hubby, they both jumped on me…
My son knows the neighborhood, and I respect what he says. However. Once he was talking about someone they knew who they found out had fallen on the proverbial hard times, and they actually saw the guy standing on an interchange ramp… What hurts is that somewhere there may be that one deserving person.
Here’s what I did once. There was a young man (but already minus several teeth) standing on Robert Street with The Sign. I stopped and said that I was going to go eat across the street at Taco Bell, and if he walked over there and met me, I’d feed him. He did, and I did. He told me a story of how he was living in the woods with some people somewhere near Robert Street, in a shack which included an illegal heater, etc. He said he was looking for work but didn’t have a resume or any way for someone to reach him. I was teaching an ESL class near there on Robert Street at the time, and I told him if he’d show up at my next class with any info, I’d print him up a resume. Of course he never did.
Now there’s sometimes a guy in a wheelchair on the Cedar ramp. If I get caught by a red light, I busy myself digging in my purse or whatever – and of course feel really guilty. But also. If you watch how many drivers actually do “donate,” even if they are only handing over a dollar, those guys are definitely making more than minimum wage…
One other observation: Over the years I think only once have I ever seen a misspelling on one of those signs. Now, the general run of the population (I’m sorry to say) has a much worse record than that… Political protests and such – misspellings all over the place. I have this vision of them scheduling their shifts (there’s never more than one on those ramps) and then handing off those signs at the end… :\
But still it hurts – and it probably should. Maybe next time invite him to church…
PS from Carol: link here.
from Lydia H: Here are some of my thoughts re:your experience w/The Homeless Guy & its larger context from my own perspective.
For most of the 25 years I’ve been in Minneapolis, I’ve lived within a few blocks of Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis. It’s a regular part of everyday life for me to be asked for money when I;m waiting for the bus or walking somewhere. Sometimes I give money, sometimes I don’t.. Sometimes I feel guilty about not giving, sometimes I feel intruded upon by those who ask for money. As with your experience, sometimes “panhandling” feels like an “enterprise” —not desperation. As a low-income person myself, I think I have some “intuition” on this. Sometimes I don’t give simply because I don’t feel safe pulling my wallet out on the street with a stranger.
Over the last 25 years what I’ve noticed most—both “on the streets” and in the upper levels of “power” in our society (government & media) is an increased MEANNESS. Those at the top demonize the poor more & more, snipping away at what;’s left of the safety net. The latest attack is cutting $40 Billion from FOOD assistance, but, Minnesota hasn’t raised the welfare grant for families on the bottom in 27 YEARS—so,, while certainly still better than my home state of Texas (which is currently REFUSING to accept federal govt money to expand Medicare for healthcare for the poor)—something has shifted. And that means it’s also shifting at “street level”, too: random violence that makes no sense reported to regularly on the 6 o’clock news or considered “fun”, like the rampage of hundreds of teens (organized through Facebook) in a NY shopping mall.
Is “inequality” the reason for these things? In significant part, yes. But, I think it’s also a fraying of SHARED social expectations–whether to care about each others well being or that some behavior is simply totally UN-acceptable–regardless of one’s economic status. The Wall Street “banksters” felt no shame at robbing the nation blind and street thugs seem equally blind to conscience.
Yes, we must reverse the widening chasm of inequality. But, we must also close the gaps in connection and compassion. Raising the minimum wage or demanding a stronger safety net and more job creation is a lot easier than deepening our connections and compassion.
from Madeline: I don’t trust the motives of panhandlers, and have often thought, if anything, one should hand them a card telling where help is available. A buck plus a few others wouldn’t solve the problem of homelessness, unless this a very successful panhandling entrepreneur, which perhaps a few are, and if it is that lucrative, it really wouldn’t be legitimate need, but rather a scam. More likely, the few dollars received in this way would go for alcohol or other drugs.
from Jeff P: I always struggle with that, but we also give to local charities that help the homeless.
The one thing the billionaires and the panhandlers have in common, the income ends up tax free, the billionaires thru loopholes in the system, the panhandler as it is Cash. That is not a value judgment, just an observation.
Response to Jeff from Dick: I have a friend, who at the time was a Priest in an impoverished area of a major city. One time he told me about the ‘circuit rider” charity folks, who did the circuit of churches for handout, say, enough money for their family to spend the night at a inexpensive hotel. The pastors who knew each other knew these folks, since they were regulars. My friend said that some of them were really good at their pitches, and could really have succeeded in regular jobs, but for whatever reason they stuck with their street trade.
The essential difference between millionaires and the rest of us is, in my opinion, that they have (and know how to use) the power to make the system work in their behalf. The rest of us – the so-called 99% – have even more power, but for assorted reasons, like failing to vote, etc., don’t exercise the great power we possess.
from Judy B: I’ve often thought about the issues you raise in this excellent commentary. For years, I would give money, because need might exist — especially if children were involved. In recent years, I’ve walked by panhandlers without guilt. But I’m starting to feel guilty again. I don’t like my callous self. The other day, when a desperate-looking woman approached me outside [a major store] and said she needed money for food, I told her we would go into the store together and she could pick out the food she needed. She refused, but I’m going to try that tactic again.
from a person who prefers name not be used: One time [then-MN] Gov. Pawlenty wanted them to register as panhandlers??? So Nick Coleman, who wrote for the St. Paul paper, went down to Hwy 55 and asked a woman about her typical day. She said they work in groups, one on the street the other 3 women under a tree. By the end of the day they hope to be able to buy one bag of pot, one bottle of wine..and if they are lucky a sandwich. [Twin Cities homeless advocate] Mary Jo Copeland says not to give money send them to her.
from Peter B: More people should read Richard Wolff and Howard Richards on economic issues. My take is that unless there is a change in the cultural norms, anything we do perpetuates the status quo.
This doesn’t mean don’t give people money, etc., but it does mean that these are conscience-soothing but futile gestures. ON the other hand, the homeless guy can’t be making much even if he is merely an “entrepreneur,” so no harm in playing into his game.
Where we need to put our energies is behind substantive change of the rules of the game, which under capitalism are: private property is sacred, contracts must be fulfilled, and investors are free to put their money wherever they like.
If you look at these, they mean the following: if a person has nothing to sell that anybody wants to buy, that person is soon to be homeless, and subject to arrest and indefinite detention. All people, communities, states and nations are at the mercy of the “law” of supply and demand, so they must cut taxes, give away infrastructure, and do whatever the corporations like, or the owners will invest their money some other place where the labor is cheap and the regulations as thin as smoke. Moreover, people are essentially enslaved by this system as life-long workers with no hope of escape.
These cultural norms are totally made-up fictions. There is no “law” of supply and demand, no “invisible hand,” and no reason why a few men in some boardroom should get to decide what to produce, and what to do with the profits. It is a complete scam.
There are many surprising examples around the world in which people have taken over the management of their factories and shops, and manage the distribution of profits in an open and democratic process. But we don’t hear much about them, as the corporate powers that be fear them more than anything, and will stop at nothing to prevent more such successes. It’s why we’re supposed to hate the South Americans and the Europeans and so on.
Meanwhile, those places also enjoy healthcare and unemployment and retirement benefits just for being alive in this world.
So, I guess my take is that the presence of the “Homeless Guy” is a shameful thing, not on him, but on all Americans who have bought this bad deal.
from Dick, Dec. 31, 2013:
It appears that the comments have run their course, as always. As always, there is something to learn from each, whether agreeing or disagreeing.
The most powerful comments, doubtless, are those unexpressed: too close to the surface, too painful, too personal. There was one such comment yesterday at the end of which were some powerful words: “don’t print”. I didn’t, and won’t….
The homeless issue, like any issue, is not simple, and the closer one gets to the day-to-day work with it, including within ones own family, the more complex it gets, though the simple part is always the business of relationship, sometimes impossible to maintain.
I had no relationship context whatsoever with Sunday’s panhandler. His was the “storefront” I didn’t enter, but he did cause me to wonder.
Neither did I relate, as an usher, with the drunk street person who showed up at Mass on Christmas morning, full of Christmas cheer, there to celebrate some long ago memory, but by all appearances likely to interfere with a thousand or more others in the church in one way or another. The gentleman had no boundaries.
What to do?
Everybody was courteous with the gentleman, but one minute I looked and he was gone, most likely ushered out. For every one like him are a large number of others, seeking some kind of personal solace in the church, some very well disguised; some like the guy who quietly sat at the very back of the church, apart from everyone, his apparent wish, standing out, but not outstanding.
In my personal end analysis, with the homeless and the like, it comes down to trying to do a decent job of helping those who need help, wherever they happen to be on their personal journey. Top of the list has to be the most truly vulnerable, the children, and their mothers, and the mentally ill. But there are more as well for whom the family has to be “society” at large (it is called “government”): the people who have no lobby.
Back in 1981, when I was on the Board of Catholic Charities in the Twin Cities, I heard the need powerfully expressed by the then-Director and legendenday Fr. Jerome Boxleitner. I and likely others thought his message was so powerful that it was reprinted, and I’ve kept a copy in my file ever since. Here is what he had to say, then: Mgsr Boxleitner 1982001
Have a Happy (and contributing) New Year.
from Kathy M, Jan 1:
The ramps off 35W to St. Joan’s are “staffed” regularly with a revolving group asking for money. I frequently feel conflicted…randomly though seldom give a dollar.
Good discussion with comments and your wrap up. Anyone must be fairly desperate. I always think it would be humiliating to beg.

#806 – Dick Bernard: Beginning the Crazy Circus about Negotiations with Iran.

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Here is a sketch map of the environs of Iran, related to Minnesota: Iraq environs ca 2005001. I sketched this in 2005 during the Iraq war to give myself some context to Iraq and its region.
This is a good time to reacquaint oneself (or get acquainted for the first time) with the geography of Iran. Here’s the CIA Factbook entry about this very large county at the edge of the Middle East and south Asia.
Personally, I applaud the positive developments between the U.S. and Iran. Any effort to stabilize the relationship between our two countries is very worthwhile.
For the great majority of us, an effort to directly negotiate some agreement with Iran about anything is very good news. It has been many years since the U.S. – Iran relationship collapsed. It goes back to the U.S. sponsored overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected Mossadegh government in 1953; followed by our support of the Shah; and then, of course, the hostage crisis at the American embassy in Teheran at the end of the Carter administration.
One of the vivid memories of my life was going to see President Carter at a political event in Minneapolis in the Fall of 1978, and having to walk through a chanting phalanx of (presumably) Iranian protestors with grocery bags with eyeholes over their heads. At the time, if I recall correctly, the Shah was hospitalized at Rochester, and he had long symbolized the very worst aspects of the relationship of the U.S. with Iran, this very large and sophisticated south Asia country with a very long recorded history.
For some in our country, good news about more positive relationships with Iran is very bad news. As Cuba has been since Castro’s successful revolution about 1959, Iran is a convenient enemy. In a political context, for some, Iran is a very useful bogeyman. President George W. Bush identified it, along with Iraq and North Korea, as “the axis of evil” years ago. Of the three, Iran is the only scary enemy left (N. Korea is a very odd special case). And to some it is absolutely essential to have a viable enemy, for all sorts of nefarious reasons.
The big issue this time seems to be the nuclear issue: Iran’s supposed pretensions to build its very own nuclear bomb. Predictably, Israel, with its own major nuclear arsenal, is again politically drum-beating against Iran.
I won’t get into that argument.
Just a few days ago, unrelated at all to Iran, came a very interesting internet link with a history of nuclear testing in use in the world. It is well worth the seven or so minutes to watch.
It gives powerful context to the nuclear menace. Note who has “the bomb”…. It’s a good time to re-learn some old lessons.
Here is the text which accompanied the link:
“TIME LAPSE MAP OF EVERY NUCLEAR EXPLOSION EVER ON EARTH
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).
Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.”
Here is a link with an estimate of the current nuclear arsenal by world country. It gives an idea of who has what.
The always good “Just Above Sunset” provides a good capsule of opinion about the Iran developments as viewed by politicians. You can read the posting about Iran-U.S. here. We need to be actively and directly engaged with our political leaders, always.

#805 – Dick Bernard: The Kennedy-Johnson Years 1961-69: What did they mean to you?

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COMMENTS as received to original post:
from Jane Peck, Nov 23: I have been thinking about the explosion of the arts across Minnesota and the USA during the early 1960s. After hearing the speech JFK intended to give in Dallas I think I know why. He spends about 5 minutes explaining the crucial importance of the arts to all societies, especially our own. His efforts began a strong chain of events that continued after his death. The early 1960s boast the birth of the National Endowment for the Arts, in Minnesota the birth of the Guthrie, the Minnesota Ballet, MN Opera, Nancy Hauser Dance Company, not to mention the planning for our freeway system. Yes, taxes were higher… We got more than our money’s worth!
from Bruce, Nov 22: Thanks Dick for this exercise. Very interesting to read a perspective from all the folks I see at MAPM. I was two years old when JFK was assassinated so “out of the loop” but those times did in fact greatly impact my life and the lives of all Americans. From what I have read and learned, Kennedy wanted to end the craziness of the military build up. Although Vietnam would be an argument differently I do believe that he genuinely wanted to keep the military spending and growth in check. That obviously has not happened since that time. Where might we be if we had taken a different path in this country?
I would love to get a copy of his speeches. Let me know what I need to do.
Response from Dick: I have the extracts of the 16 speeches from the record on CD. The record does not seem to be copyrighted, as it is simply recorded portions of actual speeches given by JFK 1960-63. Simply request more information from me: dick_bernardATmsnDOTcom.
From John L. Nov 22: Great job Dick – I love reading the posts. For many like me that left HS in 1961, the next eight years would be the best and worst of times. And like many of my peers, I had no idea how this thing was going to end.

small campaign button one inch diameter from 1960 campaign

small campaign button one inch diameter from 1960 campaign


On November 15, I asked a bunch of friends to think about the following question and respond if they wished:
“Rather than focusing on “where you were, then”, or such, I’d really like you to reflect some comments about how the Kennedy-Johnson years (1961-69) impacted on you personally, and play out in your attitudes and work today.”
Nineteen folks ‘took the bait’, in an assortment of ways.
Whoever said whatever is presented exactly as conveyed by them. Four longer responses are towards the end.
All the responses are very interesting.
My own response to my own request is at the end of the post. I wrote it before receiving any responses. Also included is a post-summary.
William Klein: I have some deeply ingrained feelings about the Kennedy-Johnson years.
Positive Feelings:
1. Progress in Civil Rights leading to Johnson’s Great Society program.
2. The origin of Medicare in 1965 under President Johnson.
Negative Feelings:
1. Our involvement in Vietnam. The Vietnamese were trying to shed the yoke of French Imperialism and won the battle only to lose the Geneva Peace Accord. This led to our disastrous involvement with great loss of human life and national treasure.
2. The loss of respect of the Hoover’s FBI in their/his involvement of trying to smear Martin Luther King, JR with false statements, wire taps. etc.
Judy Berglund: The Kennedy-Johnson years brought us the Civil Rights Movement (started before JFK), the War in Vietnam, a War on Poverty. Those of us who came of age during those years were shaped by them. For years, my generation was split over Vietnam (our little boys had Scoutmasters who fought and teachers who were conscientious objectors. Veterans weren’t honored as they should have been, nor were conscientious objectors.)
I grew up in a conservative family, but became a liberal during this era. I believed the war was wrong, that we could fight poverty and win, that we could create a society that “judged our little children not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Most of us were appalled when LBJ became our president that fateful November day, but we shouldn’t have been. Like JFK, Johnson believed that government could and should be a source of good, that we can collectively solve our problems. His mistake was escalating the war.
The other day, I watched the first of many JFK documentaries, and I found myself asking, “What would have happened if JFK hadn’t gone to Dallas? What might have been?”
Charlie Rike: I have always felt, that if JFK would have lived, he probably would have been re-elected & the US would never have been so involved in the very life wasting mess of Viet Nam for those many years. What a waste that was in so very many ways & for all the Soldiers, Sailors & Marines that served their very patriotic duty going to Viet Nam. I am proud that so many served, but I think you know what I mean.
The evening of November 22nd we are having a special presentation remembering JFK at our local School Auditorium here in little Ol’ Pine City [MN], sounds very interesting & I do plan on attending.
Flo Hedeen: In 1962 my speech for the ND 4-H Speaking Contest earned me a Grand Champion. I spoke about Peace Corps, a new initiative with a fresh approach to world problems, birthed with the Kennedy administration and the President’s appeal to: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask instead what you can do for your country.” On graduation from NDSU in Fargo, ND, I was accepted in the Peace Corps to serve in the Dominican Republic. Helping the host country nationals with whom I worked through the Extension Service and in my barrio in San Francisco de Macoris was the least I did! Learning about and living in a culture totally different from my own and becoming an ambassador for Peace with Justice to the present day was by far more important. Thank you, President Kennedy, for launching a program that continues to serve the people of the Dominican Republic and around the world, bringing actions, not just words, and greater understanding of the world in which we live to the volunteers that now include my sister, Mary Ann Maher, 71, serving in the South Pacific. Way to go, Mary! Thank you!
Florence Bernard Hedeen – DR 18, 1966-68
Wayne Wittman: From 1961-1969 I experienced a citizenship conversion from confidence in my government telling me the truth to questioning the government announcements and fear that my government is consciously lying to me. I now know that that is the case and it saddens me.
Bruce Fisher: In 1965 I was twenty and a sophomore at the University of MN. I was just classified 1Y for the draft, thus not eligible for the draft. I really didn’t have much of a social/political consciousness. If I thought about Vietnam at all, I bought the Domino Theory, the communists needed to be stopped in SE Asia or we would be fighting them on the shores of CA. I woke up in the fall of ’67 with an entirely different perspective and in the primaries worked for Eugene McCarthy. It was because of LBJ’s war policy and the lies to the American people that accompanied that policy that has informed my anti-war, pro-peace attitudes, and my skepticism of those in power.
Michael Andregg: I am much more concerned with how letting them get away with murdering JF Kennedy, and later Martin Luther King etc., enabled an era of endless warfare for the United States and the end of great accomplishments for America like going to the moon, using the UN as it was designed to be used for peace and development, and similar objectives more noble than anything we see today. Yes, the militarists and covert assassination crowd is to blame. But wimpy, limpy liberals who watched it all unfold and sucked their thumbs while the evidence was massaged and the Congress corrupted also enable evils such as this. I apologize to friends who may be offended.
John Borgen: 1961 to 1969, those eight years, were formative for me. They include the years of finishing high school, attending college, getting married, graduate school, selecting a career as a teacher, negotiating a teacher-school board contract and developing a personal political POV [point of view] I would describe as bleeding heart socialist progressive.
John Kennedy didn’t particularly impress me. Looking back, pundits suggest, he was much more progressive in his intentions than seemed at the time. I was on tour with my college orchestra, actually in Bemidji, MN when JFK,s assassination occurred. I remember saying, “if LBJ is our president I’d like to move to Canada.” In retrospect, LBJ did some great things, actions that might only have been possible from a southern Democrat. I supported Bobby Kennedy before he was shot. Later, I supported Gene McCarthy.
The years in question were tumultuous. Some things from that era were beautiful and fun. Generally, they hard years of transition for Americans. One regret: I didn’t go to San Francisco in the summer of ’68. One good thing: I didn’t go to San Francisco in the summer of ’68.
It was interesting for me to write this and at the same time compare and contrast my attitudes, behaviors and feelings, then and now … and wondering how these will alter in the future. In 1961 my heroes were Miles Davis, Jack Teagarden and Jack Kerouac. In 1969 my heroes were Miles Johnson, Frank Rosolino and Jack Laumer. I like myself much more now than in the 60s.
Elizabeth Young: I was in my classroom at Burbank High School, Burbank, California, administering an exam to my 10th grade English class, when the news came in over the intercom that President Kennedy had been shot. I had to cancel the test. We were too shocked and upset for business as usual. Instead we all sat there in tears.
Fred Johnson: Have to admit to more than the usual self absorption with my personal life during these important years. I graduated from high school, college, got married, began teaching in St. Paul and my wife and I bought our first house during the ’60s. Major changes came to my work place, St. Paul Public Schools, during the Kennedy-Johnson era. Prompted by the growing Civil Rights movement and national legislation—Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of ’65—St. Paul began dismantling a de facto racial segregation system in city schools. The new laws and the racial unrest in urban American cities, including St. Paul and Minneapolis, combined to spur the integration of Twin Cities public schools during the 1970s.
Mark Ritchie: Kennedy helped me believe that young people could make a difference, Johnson helped me believe that anyone, including folks who grew up in poverty in the South could make a difference. I have never forgotten.
Kathy McKay, Iraqi & American Reconciliation Project: The era of President Kennedy was superimposed on formative years for me…later high school and college.
I think one of his lasting impacts on me was what I perceived as his absolute belief and almost “genetic” understanding of democracy. Despite skeptics who point to his family money and drive for power, I see Kennedy as honing his own world view before the presidency with his time in Europe and in the military. The commitment he made to public service and the call to others to join him in that service to country reveals to me the notion that we are all responsible for the activities, direction and welfare of our country.
“…ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do…” is, of course, legendary. I think it is emblematic of his entire presidency. He expected more from fellow citizens than others had, I would argue. He worked hard to do his part to make this a better country and a safer world…good model for peacemakers, in my opinion.
Dave Culver: The Kennedy-Johnson years were eight years that had the most important impact on my life, not much of it for anything good. During this time I finished HS (61-63; attended and graduated from college (64-67); started my HS teaching career and got married (67); and was drafted into the Army (68). The military dramatically changed my life for the worse and I would not have had these negative experiences had warmonger Johnson not reversed Kennedy’s course for getting out of ‘Nam. Thanks to skilled and dedicated doctors and a supportive network of family and friends I’ve been able to carve out a productive, fulfilling life for myself, but I blame Johnson and those who supported the war for me and my family going through a lot of unnecessary pain. Today I’m a very involved anti-war advocate.
Treffle Daniels: JFK had some physical problems which did not slow down his dreams for a better future.
Lowell Erdahl: Kennedy’s death lifted and empowered Johnson. He led the fight for civil rights knowing that it would likely cost the Democratic Party the loss of the South. If Johnson had kept us out of the Vietnam war he would have been a far better president.
Watching the 1960 Election Results come in at Valley City State Teachers College, Nov. 1960

Watching the 1960 Election Results come in at Valley City State Teachers College, Nov. 1960


Joyce Denn:I haven’t been able to answer your request because every time I start I feel overwhelmed. Those years witnessed such huge, incredible changes in this country and, indeed, in the entire world!
I was in grade school when Kennedy was elected, I was in college when Johnson announced he would not run again. During those years we had “take cover” drills in grade school – we’d dive under our desks, as if that would protect us from a thermonuclear war! I spent much of my childhood thinking I was going to die every time I heard a plane overhead and, since I lived not too far from LaGuardia airport, I thought I was going to die very often.
It was in 1967 that Israel took over East Jerusalem and the West Bank after the amazing 6 Day War; as a Jew, I was thrilled because my fellow Jews would no longer be seen as the small, timid, Yiddish-speaking people of my grandparents’ era, but, rather, as miracle-working soldiers and pioneers. It was a very, very heady time for American Jews, we thought Israel had won security from Arab attacks; we had no inkling of what lay ahead. I was graduated from high school in ’67, and I spent that summer in Israel; I visited the Western Wall before the Old City had been cleaned up and restored, I was with the crowd that walked around the walls of the Old City on Tisha B’Av (a tradition for that holy day of mourning for the fallen Temple) for the first time since 1948.
When I went off to college that fall, the ’60s were still part of the ’50s; we still dressed up to go into town, with gloves (white cotton ones in summer) and chic little hats that matched our suits. I remember I had a pink suit, though not one that resembled Jackie Kennedy’s. Those college years were scary and confusing, especially since I was only 16 when I was a freshman, totally unprepared for the turmoil that started in 1968 with the war protests, the student strikes, the free love movement, drugs, hippies, yippies, the violence at the Democratic Convention, the assassinations of Martin and Bobby. I think we became another country that year, one which my parents, I am certain, never reconciled.
As an aside, I have a connection with Mario (Bob) Savio, who led the Berkeley student uprisings. My Dad was Savio’s high school principal! Savio was the valedictorian and there was concern about his being able to give the valedictory address at the graduation because he had a terrible stutter. My Dad arranged for one of the speech teachers (I believe her name was Marie Dresser or Dressler) to coach Savio and, in the end, Savio gave his speech flawlessly, without a single stutter. Meanwhile, Savio’s father announced that he wasn’t going to let his son go to college – “I never went to college so my son doesn’t need to go to college either”. My Dad invited Savio’s parents into his office and managed to convince the father (the mother wanted her son to get a college degree, but theirs was an old fashioned Sicilian household, and the father ruled) to let Mario go to college. So, indirectly my Dad was responsible for the Berkeley student uprisings in ’64, which presaged the changes that would occur in ’68!
Those were also the years of the new feminist movement and, since I went to Smith College, the Alma Mater of both Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem (not to mention Sylvia Plath, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Julia Child, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush) feminism played quite a role in my college years. Gloria Steinem spoke at my graduation, and my Mom, who was firmly convinced of the inferiority of women, was shocked and appalled by the things Steinem said. The car ride home after the graduation, all three hours, was a steady monologue from my Mom about how anything a woman could do, a man could do better, and women should know their place and should not speak so brazenly, and so on.
Oh, how the world changed, and for the better!
The civil rights movement was another huge influence in those years, another shocker for both of my parents, who believed people of African descent were intellectually inferior. I had African American friends for the first time in college, another step in a huge journey!
I know this isn’t written well; there isn’t any way to summarize it all briefly, and I’m tired right now and still recovering from eye surgery, so the computer screen is a bit of a blur. I hope I’ve conveyed some of the incredible changes of those years.
Peter Barus: I searched my files on “Kennedy,” and the following came up, to my surprise. This was published [about2007], I think, on Ezili’s list [a Haitian who advocates on Haiti matters], where the article was that inspired it [What colonial education did to Africans | Ayi Kwe Armah]. I send it along because it reflects exactly my answer to your question, only touching on the subject of where I was then as a point of departure. Reading it over, I don’t see any word I would change.
This caught my attention, as in the year John F. Kennedy was shot, I, who would be described as a white, middle class American teenager, was receiving a colonial education in Nigeria. It was indeed, as this author puts it succinctly, an atrocious lie. In confronting this lie, I found myself surrounded by Nigerian kids my own age, who were living out the pretense that they had swallowed it hook, line and sinker, although it was clear they knew better. So it was a bizarre situation, in which the language of ordinary conversation admitted of no flaw in the seamless mythology of colonialism, even now that Nigeria was supposedly independent. We were forced to attempt to make sense in some way, around or under it; and in this we mostly failed miserably, and without understanding what was going on.
Upon my return to my own familiar version of Planet Earth, the northeastern United States of America, I discovered another astonishing revelation: the education offered here, with its magnificent schools, was an atrocious lie!
In the forty-odd years since I have tracked this lie to its source, I think. It was not easy, and I still cannot quite trust my own senses in this. But the Liar, I have discovered, is my humble self.
We all tell a story about life as it occurs to us. Something happens, and we speak about it, even if we appear silent. It is in describing to ourselves what we see, hear and feel that we erect this edifice of self-deceit. We do not make it up all at once out of whole cloth, but pile one stone of judgement and evaluation upon another, as it were. What I spoke of yesterday has now become the foundation of my belief of today, and shapes what I can build upon it. As I go along I erect a great deal of scaffolding to prop up the weak points in this structure of fiction I have built so carefully.
Why? Why do I say this, and why, if it is true, do I continue to build this fictional world? This is simple: it is a built-in function of the human brain. We are not designed to handle reality, uncooked. It is too fast, too chaotic, and too meaningless for us to survive it. So our brains have become clever at building models of the life around us, and these models, though they are completely made-up, are very effective as survival tools. They can also be very beautiful and rich, supporting magnificent traditions of human civilization, community and relationship. Left to themselves such traditions can produce generations of happy, healthy people, living lives of peace and joy. But our world is shrinking as populations grow. In Africa, many of these civilizations were destroyed in the encounter with the European version. But it is a mistake to think this had anything to do with their relative value. And it is a worse mistake to believe that today there is a “clash of civilizations” in which we must choose sides and join the battle.
When my brain-model of life does not agree with anothers, I discover just how deeply I am invested in the supposed truth of my perceptions. In my case, moving to Nigeria while a young person, and then moving back again, disconnected my attachment to my world sufficiently to provide me with a healthy skepticism about what many others take for granted.
I witnessed firsthand what the Sudan Interior Mission accomplished in Nigeria in the sixties, just about four years after “Independence.” Their version of education was abusive, repressive and violent, and all in the name of Jesus Christ. One of the students who graduated from my school learned these lessons well. He was to become the Head of State, plunging Nigeria into a generation of political corruption, leaving her ripe for the outrageous plunder that continues today.
The evils done by nations are hardly planned by evil masterminds. Rather they are the result of the destruction of communities’ very frames of reference for living. We see this now in Haiti, as the US State Department labors under a wholly inadequate and wrong-headed set of beliefs about history, the region, the people and the problems that only serves to wreck what functional models still exist. This cannot be fought head-to-head, though there often seems little alternative, because the models and maps by which we live from day to day are destroyed, leaving us without an operating system, perverting our own words before they are heard, twisting our actions to strip them of our intentions. Today’s victims and heroes become tomorrow’s oppressors and villains. Just look at what Israel has done to the Palestinians: victims of the Nazi genocide, now putting the screws to hapless Arab peoples. Am I antisemitic to say such a thing? Of course not. I am a white man, holding my own people to account for atrocities committed against people of darker skin color. I know only too well whereof I speak.
How to deal with this? One way is popularly called “speaking truth to power.” The reason this can be effective is that there is truth that is transcendent, that is true regardless of what our mental pictures indicate. This kind of truth is simple and undeniable. It can be demonstrated even to the willfully blind and deaf. It is contextual, meaning, it shapes our very perceptions of events. Such truth is decisive without coercion.
Our job, then, is to discern what these truths might be, and stand in them, and speak them loudly and unflinchingly. A characteristic of such truth is that it resonates with something deep in human being. It does not exhort us to hatred, or to deception, or to selfishness. And it recognizes the humanity of the other, even when that one is perpetrating terrible crimes upon the community. Ultimately it has the power to break the cycle of revenge and shame that grips us even after the small victories that seemed to liberate, but only transferred the bonds from dead to living hands.
Speaking and listening contain the keys to true power, power as distinct from force. Listening can be as creative an action as speaking. Truth can be spoken or listened into being, and we can all find examples of this in our own lives.
This is why I remain hopeful for our world, for our humanity, for our future. I thank you for the profoundly effective work you are up to, and I thank your friends and relations who have given so much as well. It is not the victories or defeats, but who we show ourselves to be in the struggle, that counts.
Carol Turnbull: OK, sucked me in here with that terrific Brian Lambert column. I am so sick of various “experts” coming out of the woodwork now (including on the front page of a recent Pioneer Press) to declare Oswald the “lone assassin.” (Some of them, of course, are promoting their recent books.)
I certainly remember “where I was” when JFK was shot (I had stayed home from work that day to play organ for the funeral of the president of Herbergers [Department stores]). Some years ago I got a little tired of all the conspiracy theories, and decided to do my own investigation. I totally believed that I would quickly decide in favor of the “official” explanation. Quite the opposite, as it didn’t take very long at all to say “Something is really wrong here.” I eventually collected a large 3-ring binder full of what I found – which is entirely from the Warren Commission Report and Exhibits, plus the subsequent Church Committee investigation. I got a bit obsessed, haunting the pre-remodeled downtown St. Paul library, where one had to go upstairs and take a teeny elevator into the depths to access the Warren Commission Exhibits, etc. (I think they’re out in the open now…) Guess I’ll have to trot out that notebook for the assassination anniversary as I’ve forgotten a lot.
I’ve worked in a number of law offices, and any attorney doing the kind of job the Warren Commission did would probably be thrown out of court. When you have supporting exhibits to a case, they’re carefully labeled and then an index is created. The Warren Commission Report had 20-some books of Exhibits – all thrown together helter-skelter with no index. A wonderful lady later spent a good deal of her time in indexing them. Sometimes what you find in the Exhibits contradicts what is in the actual Report.
The Warren Commission was told what to find – and then they obediently found it. (Gee, I’m sure that never goes on today…) Government officials were terrified that the Commission would actually find a link to Russia – or Cuba’s Castro – and all hell would break loose.
There were so many entities that hated JFK. The Mafia (per Lambert column, bless him) – A Mafia don was quoted as saying it wasn’t enough to get rid of Bobby Kennedy because if you cut off the dog’s tail, it would just grow a new one – but if you cut off the head, the tail would go away. The CIA was furious with Kennedy because of what they considered his betrayal in the Bay of Pigs (as were the Cubans in southern Florida). And back then, the CIA pretty much was running amok (that never happens now, of course). The military establishment was unhappy as it was rumored Kennedy planned to start bringing the troops home from Vietnam. (Some claim he had signed an order to that end which LBJ quickly rescinded.) Even J. Edgar Hoover was aggrieved, as word had leaked that Kennedy was going to force him into retirement after the next election. (He was past mandatory retirement age but was still there because he had “the dirt” on everybody…) Word was also out that Kennedy was planning to replace LBJ on his next ticket. It was “a perfect storm.”
I do not know who shot Kennedy – I don’t have a pet theory. That doesn’t mean that Oswald did it. It means that the investigation was incredibly sloppy (by design or otherwise), and now we will never know.
Oswald may, or may not, have shot AT Kennedy. Given his cheap rifle, and the time it took to fire it, there’s no way he could have gotten off three shots in the time frame (and I think any credible researcher agrees that there were at least three shots). A subsequent government investigation determined there were more than three, and maybe as many as seven. (I see that some yokel – who is a regular on Fox News – claims to have just done his own research, refuting that research. And he wrote a book.) The motorcade came down the street, then had to come almost to a stop underneath the Book Depository in order to make a very sharp corner. If Oswald was up in a window, why didn’t he shoot the President while he was right there? Instead, we’re supposed to believe he waited until the motorcade was down the street a ways, with a tree and Secret Service men standing on running boards obscuring his view – and then accomplished a shooting feat like no other.
Kennedy wasn’t perfect. We’ve learned a lot about his flaws and foibles over time. But in his short while in office, he inspired us to be a better people. He certainly deserved that his true killer(s) be brought to justice – and so did we.
Burt Berlowe: I never got a chance to vote for JFK. When he was elected in 1960, I was two years away from the legal voting age of 21. I had just begun a stint as a journalism student at the University of Arizona. Raised by parents who were active Democrats, I had become an interested observer of national politics.
When first heard Kennedy speak I was moved by his youth, his vigor, his intellect and poetic rhetoric, and, later by his call to public service. I remember being transfixed listening to one of his speeches broadcast over a loud speaker on the university campus.
The 1960s were clearly a watershed time in our country when the nature of the American Dream changed dramatically from the isolated self-centered yearnings that focused on individual welfare, societal ambition and conformity, into an emerging new reality that would expand the nature of dreams and visions beyond the parochial and personal to encompass the common good, a concerned view of the state of humanity and what could be done about it — a new journey into previously unknown places and bigger dreams with unpredictable and challenging outcomes.
The seven years of the Kennedy and Johnson administration were seminal moments in American history. They were the best of times and the worst of times when tragedy and triumph shadowed each other. They were a punctuation mark on our most turbulent and transformative decade.
JFK became the first president to have televised press conferences and his youth and charisma, along with his attractive family, made him a media celebrity. His election had signaled a sea change in American politics. He spoke eloquently about passing the torch to a new generation. He became the symbol and catalyst of a new generation of political leaders replacing the older, more established men who had preceded him in office, a trend that unfortunately ended with his presidency, along with the promise and potential of great things in a second term. Still, the imprints of his administration remain embedded in our culture – the step back from the precipice of nuclear war and the treaty to ban those weapons – landmark civil rights legislation, the peace corps and call to public service, a commitment to explore outer space – the feeling that anything was possible if we had the will to do it. After years of older, establishment politicians running the country, JFK announced that the torch was being passed to a new generation. He became a symbol of that new generation. For those of us who were still young, it was an inspiring message.
As a young president invoked a call for citizen activism and public service, the sixties generation emerged from the age of innocence and despair overflowing with hope. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)staged a civil rights conference in spring of 1960. A National Student Association (NSA) conference at the University of Minnesota drew more than a thousand participants, becoming at the time the only national forum for students. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commmittee (SNCC) gathered for a retreat. Led by groups like SNCC, the movement began its push into the black belt confederacy in the fall of ‘61, leading to the dramatic freedom riders movement. New and unexpected grassroots movements cropped up everywhere, among blacks, peace people, students, women, environmentalists, gray panthers, gays and lesbians, all organizing around an anti-bureaucratic model. The early ‘60s saw the dramatic rise and impact of the civil rights and women’s movements and mass protests against the Vietnam War.
It was a time of graduation for America. The stage was being set for the commencement of a new era of political and social change, a harsher, disruptive time when much of America did a full turn from the previous decade of innocence and family values and flag-waving super patriotism, questioning the policies, mores and standards of the previous decade, standing up for social change and hope for better times. The rebellion took many forms – from the raucous demonstrations against war and inequality to the mellow, idealistic “dawning of the Age of Aquarius” where a new counterculture generation asked “what’s wrong with peace, love and understanding,” and attempted to forge a new society based on that premise.
These were the new children of light, the pacifists and idealists of the time driven to struggle for a better world, echoing the words of Camus who wrote that “hope lies in man’s decision to be stronger than his condition.” As the Vietnam war and the draft interrupted young people’s dreams and hopes, an inspiring free speech movement and a burgeoning antiwar movement began on campuses across the nation.
In June of 1963, President Kennedy began a visible turn towards peace and an end to the cold war era. Addressing students at American university on the 10th he rejected a collision course with communist governments saying “if we cannot end our differences a least we cab help make the world a safe place for diversity. For in the final analysis our most basic link is that we all inhabit this small planet. A month later, he signed the nuclear weapons treaty banning tests in the atmosphere in space and beneath the sea.
There were indications that he may have ended US involvement in Vietnam in a second term – or at least considered it. What a change in history that would have been. The dreams and hopes that were shattered by the bullets that hit him never have come to full fruition. Still, there is a reason why so many remember that time and realize that it can never happen again.
For awhile it seemed like 1963 would end on a positive note – the march on Washington and MLK’s I have a dream speech , the beginnings of the women’s movement – the ways in which peaceful civil disobedience had withstood the violence that tried to stop it, the growing citizen movements that were standing up for peace, civil and human rights.
Then the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963 shattered the dreams and hopes of millions of Americans and people from around the world who had believed in the coming of Camelot. It was, at least for the moment, a triumph for violence, the profound statement that a few gunshots could bring down a popular young American president and send the world into a state of shock. We felt suddenly vulnerable and that we had somehow lost our innocence and confidence in the future. In those moments of numbness, would we forget all that had been accomplished during that seminal year in the areas of civil and human rights, in the hard-earned victories of ordinary people waging nonviolence and popular resistance. Would the violent moments – the Medgar Evers and JFK assassinations – the bombing of an elementary school, the beating of protestors, be the most remembered times of that year?
History tells us otherwise. Within a few weeks of the JFK tragedy, citizens were back on the streets peacefully demanding that JFKs promises of action on civil rights be fulfilled. Within a few months into the new year of 1964, President Johnson had signed landmark civil rights legislation. The people won. The dream remained alive. Like many other Americans, I have mixed feelings about the Johnson years – the landmark achievements in civil rights and other domestic issues seemed to be overshadowed by the escalating war in Vietnam that led to his decision not to seek a second term and throw the nation into political turmoil. The Kennedy assassination was a stunning realization of the impacts of gun violence and political turmoil – one of a series of such events targeting promising young political leaders in the 1960s. It had a major impact on the young people of that generation but has largely been forgotten by more recent generations who have no memory of that time. There have not been political assassinations in the United States in recent years. But the 20th century was the most violent in history. Instead of presidential assassinations we now have gun violence against average citizens in supposedly safe places to congregate in schools, church, movie theaters, shopping malls sports events, and other public venues.
Fifty years ago, in the early summer of 1963, I graduated from the University of Arizona and set out to pursue a career in my chosen field, moving from the cloistered and disciplined academic environment into the larger, more challenging world of professional pursuits and enduring relationships.
That year also marked another kind of graduation for me — an evolution from a concerned but largely passive observer of the political and social scene in America to an active participant in the process of social change, from reflecting and studying and dreaming to an active journey into the world of possibilities and solutions. I was inspired by Kennedy’s soaring rhetoric, youthful vigor, his compassion for the common man and his commitment to public service, and devastated by the violence that put an end to Camelot and left a trail of tears but also the remnants of hope on the American landscape. On the anniversary of his assassination, the tears and the hope mingle again in memory along with what ifs and what might have beens and remaining questions about who was responsible for the tragic act of violence.
It would be six more years before I would take the big, transformative step of participating in a national peace demonstration a year after the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the tumultuous Democratic convention, the election of Richard Nixon and the perpetuation of the Vietnam war, all of which would lead to years of political and journalistic activism.
The Kennedy-Johnson years set the stage for this dramatic personal evolution as well as the transformation of our country’s politics, culture and way of life. As we re-visit the hope of the King speech and the despair of political assassination, the legacy of that time continues to manifest itself in the extensive social change movements that rise up constantly to campaign for peace, justice and a better world. Because of what began a half-century ago, we will never be the same again.
Commemorative Record of JFK speeches 1960-63, published in early 1964

Commemorative Record of JFK speeches 1960-63, published in early 1964


Front and back jacket of a 33 1/3 rpm phonograph record of extracts of John F. Kennedy speeches 1960-63: JFK Speeches 001 A friend found this record in a garage sale and gave it to me quite a number of years ago; some years later another friend transferred the speeches on the record to cassette tape, and if anyone is interested, I’ve now had the cassette translated to CD format. The speeches are public record.
Dick Bernard: I was 20 years old when John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960. I was a junior in college and not quite old enough to vote. Two years later, in October, 1962, I watched JFK’s speech about the Cuban Missile Crisis in an Army barracks at Ft. Carson CO. We soldiers watched carefully as Kennedy spoke to us on the 9″ black and white TV owned by the Mess Sergeant. Cuba was not an abstract deal to us that night.
Of all the impact-full acts of these eight years, Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” stands out. Two of my sisters, one in 1966-68, and the other, currently, served in the Peace Corps.
As for President Johnson, while he’s remembered for Vietnam, he had a huge positive impact as well. I believe it was when he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that he said this singular action would cost the Democrats political power for the next generation. It was a true statement, and it reflected the courage and determination he had in this and other initiatives to do the proper thing for the country.
Of course, the business of race (and other things) remain very much alive and well yet today, but our country forever changed in the eight years of 1961-69.
Both Presidents believed in the power of the people.
I always recommend Martin Luther King’s 1964 book, “Why We Can’t Wait”, reflecting on the year 1963, published soon after Kennedy’s assassination, as a great window into the political life and times of the early 1960s. Especially read the last chapter. Only 34 when the book was published, Dr. King comments on Presidents he already knew personally, including Kennedy and Johnson.
Lyndon Johnson was a casualty of the Vietnam War, as was Hubert Humphrey.
By happenstance, I am an early Vietnam era military veteran, and my two brothers were directly involved in Vietnam. Those divisive years all came together for me in the fall of 1982 when I happened to be in Washington D.C. the weekend the Vietnam Memorial was dedicated. Never have I had a more powerful experience. I wrote about this in my 1982 holiday letter: Vietnam Mem DC 1982001
But all is not quite so simple. Just a week or so ago a good friend of mine showed me a Declaration of World Citizenship signed by President Johnson July 8, 1965. I wrote about this Declaration a few days ago, on November 9. You can read it here. In its quiet way, this declaration reflected a positive idea of the U.S. in the World, and led to subsequent declarations in Minnesota and many other places. Ideas like this one need to be resurrected.
Both Kennedy and Johnson were seasoned U.S. Senators when elected as President and Vice-President. Kennedy was a child of the elite; Johnson was a poor boy from the Texas Hill Country. My Dad and I visited Johnson’s birthplace in 1983. In many ways they translated their early experiences into leadership of a country.
This odd couple in so many ways took risks, inspiring citizens to action in diverse ways. Both made a positive difference. They made big mistakes. To be President of this immense complicated country is not a task many of us would relish. This was true for both President Kennedy and President Johnson.
POST COMMENT NOV. 22, 2013: Last evening I listened to the extracts of 16 important JFK speeches from 1960-63 (see photo above – I now have the extracts on CD), followed almost immediately by a fascinating talk by Prof. Ragui Assad about the recent and ongoing political situation in his home country of Egypt.
In a sense, in a couple of hours I revisited 50 years of U.S. and international history.
In the extract of one speech, JFK spoke of America’s 185 million population at his time in history; Prof Assad said Egypts population today is 84 million. Fifty years ago the U.S. had roughly twice the population of Egypt. (The U.S. population today is about 315 million; at the time of the Civil War, about 30 million.)
As the political world of Kennedy and Johnson was extremely complicated; so is the politics of present day Egypt and everywhere. But we tend to make such histories simple and shorthand them, and miss a lot.
In 1961, the enemy was said to be generic Communism; today it seems to have been replaced by radical Islam. One wonders if the enemy was/is is a real one, or one concocted or inflated by those interested in keeping populations split for political gain. Or something in between, in part real, in part made up.
We learned in 90 minutes last night that Egypt has complex political factions and factors now, full of nuances provided by its national, regional and international history; so did America then, and now.
In both, there seems a constant tension for a dominant ideology to emerge and be in control. Any us-them ideology that rises to the top of the heap always seems to fail, and we we never seem to learn that a sense of control is always temporary.
It occurred to me again last night that the best one can do is to work off the rough edges and gently move a society, small or large, in a more positive direction. And it is very important who the President is, but the President is a prisoner of events completely beyond his or her control.
Kennedy and Johnson are dead, unable to control the interpretation of their records as chief executives of this country.
I think on balance that they impacted positively.
But that’s just me.
How will we look back on today, 50 years from now?

#801 – Dick Bernard: Obamascares. The Insanity of it all.

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Last night, while watching the Daily Blathers (some call it “evening news”; a good friend, yesterday, referred to it more precisely and accurately: “CBSNBCABCFOXCNN”), I set to the task of sorting through the paper flotsam and jetsam from my Uncle’s apartment in rural ND.
Like tens of thousands of others, yesterday, and over time, I was trying to sift and sort through mail, receipts, records, etc., that some friend or relative was no longer able to deal with, due to death, disability, or otherwise.
As I sorted, the blather on the evening news programs was about President Obama’s contrition about the (insert your own words) continuing rollout computer problems of (insert your own descriptor), otherwise officially known as the Affordable Care Act.
Just three days earlier my Uncle had made an undesired but necessary move from assisted living, his home in town for the last six years, to the nursing home down the hall. His stuff stayed behind for someone else to deal with: an oft-repeated story everywhere in this country, every day.
In one box was the specific reminder of why he and his sister moved to town in the first place:
Heart Surgery001
It was a folder given to him after successful open heart surgery in April, 2006. The surgery was the only reason he’s still alive, but (in his opinion) that surgery is held as the reason he never fully recovered and could not return to his lifelong occupation of farming. Whether this is so or not can be argued forever. Nonetheless, he held off the grim reaper for what is now an additional seven years. While he couldn’t farm, his general quality of life was pretty good. And at near-89, why should he still want to farm?
Of course, the surgery, and virtually all of the other medical costs for other dilemmas since then, have come under the protective umbrella of Medicare and supplemental benefits of North Dakota Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
What gave him the wherewithal to financially survive, indeed thrive, as an independent farmer was the Medicare program signed into law in the summer of 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson. That earlier version of “Obamacare” was scorned then, too, as socialized medicine, and it was spared withering coverage by the “blathers” of the time by, likely, two main factors: 1) fewer and less technologically advanced news media outlets; and 2) media reporters who were more conscious of reporting news, as opposed to dispensing propaganda.
Now we are engaged in the great unCivil War of simply trying to implement a new imperfect insurance program (and even more imperfect computer program) that will cover more people more efficiently and effectively than the hodgepodge of legitimate and scam “insurance” that now faces America, and excludes from coverage tens millions of Americans, but not my only surviving Uncle and Aunt, who benefit from an assortment of programs which thankfully exist in their time of need.
We’ll get through this hysteria, I hope. For me, a survival strategy will be to quit watching the endless analysis, the faux news, about ACA, at least as portrayed on CBSNBCABCFOXCNN. It is all a bunch of dangerous nonsense.
POSTNOTE:
In the same ‘sifting and sorting’ session last night, we watched an excellent special of CNN on the approaching 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Familiar faces appeared there: Walter Cronkite, Lyndon Johnson, on and on…. Just a short while ago CBS celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 30 minute evening news program inaugurated on CBS by Walter Cronkite in the year 1963. Oh, how things have changed.
COMMENTS: one in the comment box below, and the following as well
from Corky: Just finished my 5 year repeat “internal flushing” of the colon yesterday and apparently good news. Now as to the news pundits who state that all these citizens really like their insurance . Or like the movie , the way we were or something like it.Is America brain dead? When you look at medicare billing and the significant reduced cost by medicare administration and the really miniscule and late payments by the insurance carriers . A $200 Dr. office billing and medicare reduces to $70 and medicare supplement F pays less than $20 (3 months after office visit), shows me the system is very busted and hooray for any proposed changes to health care. Michael Steele GOP guru even said this morning that constructive changes need to be proposed by GOP legislators! Did I hear that comment correctly or am I hearing impaired?
from Tref D: Just a lot of hot air on all sides. Eventually I hope it will work out for many folks.

#799 – Dick Bernard: The case for World Citizenship.

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UPDATE Dec 11, 2013: In early December, 2013, I asked Mr. Elling about the history of the document signed by Pres. Lyndon Johnson and Sec’y of State Dean Rusk in 1965. He recalled that it had originated within the Twin Cities community, particularly Stan Platt and others in business, like himself, and he was directly involved in the initiative. He was a downtown Minneapolis businessman at the time, and he was a co-signer of the final document.
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A week ago I stopped in to visit my friend Lynn Elling, and he gave me a 18×24″ poster of a 1965 proclamation about U.S, World Citizenship that had been stored in his house, and a 1971 letter from President Nixon’s counsel, John Dean, to then-Republican Congressman Bill Frenzel. Both were big surprises to me, and noteworthy for their content. They speak better for themselves than any translation I could provide. A photo of the poster is below, a pdf of its actual words is here: United States Declaration of World Citizenship The single page Nixon administration letter is here: Frenzel Letter from WH001
(click on photo to enlarge. Poster was warped, thus text is not completely clear. The actual text is the one page pdf accessible above.)

United States Declaration of World Citizenship, July 1965

United States Declaration of World Citizenship, July 1965


The 1965 Declaration and 1971 letter fit like a glove with two previous Declarations Mr. Elling had given me: Hennepin County and Minneapolis Declaration of World Citizenship (1968) and State of Minnesota Declaration of World Citizenship (1971). (The story of both of these, and a 1972 movie about World Citizenship, are all accessible here. Click on the half hour movie featuring singer John Denver and others, and read the Lynn Elling story as well.)
I was particularly struck by the fact that signer, and probable coordinator, Lynn Elling, was 44 years old at the time. It is important to give such context to past events. Mr. Elling is still active at age 92, but his crucial and important work was done when he was younger.
So, I now have Declarations of World Citizenship from 1965 (U.S.); 1968 (Hennepin County/Minneapolis); and 1971 (Minnesota) (scroll down). I know there were lots of similar Declarations in other places, at the same period in time, all similar in that they were officially endorsed by all manner of political and civic leaders, completely non-partisan. There must have been some national undercurrent flowing at the time.
What might this mean?
I’ve been a Minnesotan since 1965, but I never heard of these Declarations back then. I was a young widower, struggling to just survive.
What was making the news back in 1965-71 was not World Citizenship, but the Vietnam War, and to this day, President Johnson and Richard Nixon are inextricably linked to War, not Peace, as the 1965 and 1971 documents clearly espouse.
I have not yet had the opportunity to question even Mr. Elling about the history of the 1965 Declaration, how it came to be in the first place. I note that Mr. Elling was a signatory on the document, which basically affirms, in Minnesota, the 1965 Declaration signed by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson.
Who lobbied for the Declaration by President Johnson? Somebody had to actively lobby for, likely, an extended period of time. Proclamations are common enough, but they are not dealt with as a routine matter, since the signers know that some day, like now, they can surprisingly resurface somewhere, somehow. They have meaning.
I am just beginning the inquiry about the 1965 Declaration, but on the occasion of 2013 Armistice Day (called Veterans Day in the U.S.), remembered around the world on November 11, I simply want to bring this to the public eye.
(Recently the St. Paul City Council brought back to public attention to the famous Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. Declarations can live on, if given life.)
While our country memory of 1965-71 was War; there was, even then, a back-story about Peace, shared by political leaders of both major political parties, and enshrined into assorted bi-partisan actions that live on to this day.
What is obvious to me is that this is a matter that resulted from all sorts of person-to-person conversations at many levels over a long period of time.
It is a hard slog to reach a destination. You need to make the trip first.
POST NOTE: Ironically, and essentially coincident with the discovery of this 1965 Declaration, I was at a meeting with another of my elder heroes, Dr. Joe Schwartzberg, last Thursday night. At the meeting he told us of a short essay he had done in 2006 on “Steps on the Path to Global Justice”, using the conquest of Mt. Everest as his teaching tool. Yesterday, he sent to those of us at the Thursday meeting his short essay, and it is included here, with his permission: Schwartzberg, Steps on the Path to Global Justice May 2006
The Essay includes some acronyms: “CGS” is Citizens for Global Solutions, which previously had been named World Federalist Association or United World Federalists; and which presently is named GlobalSolutionsMN.org. The distinguished history of the World Federalist Association can be read here. Note WFA 1947-1997 History, which was dedicated to Minneapolis businessman and civic leader Stanley Platt.
“ICC”, I believe, is for International Criminal Court.
In his notes to us (members of the Global Solutions Minnesota Board) Dr. Schwartzberg added this note: “The attached essay on what we can learn from the conquest of Mt. Everest is the one I referred to at our Global Solutions Board meeting yesterday. I believe it is relevant to the strategic direction of both our Chapter of GS.org and to the national organization. The essay was written in 2006 and subsequently published in The Federalist Debate. My thinking, however continues to evolve and I would now give more stress to the need for a World Parliamentary Assembly among the desirable reforms note in my penultimate paragraph.”

#798 – Dick Bernard: Affordable Care Act. Light Years. Peaking too soon.

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A night or two ago CBS Evening News did what news reports always seem to do: in order to capsulize the latest crisis, they had short interviews with two women in Virginia after Tuesdays election. The unsuccessful candidate for Governor had made Obamacare the prime issue, and while he lost, the margin was less than predicted.
It was a referendum on Obamacare, so went the story.
One of the women hadn’t voted for Obama and didn’t like Obamacare, but had changed her mind when she found out how much she’d benefit by getting into the program. She was a working woman with a small day care business, best I recall.
The other woman was a businesswoman, apparently more prosperous, who was upset that Obamacare would cost her more in premium than the plan she carried.
I’m not sure what the CBS news team was asking me and others to conclude…. For me it made sense: we are an individualistic society, marking wins and losses from our personal perspective.
Yesterday, all the rage was President Obama himself apologizing for something he had said at the time the program was rolled out that was (depending on the report) a lie, dishonest, a mistake only in that the people who had to give up their insurance had substandard policies.)
Of course, then his apology was critiqued. It is all so very American. We lurch from one news report to the next. In perhaps a minute or at the most two we are given the definitive answer to complex problems. And usually we get the news from only the news source that verifies our own bias. I always like the after-report digest of Just Above Sunset, and last nights issue was pretty interesting. You can read Apologies of the Day here.
It is no wonder that we wander around confused about things.
For the enemies of Obamacare, this all seems like a godsend. Not quite so fast….
By accident more than design I spent much of my work career as an organizer of people. Since President Obama has been labeled by the hate words “community organizer”, I feel somewhat in company with him.
I did what he did (and you don’t get over ‘organizing’ – it becomes engrained).
Over many years, often by trial and error, I came to understand certain common sense principles about organizing around an issue.
One of these comes to mind specifically, especially around “Obamacare” (I prefer Obamacares):
1. As I understand the situation, the final deadline for people to enroll under the Affordable Care Act is March 1, 2014. This is about four months in the future. For most of us, that is Light Years away. Adding to this the fact that people tend to procrastinate for all sorts of reasons, the temporary bonanza of the computer botched rollout of the insurance plan will be hard to leverage for political advantage four months from now. (I’ll grant that serious mistakes were made in the testing, etc., of a gigantic new system, but blaming Obama personally, or Sebelius, only goes so far. It was, best I know, a private company that was the subcontractor….)
2. One of the absolute rules of organizing is “don’t peak too soon!” (or “too late”). If you had the perfect organizing plan but you peaked two weeks before the election, you risked losing. You wanted to peak at the last moment before the election, not three days before, or the day after. Of course, there are infinite variables in this business of “peaking”, but the wise strategist tries to factor in these variables. In this case, the “peak” will be in the 2014 election, a year from now. Many, many light years away. And don’t even ask about 2016. And remember Obama won’t be running for reelection then.
3. Of course, the competitive news media needs a “peak” story for their main news program…every day. They, makes no difference ideology, along with their subscribers, are most responsible for this constant frenzy. The constant focus on “ain’t it awful”.
There are many other similar organizing principles that could be identified. The above are enough for now.
But is hard to stay peaked for very long – we all know this from our own personal experience. And remember the “cry wolf” parable. It applies.
Chill.

#797 – Dick Bernard: A School Election

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NOTE: I did a post in the Woodbury Patch that is essentially the same as the below post. You can view it here. A directly related column originally appeared in the Woodbury Patch on October 30, 2013. You can view it here. In addition, a letter of mine on the topic of the Woodbury School Election appeared in the Woodbury Bulletin on October 30, 2013. It can be read here: Woodbury Bulletin Ltr002.
UPDATE Nov. 6: Here are the results of the election as they appear on the School districts website. More details as I learn them.

Nov. 5, 2013 Woodbury MN

Nov. 5, 2013 Woodbury MN


This is being written and will be posted on November 5, 2013, before any voting counts in my School Districts election of five school board members, and decision on three referendum questions before the voters.
I’m writing early to avoid pre-judging reason(s) for outcomes. That can come later.
Personally, I’ll be most interested in the voter turnout. We are a generally very prosperous school district, but in the two preceding school elections, in 2009 and 2011, the turnouts have been dismal:
2009 – 6%
2011 – 8%
2013 – ?
Nov. 5, 2013

Nov. 5, 2013


There are many good reasons to expect a much higher turnout this round; but there were plenty of good reasons the last two rounds as well. In a district where about 18% of the population (17,300 or 94,000) is enrolled in public school, we should do much, much better. And this in a state where the voter turnout in the last few elections was as follows:
2006 – 61%
2008 – 78%
2010 – 56%
2012 – 76%
I’m betting our district was at least as high as the state average voter turnout, if not higher.
I suppose there are rewards for not voting but I’m not sure what they might be.
I know there are consequences, whether one wins because of a low turnout, or loses. We, the people, are always the losers in the long run.
School districts are people organizations.
Not voting at all is always a very powerful vote, never in the non-voters best interest.
When you read this, the election will be over, and quite certainly the results will be easy at a link on the school district website.
When you’re looking at the results ask yourself what you know about each of the Board members just elected, as well as the other incumbents remaining on the Board.
These are the people who will be in charge of making the policy affecting our children for at least the next two years. The Board members who approved the three referendum questions took an action for your children. For some, taking this action might have been considered a political risk.
My business was public education, both as teacher and teacher representative, so my acquaintance with school boards, school board individual members, and school districts goes back many years and hundreds of meetings in diverse (and usually physically uncomfortable) settings with an interesting assortment of Board members.
In my office is an old curriculum booklet with which I was involved, which was used beginning in 1971-72. In that first year, the Board of Education members (Anoka-Hennepin #11) are listed. At the time, Anoka-Hennepin was already larger in enrollment than my present day South Washington County ISD 833.
These were the Board members that year of 1971-72: Carl Swenson, Nils Sandell, David Spencer, Alton Drury, Robert Gordon and John Weaver (yes, no females. A typical profile then…) (In todays election, 9 of the 17 candidates are women – though two of the men and one of the women showed no evidence of actually campaigning for their position.)
I still remember all of these: there was, let’s see, an insurance executive, a physician, a corporate manager; a farmer; a Minneapolis teacher; and a businessman. In a former year, one member was a rural letter carrier. One Board member later became a state legislator.
In those years there was no partisan politics allowed. I’d say five of the six were typecast as pretty conservative (including the teacher member), but all of them took their responsibility of representing all the children of the school district very seriously. They were a good Board, as were almost all of those that I saw in action over the years.
Likely the upcoming Board in my district will be a decent one too, but there needs to be much more active involvement by local citizens in both selecting and monitoring the actions of school board members.
Our children (and grandchildren) deserve our attention.
Nov. 5, 2013

Nov. 5, 2013