Shtraight Outta Oakland

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SYBILL THE SOOTHSAYER DEPT.

Madame Sybill is in a deep trance….Woooo…..wooooooo…..! Spirits, tell us who will be Biden’s Biden? A picture is becoming clear – a place, it’s….very distinctive, it’s…. – Oakland, California! I see sharp racial tensions — a time of progress, but poverty…is it now, or is it the mid-sixties? I see a turbulent society in need of a new paradigm — I see police on the streets — I see Black Americans coming to the fore — I see………

[Ed.: Sybill’s segment is CANCELLED. Patient Reader, she was ordered to pack up her snakes, stow her moon-and-stars turban, and go live under the freeway. Who needs a pandit clairvoyant to “foresee” Biden picking Kamala Harris?]

The View applauds the candidacy, as we all needs must. But, with the unstoppable tsunami of social collapse still gathering, already crashing down, the Dems — wooo, woooo! — will need someone on the ticket who will evince feelings of compassion for the out-of work, for the millions each week from now until the election who will be losing their already pathetic health insurance, and turned out of their rentals or foreclosed upon. God knows Joe Biden won’t get it.

Maynard Dixon, ‘Scab,’ 1934. Oakland Museum of California.

If we hear Sen. Harris in the coming weeks of Being On Camera 24 Hours a Day, plumping her usual hard-on-crime authoritarianism, or hear her talk about foreign trade packages, or hear her slam Medicare for All, or disparage rent relief, or defend Wall Street, or if she scotches police reform, or worst of all, if she even mentions the words “budget,” or “sacrifice,” then we will know our land, our World, have truly no hope of grasping the only slim branch that could stop the plunge into the deepest doo-doo: mass death, mass poverty, mass extinction, mass climate chaos, mass class warfare. There may be very few left, indeed, to care about or even remember her historic candidacy.

UPDATE: The View grins from ear to ear. Senator Harris just gave an extremely beautiful and appropriate and (thank God) coherent speech. She highlighted almost all the points of concern taken in View above. She is by far, the most competent mind on either party’s ticket, and she displayed warmth, humor, and seriousness, all heretofore seriously lacking in the race.

Let’s cautiously celebrate!

https://valleyvillage.home.blog/2018/07/19/the-valley-village-view-takes-in-downtown-oakland/

Sen. Kamala Harris was born in Oakland in 1964 (woo hoo!). Her parents were of Jamaican and Indian descent, both university professors. The community in which she came of age was an extremely dynamic (some might say seething) polyglot, a living urban experiment, a vibrant and culturally rich city unlike any other in California, let alone the world.

https://valleyvillage.home.blog/2018/07/19/downtown-oakland-the-wonderful-stone-work-of/

Oakland’s reputation as the neglected step-child to San Francisco, is an integral part of the city’s character, and has led to a maverick, we-have-to-do-it-ourselves spirit that has made it an important laboratory of social thought. For instance, Oakland is the home of the most spirited and dedicated Left, left, in America. Check out Riva Enteen’s take on our moment:

https://blackagendareport.com/seize-time-or-face-fascism

https://blackagendareport.com/desperate-times-desperate-measures-dump-democrats

Oakland’s famous Black Panther Party put out an elegant and reasonable paper in 1966 when Sen. Harris was a toddler. We all ought to read it, and, if we have goodwill, admit that it, equally with the Jefferson document which it quotes, is a “masterful expression of the American mind,” and that most of the 10 points already have the powerful support of the American people and have for decades:

http://www.blacklivesmattersyllabus.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/07/BPP_Ten_Point_Program.pdf

The historical perspective, however, admits Oakland has been ground zero for some of the worst urban trends, from industrial overreach to industrial collapse, to neglect by the Navy, to toxic pollution, to blight, to fierce segregation, to redlining, to white flight to crime spikes and gang terror to police terror and back again Now it’s in the agonies of a gentrification so sudden and so extreme, that dirty-cheeked, barefoot Oakland stands right up there on the platform with waving, blond-ringleted sister San Francisco, as the winner of the Most Acutely Gentrified Places in America Award. (This according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.)


I am not saying that Sen. Harris is an intellectual or a progressive, or has even been paying attention to any of this. Few Americans seem to see the cities they live in, the successful, often, least of all. But it is fair to say that Sen. Harris’s enriched home life, urban childhood experiences, and early civic education are totally unlike the background of any other candidate in American history. But even before the election happens, her challenges, likewise, will be unlike those of any other candidate in American history. With V.P. Biden vaporizing before our eyes, Harris may be de facto President before the election even happens, if it does.

Everything – our election season, the departments of state, the courts, our illusions about a fair and just money supply, our customary ways of organizing employment or habitation or Social Security, our baked-in nonsensical Puritanical moral ideas of the Deserving Worker vs. the Criminal Idler, even the notion that we are in any way a healthy or coherent nation — are all being wrecked by the Trumpvirus. Sen. Harris may well be tasked with putting Humpty Dumpty together again. If she’s wise, she’ll dump the idea of just flooding the land with “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men” — it’s the King’s men, after all, who have pushed our fragile democracy off its perch of esteem and regard.

Pacific Overtures

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75 years ago today, the Fat Man plutonium bomb incinerated Nagasaki. Soon after, the Emperor took to the radio, and for the first time, his people heard the divine voice, offering the surrender of the Japanese Empire to the Allies; it was the final surrender of WW II. It were remiss, in a blog about civilization, not to mark this solemn anniversary.

January 11, 1976, the Dawn of the Bicentennial came to America, suitably, from the Land of the Rising Sun. The finest historical opera ever written, Pacific Overtures, opened at the Winter Garden Theatre. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book by Weidman and Wheeler, staged by Harold Prince. It closed on June 9th, after 193 performances, when it was recorded live and broadcast on Japanese television. Youtube has the entire performance, masterfully staged, perfectly sung, and audibly plummy.

It will charm, delight, beguile, amuse, threaten, scare, seize, and embrace, you, Patient Viewer, and leave your ears ringing with song. [Sondheim shy? Whet your whistle with a few selections that embody the show, especially, “Someone In A Tree,’ which is about History Itself.

0:00 — Opening; “The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea”
54:06 — “Walking with Poems”
1:12:00 — “Someone In A Tree”]

Was This The Moment American Civilization Collapsed?

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I was only dimly aware of this event, an early Be-In, at Central Park in Easter. The timing is right for it to have precipitated The General Collapse. And, not coincidentally, it’s right at this time that Central Park becomes a by-word for crime and neglect and decay and anti-social behavior, including the legendary dangers to young white joggers by the innocent Central Park Five, which precipitated the political career of America’s vilest fascist, the author of our now unstoppable final collapse.

It may have been this — by modern standards — astonishingly sedate and innocuous Sunday gathering, patronized by dancing gents in ties, kids in dress-up costumes, the Usual Faggots, and pretty young girls in jeans, dancing with their weird hairdos — that was the last nail in the coffin. Here Blacks and whites are seen mixing, New York-style, casually, shoulder-to-shoulder! Maybe this was the straw that broke America’s back, and inaugurated five generations of flight to suburbia, sprawl, anomie, fossil fuels, debt, Neo-liberalism, and Trumpism.

Remember: on the East Side of the Park, John Lindsay’s 5th Avenue retro-Rotogravure Easter Parade must have been in full swing. These annual events by the Mayor, featured the UNHEARD-OF, UNREMEMBERED progressive act of closing off the Avenue to auto traffic for pedestrian accomodation. Alright, they were mostly the remnants of the 400 and a few suburban wannabes. But I wonder if this East Side Parade was contrasted with the Be-In on the news, on TV? I’ll hunt for any more footage.

The United States Postal Service

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When Long Knives slash from all sides, it’s hard for the flailing victim to feel which cuts pierce the Body Politic to the quick, and which are only further shredding the ragged bloody toga of Democracy.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/07/900126106/postmaster-general-touts-usps-overhaul-but-promises-on-time-election-mail

“Messenger of sympathy and love
Servant of parted friends
Consoler of the lonely
Bond of the scattered family
Enlarger of the common life

Carrier of news and knowledge
Instrument of trade and industry
Promoter of mutual acquaintance
Of peace and of goodwill
Among men and nations

— Inscription on the former Washington D.C. Post Office, now home of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Service Museum

It’s no wonder why this dangerous octopus must be strangled. There is no greater example of the People organizing themselves for mutual benefit.

“Mail Transportation” — WPA mural in the San Pedro Post Office; 1935, Fletcher Martin. Note the ethnicities represented.

Dr. Franklin had been made Postmaster General for North America in 1765 by the British Parliament; during most of those years, he resided in London, but regulated the apparatus for mail delivery in America. When the British dismissed him in 1775, he returned to Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress hired him as our first American Postmaster General. In 1792, under Pres. Washington, the U.S. Post Office was created; it was later made a Department of the executive branch; then, made a cabinet post under Pres. Jackson.

Few remember, but the U.S.P.S. offered non-profit public banking services for much of the 20th century. During the wild days of Bank Runs, Panics, Wartime Inflation, Influenza, Florida Real Estate, Margin Calls, the Gold Standard and Old Man Depression, the U.S.P.S. was the most popular, and one of the ONLY stable and reliable, of all the banks in the WHOLE COUNTRY. They could turn around and offer Public Postal Banking again tomorrow, (without even touching the FDIC program that was “meant to” replace it and which serves the industry’s purpose just fine by socializing their downside.) Postal Banking has all the infrastructure in place, all that would be needed would be the flip of the switch that turned it off. If switches can be turned off — they can also be turned on, which is what really scares conservatives. Thus, they must tout the ruse that the U.S.P.S is an expensive luxury, a palsied hand that must be pried from around the country’s throat. Of course, the truth is that the Post Office is a major artery of America, carrying commonalty, security, absolute equality, social convenience, penny-cheapness, and other desirable democratic attributes, to every corner of the land. That it has been,, like Amtrak, sorely abused by Congress and savagely kicked in the ribs by nearly every Administration of my lifetime, is no discredit to the Post Office.

The Butterfield Overland Express, mail contractor for California, stops at the Bella Union Hotel on Main Street off the Plaza.

For a perfectly great history of the U.S.P.S., by the U.S.P.S. click below, for Publication 100.

Click to access pub100.pdf

God help us, these were the folks we were counting on to be helping carry our precious ballots at election time. God help them, especially our letter carriers, whose stable, respectable middle- class jobs “literally” created America’s communities.