Hasta la Victoria Siempre.

This phrase in Cuba means "until victory, always and symbolizes enduring commitment to the values of Che's revolution which celebrated its 58th anniversary this year.

So much unabashed joy,warm welcomes and friendship. Old classic cars and crumbling infrastructure. The common bond of socialism. The proliferation of poverty. Visiting was both a thrilling and devastating experience. The Cubans people are intense and passionate. They talk loudly and use their hands. A tremendous commonality exists in a diverse society where races mingle without the level of  tension that racism breeds here in the United States. There is so much music, art and theater that creativity is an integral weave in the social fabric. I am still processing many conflicting feelings after my visit.

Their economy uses two currencies, one for the paychecks of the people and one for luxury items like hotels and restaurants. The national currency of the people is worth about 1/24th the value of the upscale currency, which is roughly based on the value of the US dollar.

Tourism is huge in Cuba. Many Americans don't realize that the rest of the world has been visiting regularly for quite a while. Yet, with the US embargo, the tourism-reliant economy is not enough to keep the people's economy afloat. Folks earn very little. A medical doctor makes around the equivalent of thirty dollars a month. Their rents and mortgages are paid by the government and food allotments of lower quality merchandise are given to everyone daily but those who can afford better quality items, buy them.

Houses can now be bought and sold. Higher up the hillsides and often near the ocean are nicer homes. Following purchase, all living expenses are paid for by the government. People who rent rooms in their homes or turn part of their homes into restaurants for tourists can supplement meager wages. I didn't find a classless society, but it is one without homeless people that has a safety net for the very poor.

The people we talked to said there are forms to fill out for everything. We saw a store in Havana where large appliances and sound systems from companies like Panasonic were in boxes. The woman who ran our pension in Trinidad said is a very regimented and it takes a while to get permission to buy things. People are used to waiting. The lines for the bank and the money changing office wound around the block.

Restaurant food is very simple. Cuba doesn't have salsa or tortillas or even potato chips. Homemade crackers with a mayonnaise-garlic-mustard sauce is a typical appetizer. The sea food is good and relatively cheap. Portions are small, which is a very tropical climate works well. If you ask for salsa, forget it. This is not Mexico. But they will gladly bring you oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. So, if you like salads, you're in luck.

We didn't find any supermarkets or tiendas in which to buy instant coffee or milk. What they call markets are startlingly stark. There is a lot of alcohol of all kinds and Cuba produces at least four brands of beer, all very tasty and cheaper, for tourists, than water. The people don't pay for water. Cigarettes and soft-drinks proliferate at the bodegas and there are no anti-smoking laws anywhere except museums.

In spite of the intense heat, there is very little air conditioning. Fans proliferate. I did get more used to the heat as time went on but it is painful to walk outside in the April sun during the day.

The penalties for drugs or violent crime are harsh. Marijuana use can bring 35 years. They still believe that weed leads to hard drug addiction. The streets are safe, even for women at night.

Music is everywhere. Traveling musicians descend on restaurants and play in bars. Many are very good and the streets at night are alive with sound.

The internet is not generally available. At fancy hotels it is 30 dollars an hour. We learned we could buy cards from the phone company for the equivalent of three dollars that would connect us for an hour if we stood in the street in front of a big hotel that had Wi Fi.

There is no advertising and very little signage. Billboards are used to glorify Che and the other movers and shakers of the revolution. All things pertaining to revolutionary philosophy are called propaganda, a word that doesn't have a pejorative slant in Spanish.

Toilet paper is like currency. Bathrooms are not free. They cost between 10 and 50 cents a pop, er pee, and there is a person, usually a woman, out front handing out little pieces of toilet paper for your use. If you speak Spanish, you can usually talk bathroom attendants into not taking money in a restaurant where you are purchasing food. Or if, like me, you bring your own toilet paper and promise not to flush. The bathrooms are clean but only in the fanciest restaurants and hotels do the toilets have seats on them.

Gay male Cubans are visible but quiet about issues. We met one Afro-Cuban lesbian. I didn't see any transgender people. As an experiment I dressed butch one day and was taken for male as long as I didn't speak. We got harassed less as a straight couple. As two women we were pestered for taxis continually and everyone assumed we were lost and needed help.

Some people talked politics with us. Many were afraid to express themselves. The national bookstores had a few leftist works considered propaganda. The used bookstores were packed with a wide variety of non-fiction, poetry and novels. They have large public libraries as well.

All in all, Cuba was a mind-opening experience. It is a socialist country quite different from others like Sweden. It has positive and negative sides to the vision of equality. But the warmth of the Cuban people is undeniable. They seem to truly enjoy each other's company and to live life for so much more than material goods. I can also see why someone would want to leave and try life elsewhere. If and when they do, I imagine they feel very isolated and alienated.

Ebola: When Poverty Equals Death

Over 2,300 people in West Africa have succumbed to the Ebola epidemic and over 240 of them have been health care workers. Finally, Obama is sending in 3.000 military troops to help deal with the epidemic. It's too bad that the world stood by silently as this epidemic took hold. 

The nations of West Africa are extremely poor. Many “hospitals” there are simply places with beds and a few staffers who may or may not have even gone through medical training. Even before this epidemic, meals were brought in by family members, not provided by the facility.

Training in the handling of contagious disease is haphazard to non-existent but, that is not the reason for the tremendous loss of lives. The majority of deaths of care providers have been due to lack of equipment, understaffing and exhaustion, not negligence. There is not enough protective clothing or personnel to treat, or contain, the infected whose numbers are spiraling out of control.

Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal are not countries that attract the attention of the pharmaceutical drug industry. A majority of their citizens are black and live at a level of poverty unimaginable in the United States. They have no plumbing, running water and much cooking is done with open fires, not stoves. 

People lives can be saved. Research, that should have been done at the first sign of this new disease, is happening. But vaccines for ebola, like all of our medical care, are available only to those from wealthy nations. Two infected an American medical personnel, a doctor and a nurse, were flown out of Liberia and taken to Emory Hospital in Atlanta, quarantined and given the rare, expensive, experimental drug called Z-mapp, which helped them survive the disease.The infected of Africa, even doctors and nurses have been essentially on their own.

The pharmaceutical industry has no interest or desire to manufacture complex and costly vaccines when there is no financial incentive to do so. Poor Africans cannot lay down big money to cure themselves or their relatives. This would not be a profitable enterprise like Statin drugs for high cholesterol or Viagra for erectile dysfunction.

The brutally sad truth of the matter is that what drives the search for cures for diseases is this potential monetary windfall. Even if the big medical think tanks found, say, a cure for cancer, they would make sure that what was required would be that people take a certain amount of medication every day for the rest of their lives.This would provide them with continued financial security.

That insures the continued prosperity of Big Pharma. Stocks rise, doctors get samples and desperate people, without adequate health options, find some way to gather the financial resources required to save their lives.

Finding a cure for Ebola offers none of these remunerations. If it did, the epidemic would have been halted in its tracks before it spiraled out of control. Instead, we all are forced to witness the way the so-called developed nations of the first world allow fellow citizens in Africa to be ravaged by a merciless disease!

Where Ferguson and Occupy Meet...

I watched the coverage of the Ferguson uprising on MSNBC and a lot of what I saw the police doing looked disturbingly familiar to the police riots I experienced when I participated in Occupy Oakland. There were flash-bang grenades, bean-bag projectiles, rubber bullets and plenty of tear gas. The sound cannons were new “toys,”  for our militarized boys in blue.

When I was arrested, as part of a mass arrest in 1991 following the Rodney King excessive police force incident, the cops had little access to all this weaponry. They simply surrounded around the 400 people peacefully participating in the protest, handcuffed us and hauled us away. Today what cops are engaged in is more like a live staging of World of Warcraft.

Let me state unequivocally that racism plays a huge role in out-of-control policing in this country. There exists a rampant, unbridled fear of young, black males in our society. Beyond that, the government and its enforcement arm are tremendously afraid of resistance of any kind and invest everything they have in crushing rebellions before they can spread and take hold. This has been of utmost importance since the economic collapse of 2008.

Sure, the NSA and its defenders will say that heightened security dates back to the September 11^th attacks of 2001. But why then has the collection of metadata increased to a loud crescendo at this point in time. Why are racism and all forms of ethnic hatred being constantly and continually promoted just as labor unions, job security and workers’ rights and the right to a living wage are being hammered into non-existence?

It's a simple divide and conquer tactic to perpetuate capitalism. The existence of a cheap, disposable underclass is the foundation that buttresses the wealth of the one percent. Those in power are especially afraid of young, black males but they are afraid of all of us. They know they are sapping our life-blood both as low-wage workers and as an unemployed poverty class.With the highest incarceration rate in the world, the USA is now rounding up folks who can't pay their bills, thus reinstituting debtors' prisons. Economic inequality here has reached an all-time high and that's not going to change anytime soon. The bottom line is:  as long as WE are at each other’s throats, THEY are safe. The second we begin to rise up, they beat us down with ten times the force required to do so.

Racism is a real problem but it is not a "black" issue. It is an American issue that affects all of us. “We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” That quote is from Ben Franklin at the signing of the declaration of independence. And he wasn’t including women, everyone considered "non-white," immigrants, non-landowners and a whole host of others. But he still has a point. We can all learn from his mistakes and try to do it right this time!

Marriage is Not the Answer

With all the rose-colored musings on the wonders of marriage that have arrived with our newly acquired, still limited marriage rights, you’d think that all the problems of the LGBT community had just been solved with one stroke of a Supreme Court Fairy’s pen. But this flurry of excitement, while contagious, obscures the fact that the institution of marriage is woefully inadequate as a panacea to remedy even the challenges of our personal lives, not to mention our political ones.

I remember, in the seventies, being totally perplexed when the boyfriend of politician Harvey Milk committed suicide. Someone who was part of a couple offing themselves? How could that be possible? What does this mean? In my own fantasies the idea of finding a girlfriend would put all my existential angst to rest.

Marriage is part of a canned, lobotomized prescription for” happiness,” and in reality not much more than a massive advertising campaign. Americans tend to worship the philosophy of “rugged individualism.” Within this doctrine, all formulas for a productive life begin and end with you and yours. The acquisition of wealth is but another of these personal solutions. Reproduction is fundamental as well. Babies are just a commodity created by the family.

In this world view, poor, minority, female, queer babies all have their roles to play whether it is as a target for police, cashier for a convenience store, CEO for an internet giant, or doctor for the upper crust. Whatever their future role, babies keep their parents in line financially and help disseminate this “capitalist mystique.”

At my old librarian job, access to system-wide emails was strictly limited. Yet, we all received announcements of a co-workers marriage or birth of a child. Never did we get information about an employee who’d written and produced a play, an art gallery opening featuring someone’s work or a mountain successfully climbed. In fact, those accomplishments were seen as threatening, taking away from our “real” work in the service hierarchy of the library.

Why are we encouraged to retreat into a universe of marriage, babies and private life? The answer seems obvious. Together, questioning, participating, exploring greater community issues is too threatening to the powers that be. We might grow to see and understand things that would make the crumbs they throw us harder to accept, one that could jeopardize their dominance and hegemony.

It is absolutely necessary that queers have the civil right to marry, to adopt children, to join the military and share every single right that heterosexuals possess. But to elevate marriage to the highest, most noble fulfilling goal is to perpetrate a lie. Each of us is a member of a larger community, beyond the nuclear family and its rigid boundaries. We must make political sense of our shared circumstances and rise and fall together

Is Cruelty to Workers Behind Workplace Violence?

Another workplace shooting took place in Fresno on November 5th at a chicken processing plant. Three workers were killed and two were injured by a fellow employee with a handgun. According to filmmaker Emil Chiaberi, this pattern of workplace violence has roots in the way employees are treated in this country.

Chiaberi's 2010 film, “Murder by Proxy: How America went Postal,” sheds both light and heat on the phenomena of workplace murders. Beginning with the Royal Oak Post Office massacre of 1991, which caused the expression “going postal” to become a part of American slang, through other workplace attacks, Chiaberi chronicles a history of employee abuse that drives some beyond the limits of sanity to commit appalling and desperate acts.

There is no excuse for these crimes and Chiaberi does not try to present one. But there are reasons and, through interviews, he explains the history of cruelty to workers that is characteristic of the US Postal Service as well as many other working-class jobs.

Since the mid-eighties no workplace protections have been instituted for workers. The climate we now inhabit is overtly hostile to those that make the machine of service or manufacturing run. The post office is a hotbed of extreme stress and discontent for many reasons. Workers are required to keep up with sorting machines, the pace of which are inhuman. Those who deliver mail have speed and safety issues combined. The job requires little skill or training but has good benefits and pays well. In other words, there’s more where you came from is a prevailing mantra.

Workplace scapegoating seems to be a particularly prevalent problem in the postal service and other low-skill level jobs. This is not explained in the film, I assume, because it is not completely understood. But scapegoating, when it works, tends to do two things. One, frighten other workers because the same thing could happen to them. And two, unify folks against a common enemy, the workplace scapegoat.

But many of the workers interviewed see through this ruse and understand the common enemy is their systematic and continual dehumanization. One shooter skipped shooting a boss who simply asked him how his recent eye surgery went.

The fact that workers are people has escaped those who advocate for the business owners and managers. With anti-union politicians like Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker leading the charge, worker protection is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Films like “Murder by Proxy,” may not change that but at least they can serve as a warning of what may be in store for our increasingly income-skewed society where production and service workers are belittled and their fundamental humanity ignored.

Obama Shines With More Promises

Obama's Many
Colors

My Grandma used to say, "If wishes were horses than beggars would ride." With the advent of cars that slogan became dated, but even so, her point was evident. Obama's words shone with promise last night, a good start, but unfortunately given the nature of capitalism they are no more than words.

I was pleased to see him mobilizing the 99% and holding the line on continued tax cuts for the wealthy. He mentioned scapegoating with a list that included immigrants and even gays and I love the way many speakers have quoted Romney's brilliant statement about if you need money to start a business, just ask your parents. 

But what can the Democrats do, besides play a good verbal game, that can actually change working people's lives for the better. Obama could have instituted a single-payer health care system instead of making deals with big pharma to fund the insurance companies. He could have sent corporate criminals to jail and closed Guantanamo. Not issuing death warrants for Americans abroad to be assassinated without trial would have been a nice touch. And forcing banks to modify home loans instead of going full speed ahead with foreclosures could have saved a lot of heartache.

Yes, it matters who is selected for the Supreme Court. It matters that  people of color are not deterred from voting, immigrants be treated fairly and queer folks be accepted as full citizens. But as long as the destruction of unions and middle-class jobs is allowed to proceed unimpeded, as long as corporations are people and our country is committed to endless and ever-increasing warfare, the unobstructed economic down-slide of the US into a third world economy will continue.

The "Empire of Consumption"

I saw Chris Hedges speak last night and the "empire of consumption" was the phrase he used to refer to what this society has become.Was it always this apparent or have things changed drastically? The commercialization of society has never seemed more obvious and obnoxious than it is today. He observes that it is a progression that has happened over time.But this out-of control growth was years in the making and, like any malignant tumor, it will destroy the host organism.

Of course, for many years the Gay Pride Parade has been used as a vehicle for advertising, some of its biggest sponsors being alcohol companies. This is not subtle irony. The fact that alcoholism is a big problem in the LGBT community only makes the strategy more blatant and obscene. What a fertile field for new consumers! And what a sad commentary on queer liberation for those of us who remember the early marches to the aptly named, Marx Meadow in Golden Gate Park.

Materialism and privatization are the mantras of the 21st century. An Ayn Rand-style, libertarian world is barreling down upon us inch by inch. It is one where the corporations and the 1% are in the driver's seat and the rest of us are under the wheels. No sector is immune. The final steps involve the destruction of labor unions so that workers are easily exploitable, cheap and plentiful. The education system is being replaced by a network of charter schools where teachers are expendable and students, taught to perform like trained seals on exams but not to employ critical thinking skills, must pay to attend. Libraries, hospitals, the postal service and prisons are all being targeted for privatization in the new survival of the wealthiest economy.

Chain stores and chain restaurants are rapidly replacing the mom 'n pop genre. The internet provides competition for almost every market excepting only those like food, medical care and hairdressing. The trades that require the physical presence of our bodies. Everything else is up for grabs. 

Dehumanization in the Capitalist Workplace

Along with the relatively recent rebirth of a movement against economic injustice has come not only questioning not only of the great wealth divide but also the structure of the capitalist workplace itself. As jobs disappear many are re-examining the hierarchy of the American labor force and formulating ways to make it more just and humane.

Marxist economist Richard Wolff points out that financial transactions don’t work within the family unit because they promote greed and discord, so why would anyone expect these same skewed priorities to function any differently in the workplace?

Capitalism requires all workplace interactions at work to have, at their foundation, the profit motive that requires the maximum accumulation of capital is the goal of any endeavor. In a service industry such as a hospital, library or school, this goal translates to servicing the greatest number of people with the lowest amount of expenditure. This is effected by a work speed up requiring more desk hours, patients and ever-increasing class sizes. In order to enforce this speed-up, the pressure is applied to middle management.

This group consists of folks who are offered extra goodies in exchange for extracting the maximum amount of monetary value from the effort of each worker, like squeezing as much juice as possible from an orange. There are always people willing to control others in return for their own personal comfort but no matter how you slice it, this process is inherently unpleasant. 

In the workplace it is commonly accomplished in one of two ways: manipulation or intimidation. Most often, it winds up being a combination of both. Manipulation includes not only the concept of worker discipline, but the more pleasant aspects of a worker/manager relationship as well. For example, praise for work is included here. While, in some cases, this may be genuine, it also serves the function of motivating the worker to continue to work hard. Intimidation is the method that is more fundamental to the manager/worker relationship. Every interaction at work harbors veiled threats to the survival of the worker because, at any moment, his position could be terminated. In the private sector, where the“employment at will” doctrine prevails, job insecurity creates perpetual stress. It is only with the advent of union protection that working people were granted a bit of relief from this sword of Damocles. 

In an inauthentic, contrived, highly-pressurized environment like the capitalist workplace, collateral damage is everywhere. In public sector work, managers are trained to distance themselves from treating and even perceiving their subordinates as human beings. Training workshops are instituted to instruct them not to engage their underlings in genuine conversations about the actual concerns in their lives. Any opening that might let friendship in must be slammed shut. This would interfere with the credo of putting production first and foremost. A philosophy where suppressing anything close to emotional intimacy is an absolute necessity.

For starters, we can begin rethinking and reworking ideas that have ceased to function properly and replace them with a more beneficial and productive vision. We all deserve something better. How can we create a cooperative workplace? Is there a way to pay people for creative contributions to society, not just wage slavery? A cooperative model would be a good starting point. Those who have a say in their lives at work will be more likely to pull together for a common goal. In a world where everyone can earn compensation for some kind of contribution, there would be no need for every exchange to be predatory or adversarial.

Alliances are stronger than hierarchies. Subordination only breeds varying degrees of resentment.. We are all tired of the tired old degrading capitalist model that is now longer functioning. Instead of begging for a piece of the pie, now is the time to throw out the moldy mess and begin to bake something entirely new.

Old Worker & Young Boss--Capitalist Anomaly

The Industrial Revolution Was
Revolting in Many Ways

Many cultures respect and revere the elderly. From Native American tribal groups, to the Hmong, the Aka and the other hill tribes of Southeast Asia, natural human communities reserve a special place for those who have given their time, their lives to the work of the society.

In the corporate world the basic equation of learning and life experience is turned on its head. Youth is sought after and prized while age is feared and despised. This may stem from denial and fear of mortality, but, whatever the cause, this reality plays out in a tremendously inhumane fashion.

Just as the loss of decent paying jobs with union protections and benefits affects us all, this dismissal of the elderly should threaten the young as well as the old. It is a waving red flag from a future where every worker is both disposable and interchangeable. The "there are more where you came from" philosophy hurts everyone and that indeterminate future always seems to approach more quickly than any of us want to believe it will.

Due to the fact that the massive generation of baby boomers is now beginning to become old people, we are faced with the prospect of a society that includes a high proportion of members who are "of age." Throw in the unbridled capitalism that has reared its very ugly head of late and you have the makings of workplace disaster. Combined with the slash and burn workings of capitalism we have the odd and unnatural coupling of young bosses and old workers.

Many of us from the baby boom generation will continue working long into our "golden years," not because they love their jobs, but because, from a financial perspective, they have no choice. The boss/worker relationship is a strained, anti-human one under the best of circumstances. When that boss is half your age, the contradictions and unfairness of the system are magnified and rendered more unfair and ridiculous than ever.

For those who have children it is a particularly ironic bind. Older folks are often told what to do by their adult children, but most commonly, this is after a degree of impairment has set in. Workplace interactions between those of different status classifications can range from low-stress and facile to hierarchical and difficult. It all depends on the specific work site and its cultural norms.

But if corporate stratification followed our native instincts and promoted the values of learning and experience, we would take instruction from those among us from those who have had the time to acquire knowledge, our elders. Try to envision a society where leadership ability was proven over time and not awarded for superficial, extraneous factors like youth, beauty, family money, gender and ethnicity. You need to have a good imagination to even begin.

Falling Short in the "Meritocracy"

Which Way Forward?

One of the major myths we grow up with here in the USA is that we live in a meritocracy where brains and hard work are rewarded. The theory is that Americans comprise a homogenized mixture with equal parts this and that and the cream will naturally rise to the top. In other words, George W. Bush earned his spot at Harvard and Chelsea Clinton was the most qualified applicant for her plum position at NBC.

The lie of meritocracy harms people by:
1. Obliterating the reality of socioeconomic class and all other forms of prejudice and discimination.
2. Making tons of folks feel inadequate for their lack of accomplishment.
3. Falsely reassuring the achievers that they are the most intelligent and deserving members of society.

In the capitalist workplace the truth is far more complex. Brains and innate ability comprise part of the story but, in our society, even very smart folks may end up in jail or on the street. The largest component of the ability to function under capitalism is socialization. By that I mean having parents or care-givers who were willing and able to model appropriate behavior. The universal assumption in our culture is that everyone is raised with this kind of exemplary parenting.

Many children, whether from wealth or poverty, are raised with the relatively basic guidelines where good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished. But some children, especially if parents are substance abusers or if child rearing is not a priority in their lives, acquire no reliable index of propriety. In these homes whatever action a child initiates will either be followed by a random, totally unpredictable reaction or no reaction at all. There can be know learning of values and norms under these circumstances.

My sister and I were raised in such a home. Being five years her senior, I had the honorary position of her mother in our family. We were pretty much ignored. Our friends envied our lack of supervision as well as the prodigious amount of alcoholic beverages available in our residence. There was usually quite a bit of food in the refrigerator and if we wanted to eat a whole package of Sara Lee brownies washed down with Coca Cola for dinner, that was always an option.

My mother couldn't deal with my curly-kinky hair so she only washed it about once a month. Both my sister and I had the experience of showing up at school without skirts at different times in our early lives. Luckily, we had the wherewithal  to put on tights over our legs.

On the positive side, we became quite adept at navigating through the world because this skill was engendered by necessity at an early age. But later, in the strictly choreographed world of the capitalist workplace, the children of neglect tend to fall down. Since the cultural norms that have been passed to them have come only from superficial observation, not gut-level understanding, the workplace is fraught with hazards. Hierarchy and pecking order are antithetical to those raised without them and, no matter how old I grow to be, I still believe that these are inhuman constructs to begin with.

My dream, as I approach retirement age, is that one day we will create a society big enough to encompass all our differences; our failings as well as accomplishments and hold them, without judgement, as nothing more than what they are: survival strategies. The next step would be to build a culture, expansive and compassionate enough to accept each individual's contribution, their gifts as well as their limitations, with the equanimity of a sane and just society.

Brothel Hierarchy in the Capitalist Workplace

Is the Oldest Profession a
Prototype for all Others?

The main problem with the employment scene lately has been that decently paid jobs with benefits are rapidly disappearing. But, for the first time ever, the word capitalism is being tossed about in public discourse. People are daring to admit that the capitalist workplace, even when it's functioning perfectly, is quite problematic for many, perhaps even most, of us.

The fact is that when observing the stratified, profit-based workplace, the brothel model fits nicely. All work is, after all, prostitution on some level. Take the library where I am employed. At the bottom rung of the ladder you have street hookers, hourly employees without benefits hired if and when there is demand. They are the "five dollars for a quickie" set. As totally independent practitioners not under the umbrella of the pimps, they are free agents but the trade-off is that they are completely vulnerable to the tides of economic, and personal risk. Their work takes place in the moment and when it's finished there are no future guarantees.

Above them there are those who are offered a certain number of hours per week with benefits. These are the pros who can rent rooms by the hour. The rental of these folks' time involves a modicum of warmth and shelter in exchange for an ongoing financial arrangement.

Proceeding up the food chain, you have lower management, the call gals and guys who live very comfortably in exchange for their favors. In this classification a bit of the pimping of others is a necessary part of the bargain.

As you enter the area of middle management the true pimps emerge. These are people who earn their living off the front line work of others. They no longer need to service the johns at all and are paid only to oversee those who do.

In the rarefied air of the very top level you will find the madams, ironically a mostly male coterie, who own the brothels. They reap the profits by manipulating the pimps who control the entire stable of call girls as well as  room-rental by the hour hookers.

So what is the point of this exercise? Those of us who were not born into the lap of luxury have to sell our labor to survive. There is no need to feel ashamed or guilty because of the simple fact of our role in prostitution. After all, it's a living.

But wouldn't it be wonderful if we could stretch our minds and try to develop a different model for the workplace. A cooperative versus a competitive one, where all workers have inherent value. It has been done before, sometimes with very good results. In any case, as long as were dreaming of rebuilding society, it's at least worth some thought.

Medical Care for the Masses: A Traveling Circus

Oakland Free Clinic at the Coliseum

The Oakland Coliseum has been hosting a "free clinic" operation sponsored by Remote Area Medical Corps, a volunteer group that travels throughout the third world, the American south and now financially depressed cities such as Oakland California to provide basic medical care and services. Uninsured folks line up, often waiting through the night, to get free dental care, eyeglasses, cancer screenings, all types of care that is economically out of reach for people without health insurance for the price of one long, cold, sleepless night.

Every day at the library I help people who have very few teeth, who have eyeglasses precariously taped together, who can't even think of holding a job because they can't see or their physical appearance has become socially unacceptable. Even my city of San Francisco dental insurance, paid one hundred percent of the cost of a tooth extraction but will only pay 50% of a significantly larger amount (5,000 dollars) to replace that tooth with an implant. And that coverage, which had been previously non-existent, won't kick in until July.

The USA will not pay to keep their cogs in the capitalist machinery well oiled and in working order because they consider us entirely disposable. "There are more where you came from," is their ongoing theme. Michael Moore illustrated this with painful clarity in his movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story." We have become so inured to the familiar with the naked obscenity of purchasing life and health that we hardly notice it anymore.

     "If living were a thing that money could buy, you know the rich would live and the poor would die"... (All My Trials, Song of uncertain folk origin that sums it all up).