The New Immigrants.

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Eduardo Bernal, the Catholic Hispanic Ministry coordinator for Smoky Mountain Vicariate and the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, spoke to the Franklin Voices for Peace Wednesday night at the Macon County Public Library. The meeting was hosted by Grace and Don Washington, and 13 people attended. The presentation lasted from 7:00 p.m. until 9:15 p.m.
Bernal began by pointing out US Census Bureau figures showing the Hispanic population in Macon County has increased by 400% in the past decade, and by almost 800% in some other counties in North Carolina. The Pew Hispanic Center writes that: "The undocumented population of the United States now numbers nearly 11 million people, including more than 6 million Mexicans. State-level data shows that Arizona and North Carolina now rank among the states with the largest populations of unauthorized migrants. "
Most of these immigrants are Mexican who have come here to make money they can send back home. Some of them may have children or a brother or sister they want to put through school. Others want to help their mother be able to buy a home. "They may earn $300 a month and send back $150, or $200."  Bernal says most of them have a basic dream that they live for, and that it is simply to marry and raise a family. They are accustomed to hard work - they expect it - and also expect to work without complaining. Only the poor Mexicans come north, "the rich ones go to Europe."
Not all the Hispanics who come here are Mexicans. Most Anglos can't tell the difference between various Hispanics, but the Hispanics know immediately . Many of those coming from Central and South America are better educated than the Mexicans who come north, and many of the former come to avoid political persecution at home.
The problems Hispanics face in North Carolina include language difficulties. Almost all are literate in their own language but find living in English a challenge. Authorities are another problem. There is a distrust of police because in their past experience police have often been corrupt. The first question a Mexican policeman asks a person they have stopped Bernal says, is "Who is your father?" If you father is well known or has political power, you are on your way again; if not, you will be provided a ticket, which if taken along with an offer of money from you, might result in the officer taking your money along with the ticket back, and you can go on your way. If they try this in America it has different results. They also want to hide from the police anyway if they are undocumented. Many provide different names to different people they meet. They may be known as Carlos where they work, Juan with one group of their friends, and they may be known other places by yet other names. Many of the immigrants learn how to "not exactly lie" but "to speak around the actual facts" because the "truth" is often not kind to them here.
The place they feel most at home while they are in America is the church. Most of them are not only Catholic but come from a completely Catholic community. They don't even think to ask for a Catholic church when they get here, and sometimes go to the first church they find, assuming it is Catholic. They don't speak English well of course, and expect every thing here to be different from Mexico. It may take them a while to find their error - at least in some churches - Bernal speaks of the possibility of going to the "wrong" church - a Lutheran church say, or an Episcopal church - for as long as a year before finding out, "by then, you have made friends and contacts, become part of a new community, and been accepted by a new denomination."
Coming here is not easy. The trip is hard and sometimes dangerous. It takes a lot longer than most immigrants think it will and it may be very expensive. Up to 2,000 die each year attempting the journey. Most who get here don't last more than a few months before returning. The first year is the hardest. "You are here, your body is here, but your mind is not - you mind is still at home." Bernal says that many of those who come here, come seeking a lie. "They think they are coming to a movie, which is what they know about America. What they find is a new reality. They have to learn to adjust."

©John Womack, 2005
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What does the Death Penalty really kill?

The United States is one of a small contingent of countries that still provide for execution. Most of the others are struggling to rise to the level of third-world status.

Even though the American death penalty is metered out largely to minorities, and exclusively to poor people, we have shown compassion on these wretched ones by "improving" how we kill them. Now it is generally an injection of a cocktail of drugs that peacefully (we are told) puts our prisoner to sleep wherein he (sometimes she) then dies. Some medical personnel think that only appears "peaceful" to the witnesses; to the dying one it is an agony to be suffered in a drug-paralyzed body. Who really knows?

A group of undergraduate students in Illinois did some pretty basic journalistic research and found several people on death row waiting to be put to “sleep” were actually innocent and a number of them were subsequently found to be innocent, and some were even released from prison as a result! That was a “wake up” for everybody.

What about those like Timothy McVeigh? He confessed freely. He did it. There seems to be no doubt of any degree. If anyone would deserve to be killed, it would be one such as he, or Charles Manson, or others we can all name. But even in those cases, what about those who commit the act of execution or "official killing"? And it is not just one person. There are prison workers who “care” for the one to be put to death during the last days of his life, there are clergy involved, there are technicians, doctors, reporters, witnesses, and even people who just live in the community in which it all takes place.

There cannot be a system to put just one person to death; it must be a system designed to operate in an ongoing manner. There will have to be continual purchases of expensive equipment, maintenance, testing and repair of all that. Personnel will have to be hired and trained, budgets will require additional funds, and that funding will need to increase from year to year. Performance standards and program measures will be developed and implemented; position descriptions will be build around all that, resumes will be solicited and received and evaluated. People will apply for jobs to kill. There will grow "justifications for death, and a “need” to kill prisoners will assume an importance, and will bureaucratically compete at some level with the “need” for justice.

Many of the people who play seemingly distant roles in in the process have found that they have become connected with those who are executed at a very deep place within their spiritual being. Some of them stated in a National Public Radio program that was aired in May, 2001, that these connections seem permanent and do not go away or fade. More than a few have found that they have slowly entered into a post-traumatic stress syndrome type of life that has proven to be irreversible. Some of the countries which have abandoned the death penalty have said that they did so not because of what it did to the prisoners but because of what they found it did to them as a nation and as a people.

Then there is the issue of “promotion”. History often turns on stories of people who have been put to death for following their own conviction, whether inspired by glory or evil. No one can become a martyr without being killed by his enemies. Whenever any person like McVeigh is put to death, then their cause can become “promoted” to a more worthy cause – a cause more important than life itself. Not for everyone, but some people will always come to see the one who is killed by the state as a noble prophet. Throughout history, the very act of execution has “freed” many people from a prison to play a greater role in the future. Just more of the seeds of death.

The Invrionment

Everybody knows the Environment is in trouble and that it needs help. Of course we all help now-and- then, and will continue to do more in the future. We will pitch in when we have enough money to give, or when we have time to spare and we will contribute somehow if things continue to get worse, and so on and so forth.
Webster defines the Environment as “that by which one is surrounded”. While that emphasizes how important it is to all of us, it is also implies the Environment is something which is “out there”. To play a philosopher’s game of words, we could say the Environment is therefore “not-us”, i.e. by definition it is something other THAN us. Thus the Environment becomes a little bit like some old friends who are having problems - we are concerned, of course we are, and we really do feel sorry for them. We will keep them on our mind and perhaps even pray for them. Meanwhile we have to deal with our own problems.
But aren’t we missing something when we then eat food that was “out there” and digest it in our own insides? Or when we drink water from “out there” and use it to refresh and clean the insides of our bodies? Or when we breathe in air from “out there” and mix it with our own oxygen and blood, and pulse all of that deeply inside of us? Isn’t it strange how that which is “out there” keeps coming “in here”? The Environment (En-VIR-oment) keeps becoming our own Invironment (IN-vir-oment), and that’s becoming scary.
The Environment in the Smoky Mountains has become polluted with fine particulate dust and mercury emissions from nearby power plants. We are now finding our Invironments have also become polluted with those same particles and emissions, they are hung up in our lungs and they float through our blood.
The National Academy of Sciences tells us that lead used in paint and other places has become part of the Invironment of many of our children, especially those living in lower income homes, and it has gone deeply inside the brain cells of these children and it inclines them to a lifetime of violence. The Environment of our children has become the Invironment of our society.
An even more recent study indicates that methyl mercury is readily absorbed when ingested, then easily crosses the placenta and blood-brain barriers, and appears to create adverse effects on children while in the womb, and affect their ability to learn language, develop memory and attention skills, and these problems will last their entire life. The degree of affliction is directly related to the amount of mercury their mothers were exposed to during pregnancy. Autism has been found to increase in a predictable rates as mercury in the Environment increases. Mercury comes from eating fish, also in many places from breathing air. Too many American children are now born with permanent brain and nervous system damage due to mercury pollution. Our Environment begins to reach deeper and deeper into our being, no longer just personally but now collectively too, reaching in unknown ways into our posterity. Our government has promised to begin reducing mercury emissions in fifteen years.
All production requires purchasing of raw material from someone else, the labor of processing it and then distributing the product. Material and production costs are subtracted from revenues and the remainder is called "profit". Part of the raw material used in most production processes is clean air and fresh water that is also needed by the citizens of our land who also need that same raw material for their own life. But when many of our citizens receive their air and water it is already seriously damanged. When any business entity takes a resource, uses it and returned it damaged, they have not covered all of their costs of production. The profits they claim are therefore not valid. You rent a car, return it damaged, you will pay for the damage, maybe buy a new car. If a business refuses to pay their labor costs, or their suppliers, they will be sued and incur even greater costs.
Great corporations say they can reduce the pollution they have created but that would cost them more money, that would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. They present the problem/solution as being not really an issue to them, they are just trying to save us money. That seems to imply the problem is our fault, and they are just doing what we want!
But by absorbing the pollution from their production process we are also absorbing some of their costs of production that they did not pay but have taken as “profit” and already dispersed it to their shareholders and officers. Does it actually make no difference to them? not really. If they do pay the real costs of production, a true picture would be available to everyone, not hidden as it is today. While prices would rise for consumers, the profits would also shrink for the shareholders and corporate officers. This would reduce the capital available to the company because shareholders would move to other investments, while many mutual funds would automatically and instantaneously switch through computer programming procedures.
The rising prices would hurt the consumer, of course, but since it would also give a true picture of the costs of our current forms of production it would also encourage conservation among consumers and help them transfer to other forms of production - hybrids in automobiles, solar and wind in electrical, etc. These options are currently repressed because of the high relative price of purchasing them. The market system, so widely endorsed by conservatives, would at last be free to operate on its own in this market, and consumers would finally be able to make wise choices.
Meanwhile, there should be a corresponding decrease in illness costs for the consumers. This would be good for them, but would create a serious problem for the economy because it would significantly reduce money spent for medical care, insurance, pharmaceutical products and the criminal justice system. The costs to respond to the pollution of the Invironment is always much higher than the cost to clean up the Envirionment. So it's complicated - what do you think?
©John Womack, 2005, All Rights Reserved.

The Problem With Religion . . .

. . .is that God, in Her great wisdom, has not yet spoken clearly to the multitude. Not in English at least, nor in Arabic, nor in Yiddish or Aramaic or Italian or Spanish or Batu-batu. Not even in French for God’s sake.

And when God has spoken it has been in secret, to priests, rabbis, Imams, shamans, roshis, itinerant preachers and other assorted receivers of the True Word, all of whom have been afflicted with the identical learning disability associated with being masculine.

God, however, has clearly and truly revealed Her intention to a few special prophets. Most people agree on the first five or six or seven or so, like Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed. But it doesn’t end there - there are always other men who have been "chosen by God" such as Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, Jim Jones and David Koresch, and it even gets worse. Of course not everybody would agree on the validity of all those “prophets”, but therein lies part of the problem with religion.

Even when we have winnowed down the lengthy list of potential prophets, we still are left with a few important questions, like should the sabbath be honored on Friday, Saturday or Sunday? To what tribe does the land surrounding Jerusalem really belong? Should a man cut his beard? How should a man treat his women - also, one wife only or can (should?) he have more? Only one God for that matter or more? Genesis indicates there were several, or that God was at least plural.

Well, never mind. God has provided that His/Her/Their word be truly recorded in language so that all people can have it available as a “Law” for posterity, to guide their actions and thoughts. Once the Law has been established, then it is THERE - for all eternity - no need for any more laws, ever. Therefore, no need for legislatures, we can do away with all that wrangling and bickering, and finally get rid of elected representives and democratic dialog - no need for any more elections either. All the Laws ever needed have already been “passed”. Humanity will now need only judges and police.

The Law will be available to all people at all times. The Ten Commandments will be especially available - all thirteen of them will be posted in all public places. The rest of the Law (fine print) can be read in the Upanishads, Bagavad Gita, Rig Veda, Zend Avesta, the Torah, the Book of Tao, Talmud, Books of Cuang Tzu and Laotse, the Qur’an, the Tao te ching, and the Holy Bible. Doesn’t matter which book you read. They’re all the same - the Judges will explain later.

Doesn’t matter which bible you read either: the King James Version, the Douay, Revised Standard Edition, the New Jerusalem Bible, the New English Edition, the Apocrypha, or the ASV, BBE, BWE, CET, CEV, DKJV, TEV, the Darby Translation, or the Book of Mormon. Well, that’s just to name a few. There are at least another 53 listed on just one site on the web. But it just doesn’t matter, they’re all the same - God would not let Her people be misled. They are all really the same. But don’t try to read them all, that would be confusing. You just have to Believe - the Judges will expalin all that.

These judges will really be busy. And they will need to get right with God, too. No more screwing around like in the past. No more sanhedrins, colonialism, inquisitions, crusades, Salem witchcraft trials, slavery, segregation, and genocide against native people - like American Indians - all of which were (and still are) done in the Name of and for the Glory of God. As far as homosexuality is concerned, that too is a no- no, well - there’s supposed to something about it in there somewhere, no need to try to find it the Judges will take care of that. Female discrimination is different though, that’s OK, the Bible says so.

It is going to require a lot of judges, police and jails ( religious remediating schools). There will have to be substantial hierarchy involved here. The only thing that will handle all that will be a worldwide return to the feudal system. Then we can have a Lord who will run everything. The Lord can finally tell us which book to read and which parts of it to honor, and how to follow all that and how to live on the "Right Side of God". The Lord can appoint a coterie of wise men who will work and act in the name of the Lord. The Lord’s will will finally be done. And it will all be Catholic too. All who protest will be shot - about time! And no more Sunni, Sh**te nonsense either - that will stop! No time for Orthodoxology and certainly no need for Reform - ever! Evolution will be banished both as theory and as a fact. Nothing will ever evolve again. Anyone caught evolving will be burned at a stake! The ban on evolution will evolve to include all learning except for religion and technology. The lion will quit eating all those lambs, and they will just lie down together - never to get up again.

But the real problem with religion is that it usurps the presence of Spirit and turns mystery into laws, glory into mere gold, wonder into mindless creeds, realization into servitude, and tells you that you are a sinful lump of clay instead of a beautiful being of light.

©John Womack, 2005. All Rights Reserved.