ISSUE 2, VOLUME I The Seed · 2010. 8. 16. · Photography: “Pepper Spray Mace” by R. Gardiner Poem: Oneiric by Jennifer Williams Poem: Don’t Blame Them by Dan Provost Poem:

The Seed ISSUE 2, VOLUME I

January—March 2006 [email protected]

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Post-Holiday Reflections by Mary E. Kohler Cartoon: John Jonik

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Peace by Piece by Jena Laske Poem: Commander by Jennifer Williams

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Women and Girls Last...by Dr. Elaine Enarson Poem: I am a Building by Jennifer Williams

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Johnny’s Got His Gun by D.S. Yoxheimer Cartoon: Ross P. Kettle

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The Warm Embrace of Warfare by Michael Niebauer Cartoon: Jonik

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Some Thought s on Capitalism and Democracy by Ben Carliner

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Democracy: The Modern-Day Trojan Horse by Milton McGriff Book Review: Mary E. Kohler

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High Pew by Paul Dorris Music Review: Nate Saar Cartoon: Ross P. Kettle When the Market Model Sells Short by Mary E. Kohler King Day 2006 by S.A. Griffith

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Poem: The Apes Of Wrath by S.A. Griffin Photography: “U.S. Flag”, “Family” by R. Gardiner Poem: March 20, 2003...by C. Allen Rearick

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Don’t Blame Cosmo, Blame the Furniture by Jessica Mahlstedt Poem: Thief of Hearts by Luna Jena

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Poem: Interstate Genesis 19:1-26 by Mikl Paul Poem: Vacant Sigh by Mike Chritton Poem: Petals of Blood by Blissful Violet

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Poem: Channel 4 by Jacob Johanson Poem: The World As I See It by Joey M. Longo Photography: “Trance” by R. Gardiner

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Photography: “Pepper Spray Mace” by R. Gardiner Poem: Oneiric by Jennifer Williams Poem: Don’t Blame Them by Dan Provost Poem: Dare I Say It by John Dorsey Poem: An example of How Darwin’s….by C. Allen Rearick Poem: Republicrats and Democans by Justin Gailit-Lutz

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Inside this issue:

Mission Statement The Seed is a quarterly publication that was born out of necessity. It is to be used as a forum for creative thought, with the intention of pro-moting consciousness over compla-cency. This publication is not Marx-ist, liberal, conservative, anarchist, or any other label that one may come up with. It is an embodiment of all of these and at times, none of these. The writings are meant to encourage dialogue, thought, and debate.

Advertising The Seed will not advertise for ANY product, company, person or busi-ness.

Contributions The Seed is a non-profit publica-tion. If you wish to contribute to-wards the printing costs please con-tact the editor at:

[email protected]

It is also recommended that if you like a certain piece of writing, car-toon, or photograph, send a contri-bution directly to that artist. Con-tact information for individual au-thors can be found either in the publication or by inquiring at the above e-mail address.

Disclaimer The opinions expressed in this pub-lication do not necessarily reflect the point of view of the editor-(unless, of course, they are written by the editor).

Cover Art by Andy Kohler

Post-Holiday Reflections by Mary E. Kohler

Another Christmas has passed and I

realize something about myself. Over the years, my attitude towards the Christmas holiday seems to become more cynical. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy the family time, good food, and the premise for which the holiday was founded. How-ever, it’s as though the whole original and pure idea of Christmas has been twisted and polluted into something rather dis-dainful. The notions associated with this holiday such as acknowledging the hum-ble birth of a savior, the idea of giving, and “peace on earth, good will towards men” appears to have been replaced by something unmistakably unchristian: ex-cessive consumerism.

I just can’t visualize Mary and Jo-seph bombarding Jesus with action fig-ures, video games, and an IPOD on his birthday. I guess this is because buying things to express love seems so soulless. It’s kind of like when you get a Hallmark card with a nice saying in it and your family or friends just sign their name at the bottom. Sure, it’s a nice saying, but you know that about 20,000 of those cards are floating around the country say-ing the same thing to 20,000 other people. It’s factory made. It means very little, or I

should say, a lot less than how great it would be to have your friends and family take the time to write their own reasons of why they care about you.

The day after Thanksgiving, better know as “black Friday”, opens up the Christ-mas season with hordes of people rushing to the stores to buy plastic things, electronic things, gizmos and gadgets, all of which are probably considered necessities. But are they necessities? I think a pertinent question we should be asking ourselves is, what do we really need? Do we really need fifteen pairs of shoes? Do we really need another televi-sion set? Do our children really need another video game? All of these questions lead to the BIG question: With all of this buying and the accumulation of material possessions, what is happening to our society as a whole? In other words, are things and technology undermining the human side of humanity? It seems as though the power to purchase has brought an unforeseen comfort called com-placency. As long as we have a new car or two, an abundance of name brand clothes, and all the latest technology, all is right with the world, at least our personal world…or so we think.

Isn’t it ironic how just about every T.V. commercial is pushing either automobiles, technology, or pharmaceuticals. Our culture is being infiltrated by advertising propaganda and individuals are scrambling to buy what-ever they’re shown to keep up with the latest trend. In the meantime, something has been lost. This preoccupation with man-made things has severed various social ties that at one time made individuals feel more con-

nected to the community. Many people live in silent despair, battling a loneliness that they just can’t put their finger on. As a result, social disorders such as panic attacks, depression, and other mental illnesses are on the rise. Therefore, it seems no coincidence that these drug commercials have as much airtime now as other products.

Karl Marx once asserted, “Religion… is the Opium of the people”, however, what Marx did not foresee was the extent to which products would dominate peoples lives. Now it’s through shopping and the television set that we gain our values, morality, and an ever-increasing cultural narcissism (*Lasch, 1979). With all of this in mind, there must be more attentiveness in regard to what we are doing (not just at Christmas time, but throughout the year) as indi-viduals and as a society to make this world less superficial and more genuine. So maybe next Christmas, rather than running out to buy things, maybe it would be more appropriate to initiate a selfless act of kindness to someone in need or make a conscious effort to volun-teer time in the local community.

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*Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Nar-cissism: American Life in An Age of Di-minishing Expectations, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. New York. 1979.

Page 3 The Seed

CrimethInc.

Sarah Takesh has gone where most fashion designers fear to thread. The founder of Tarsian & Blinkley, an upscale women’s apparel line, brought her company’s clothing production to war-torn Afghanistan in 2002. Since then, she has provided jobs to dis-placed and impoverished Afghan women.

Afghanistan is probably not a blip on most US business’ development radars. Dec-ades of war have thwarted most legitimate foreign investment in the country. The cur-rent period of post-conflict reconstruction (if it can indeed be termed post-conflict) has been pockmarked by kidnappings and na-tionwide car bombings.

Due to the general instability of the country, and the risk of losing profits and personnel, many businesses seek investments elsewhere. Tarsian & Blinkley, however, is not business as usual. It is one of a growing number of socially conscious businesses (SCBs). Loosely defined, SCB’s serve to better the lives of their workers as well as turn a profit. “Everything,” Takesh said of her initiative, “is designed with the goal of creating jobs for Afghan women.”

Social entrepreneurs like Takesh are high-stake gamblers. They go where others won’t and do what others don’t. “Social entrepreneurs identify resources where peo-ple only see problems. They view the villag-ers as the solution, not the passive benefici-ary. They begin with the assumption of com-petence and unleash resources in the commu-nities they're serving,” states David Born-stein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. “There’s nothing easy about being here – it’s pure sacrifice,” Takesh stresses. “But we are helping people who would oth-erwise not see this kind of work.” Takesh has personally overseen the hiring and train-ing of women from five Afghan tribes. Over 300 have attended her workshops where she works individually with each woman to learn her unique skills in crochet, beading and em-broidery.

Afghan women have handicraft skills in abundance. Takesh, who is fluent in Dari, a language spoken widely in Kabul, trains them about the “art direction” of her fashion line, and encourages the creation of unique embellishments. Women enhance hand-

loomed silk blouses with crochet and beading. Tailored cotton jackets are em-broidered with silk thread. Women work from home due to entrenched cultural traditions and family responsibilities. Pick-up and drop-off days for piecework at the office are “madness” Takesh de-scribed, with at least 50 women showing up on a single day to pick-up unfinished garments or drop-off those recently com-pleted. Takesh pays them well above country standards – between $4 and $5 a day. The average income for Afghan workers with basic skills is less than a dollar a day.

About 10 men are employed to tai-lor the clothing, as women lack this abil-ity. But this is about to change. Takesh has plans to train some of her best woman embroiders to tailor. To be eligi-ble the women must take literacy classes. It is necessary to provide women incen-tives because many do not want to take the time to learn. “Most women want to make the money and run. They have many responsibilities at home,” she ex-plained.

According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), female-headed households make up the majority of war affected families in most post con-flict societies. Afghanistan is exemplary in this regard, with UNIFEM estimating that Kabul is home to nearly 50,000 war widows. As de facto heads of house-holds, women are subjected to higher levels of gender-based violence and eco-nomic hardship as the sole providers for their families (UNDP, 2004). Addition-ally, Afghan women face restrictive so-cial norms which make it difficult for them to build livelihoods outside of the home.

Women’s unemployment in Af-ghanistan is very high. Estimates put their illiteracy rate at 80 percent. Cur-rently, formal sector jobs are hard to come by - with the exception of low-level government jobs. Many women are deficient in the basic office management, computer and English language skills required for these positions, according to Mina Sherzoy, director of entrepreneur-ship development with the Afghan Min-

istry of Commerce. Most job opportunities come from the informal sector where handi-crafts, carpet weaving, jewelry making, leather goods, dry fruits, and cultivation of silk worms are women’s main activities.

To help women gain employment, the Ministry of Commerce began business work-shops to improve women’s entrepreneurial skills. The workshop started with 11 women and grew to about 100. In December of 2004, the United Nations funded the development of job centers, the first of which opened in Kabul to help “unqualified” women find work (IRIN, 2004). The centers are to train women in skills that will make them “employable”. A press release about the opening of the center stated the skills that Afghan women have, such as embroidery and handicrafts, are inapplicable to the current labor market (IRIN, 2004).

Afghan women, many of whom lack ac-cess to basic resources, such as land for raising livestock and agricultural production, would benefit from a broader perspective of market development. An encompassing perspective would acknowledge their current skills and put them to use. Handicraft talents are employable to some companies – particularly those that specialize in textiles, carpet weaving, jewelry making, and fashion design. Takesh employs Afghan women based on their handicraft exper-tise. This utilization preserves Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage by paying women to per-form longstanding traditions. Additionally, Ten Thousand Villages is a non-profit retail chain that specifically focuses on trading crafts acquired by fair wages standards. Companies such as this make ideal clients for Afghan women’s wares.

While the missions of government spon-sored employment centers are laudable, dis-missing the skills women have is problematic. First, women must wait for training and then get a job before they can receive an income. Second, it is unclear whether the jobs they are trained for will take into account women’s fam-ily responsibilities or deep cultural traditions. Furthermore, according to Bridget Byrne, au-thor of Towards a Gendered Understanding of Conflict, increasing women’s supplementary skills may actually increase their workloads if they gain employment.

The Afghan government’s centralized and bureaucratic nature renders it inadequate to significantly impact job creation for women.

Peace by Piece Fashion helps Afghan Women Stitch Livelihood

by Jena Laske, Philadelphia, Pa. [email protected]

Page 4 The Seed

The government has invited private foreign investment, but not the kind that would at-tract women workers. Investment so far has focused on mining, energy, communications, and the construction of hotels and roads. While these physical developments are es-sential, they require highly skilled labor and thus systematically deny women access to employment. To encourage economic activ-ity, the Afghan government might focus on creating laws and enforcement mechanisms to foster business growth. Enforcement measures would fashion a secure investment climate. Private foreign investors are reluc-tant to locate in post-conflict atmospheres while facing great insecurity, according to risk analyst John Bray in his paper, “International Companies and Post Conflict Reconstruction” (2005).

Non-governmental organizations tend to mirror the government’s lackluster job mak-ing approaches. While a few create some jobs for people and carry out genuine pro-jects, many are ill equipped to handle women’s economic development. “Non-profits are mostly just a scam,” Takesh as-serts. “They [NGOs] talk all day about talk-ing. They spend on things that are finite and don’t go anywhere.” Takesh’s assessment of NGOs aligns with an Afghanistan Invest-ment Support Agency (AISA) report which criticizes the international aid community for absorbing 70 percent to 80 percent of inter-national disbursements itself – instead of the funds being used for development of the do-mestic private sector (2004). The report states that while it is difficult to determine the overall effectiveness of NGOs in post-conflict situations, it has proven hard to jus-tify the 1,300 – 1,400 NGOs estimated in Kabul – out of which only 300-400 are deemed by peers to provide any serious work (2004).

Socially conscious businesses are far more effective than humanitarian aid at ad-dressing women’s needs, Takesh believes. “Business gives women exactly what they need - money for their labor so they can feed themselves and their families.” For impover-ished women, learning about women’s rights and how to read and write are secondary in post-conflict atmospheres where basic sur-vival takes precedence. However, while SCBs have the potential to directly empower Afghan women by providing them living wages and opportunities for supplemental training, they confront numerous challenges.

Unlike NGOs or large multi-national corporations that benefit from foreign aid dollars, SCBs are likely to face financing hurdles when settling in countries emerging from war. In order to get the start-up capital for the fashion line, Takesh solicited “angel investors,” family and friends willing to pro-vide funding. She submitted her business

plan to Global Social Venture, a competi-tion that awards a monetary sum for busi-ness plans that are financially and socially viable. She walked away with the grand prize – about $80,000. Takesh also re-ceived a loan for $150,000 from the Over-seas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which provides loans and insur-ance to high risk companies. The loan was nearly impossible to secure, she said, be-cause the agency was hesitant to fund an apparel business.

International organizations offer some promise to qualify SCBs as viable eco-nomic actors in countries emerging from war. The Business Humanitarian Forum (BHF), in partnership with the UNDP ap-proaches post-conflict reconstruction ef-forts based on partnerships between hu-manitarian organizations and businesses. “Business is the world's greatest allocator of resources, the world's biggest employer, the principal creator of wealth and there-fore also the principal eliminator of pov-erty. Unfortunately, much of business’ potential to reduce human suffering re-mains untapped” (Business Humanitarian Forum, 2005).

The BHF, in partnership with UNDP, could link SCB’s with reconstruction ef-forts. The organization could target initia-tives like Tarsian & Blinkley and ulti-mately help streamline the process of locat-ing in a post-conflict society. In connec-tion with UNDP, the BHF has access to sources of funding that may assist financ-ing needs. Additionally, it might support SCBs in forging relationships with NGOs to facilitate the social aspects of business plans. Although some effort must go into finding such initiatives and dovetailing them with the labor skills of women in post-conflict societies, SCB’s are a valu-able tool for post-conflict development. However, there is the question of whether ‘tools’ can sustain the hammering tests of a highly unstable environment.

Tarsian & Blinkley has grown since its inception. Each year has heralded in-creased sales. Quality has improved. The number of women employed has also grown. In December 2004, Takesh em-ployed 60 women full time during produc-tion months. In August 2005, she handed out $2K to workers in one week alone. This year would have been the best yet for the company - if it hadn’t been for a seri-ous robbery that took place in November. “It pretty much wiped us out,” Takesh said through an email correspondence. Details of the theft and the full impact of it on the business remain hazy. However, this event has made very clear that insecurity remains Afghanistan’s biggest threat to business investment and women’s economic pro-

gress. It may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a small fashion business to survive and thrive in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

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Commander

by Jennifer Williams Edinburgh, Scotland

The tanks were steered as horses and boats are – counter-intuitively, with my hands to guide his hands. He knew the code of my touch on his shoulder as I had the view, and he the strength to drive blindly. Women had built the vehicle and he could feel their construction beneath his seat; their hair tied back with handkerchiefs and scraps of cloth as they sweated in the factory and wiped their faces with the rough sinew of their skirts. They wore dark red, and flushed to a complimentary colour. The red, hot girls. He did not speak much. Once we drank vodka together. He told me he dreamed of a panel bolted with glowing dials, metres, faces. Beneath it was an underground lake. As he walked the water in the darkness bodies of children burned in his wake, but he could not turn. I am a deceitful man. There was one night when we drove that tank. The witches were out in force, their flames nostrils of the wing’s sails burnt sin red, now. I pushed his shoulder, hard. We crushed the village. [email protected]

Page 5 The Seed

Women And Girls Last? Averting the Second Post-Katrina Disaster

By Dr. Elaine Enarson

The fault lines of American society as much as the failings of its infrastructure are shamefully on display in the aftermath of hur-ricane Katrina. Race, class, age, and (dis) abil-ity are now at the heart of the public debate about vulnerability, preparedness and emer-gency response but this is also a story, as yet untold, about women and men. It was low-income African American women, many single mothers among them, whose pleas for food and water were broadcast around the world from the Superdome, women more than men who were evacu-ated from nursing homes, and women more than men whose escape of sorts was made with infants, children and elders in tow. Now we see on nightly TV the faces of exhausted women stand-ing in seemingly endless lines seeking help of any kind. In the long run, as we have learned from studies of past disasters, women will be at the heart of this great city’s rebirth and the emotional center of gravity for their families on the long road to the “new normal.” They will stitch the commemorative quilts, organize community festivals and hurricane anniver-sary events, support their schools and faith-based organizations and relief agencies, and compose and sing many of the Katrina songs to come. Though not this simple, it is often said that men rebuild things while women reweave the social fabric of community life. We are transfixed now by images of needy women and strong men (a few with female partners) wearing badges, carrying weapons and riding armored vehicles, and will soon be treated to endless photos of hardworking men hauling garbage, replacing roofs, making speeches and decisions. Behind the scenes (taking nothing away from others) women labor, too. In the dreary months ahead after the nation’s attention wanes, the burdens on women will be exceptional and exceptionally visible. Imagine cleaning just one flooded room, helping just one toddler or teen to sleep well again, restoring the sense of security to a widowed mother’s life. The basic domestic chores of “homemaking” gain new signifi-cance and are vastly more difficult in a FEMA trailer, a friend’s apartment or the basement of a church—and parents will call upon daugh-ters more than sons for help. Nothing will

change in a hurry as women pack and unpack, moving from place to place across the nation with distracted partners, bewildered children, pets and whatever possessions remain or are gathered piecemeal. The demands on the women who take them in and make them at home are incalculable and displaced families will stay longer than anyone now imagines. Women across the nation are also the life-blood of voluntary organizations of all de-scriptions, now being pulled inexorably into

relief work. They will continue to do this work when the funds dry up women (and to a lesser extent men) marginalized be race and class fall between the (gaping) cracks of the relief sys-tem. Long after we think Katrina over and done with, women whose jobs and professions in teaching, healthcare, mental health, crisis work, and commu-nity advocacy bring them into

direct contact with affected families will feel the stress of “first responders” whose work never ends. These factors help explain why women more often than men report symptoms of post-traumatic stress following disasters. Their hidden emotion work with toddlers, teens, partners, parents, friends and colleagues pass-ing through difficult times takes a toll but is irreplaceable. Many will struggle to break through the stony silence of the men in their lives. Especially when so much is out of their control in Katrina’s aftermath, men without jobs and those unable to save family members and other victims may feel unmasked and un-manly. Already we have learned of the sui-cides of police officers and other men in New Orleans. Some men will cope through drugs, alcohol, physical aggression or all three, hurt-ing themselves and putting the women and girls around them at risk. We can count on increased reports of vio-lence against women as this is so common in US and international disasters. Press accounts from the grotesque world of the Superdome—a woman held a gunpoint, another woman raped and then a young girl—suggest this al-ready but the real worry is later. Women and children displaced once already by their part-ner’s violence into a shelter closed by Katrina will struggle to find their way, and crisis workers struggle to locate them. Some will be forced back into violent relationships through lack of housing and support. When rebuilding

is in full swing and the cities and towns of the Gulf coast flood with outsiders coming to help (or to profit), tent cities will spring up to house them and these will not be safe spaces for girls and women—any more than the secluded homes of profes-sional men whose businesses were de-stroyed. Double-shifts and long commutes will be the norm after Katrina as women and men work hard to get back on their feet. In their mothers’ absence, teenage girls and their younger sisters are all the more vulnerable to sexual assaults by men known and unknown to them. Both girls and boys are at increased risk of abuse and neglect at the hands of their mothers in the difficult days ahead. Most public housing residents, resi-dents of mobile homes, renters and those lacking insurance are women, often women heading households on their own income alone, but re-housing them is not a priority in our owner-focused and single-family home rebuilding plans. The poorest of the poor before Katrina, socially mar-ginalized women of color will be the last to escape the confines of FEMA tent cities and other encampments. The finely bal-anced networks of support poor women develop to survive in our economy, piec-ing together cash from odd jobs, boy-friends, government, family and kin, were ripped apart by this storm. Low wage women employed at the lowest rungs of the tourist industry and as beauticians, childcare workers, home health aides, servers and temporary office workers will not be helped back on their feet by eco-nomic recovery plans geared to major em-ployers in the formal sector. The wives and daughters of oystermen, shrimp farm-ers and oil riggers will need skills training, income supplement, child care assistance, transportation, and economic development plans targeting women as earners as well as caregivers. Indirect losses can be antici-pated, too, for domestic workers whose employers lost their homes to floodwaters and small business women who struggled to keep their business going in the best of times. Community-wide economic recov-ery is impossible without the female labor force but barriers of all kinds arise in re-building child care systems, especially the family-based care upon which most American infants and youngsters depend. (Continued on the following page)

The Seed Page 6

Katrina did not disrupt a social order in which women and

men were equally vulnerable any more than it hit

suburbanites and “To catch the reader's attention, place an interesting sentence or quote

from the story here.”

(Women and Girls Last...continued) Without functioning households and the social infrastructure of transit systems, schools, stores, health clinics and child-care, women’s return to employment is delayed. Women supporting households single-handedly are, of course, most at risk. And will the short-term emergency relief work now being pro-posed reach women and men equally? Will “youth employment” recovery projects work as well for teenaged girls as for their broth-ers? Will steps be taken to counter pressure to employ women in “women’s jobs” in govern-ment subsidized economic relief pro-grams? What can be done to change this bleak scenario? How can we act now on the “lessons learned” about women, men and gender disaster recovery? If we are to craft a strategy that takes not just some but all people toward a fundamentally stronger and more just future, the na-tional debates about reconstruction and rehabilitation now beginning must fully engage women as well as men. In the many drawers of unused plans and unlearned lessons policy makers will find planning tools for gender-sensitive emer-gency response and recovery—but will they use them? Are gender-specific data collected now so that we might evaluate and monitor budgets, programs and plans for possible gender bias over time? Gender-fair emergency relief is essen-tial, and steps can be taken now to make girls and women safer, ensure that mental health services reach men effectively, promote women’s economic recovery, provide respite care and support for long-term caregivers—the list goes on. But we have learned that the most urgent need of all is for those most affected to reclaim their sense of place, some degree of con-trol and autonomy, and the certain knowledge that their views count too in the re-imagining of the future. Will women’s voices be heard in the inde-pendent commission likely to be ap-pointed to review the national response to hurricane Katrina? Will community recovery meetings be held at times con-venient to those with children and in places safe for women? Will specialists about family life, women’s issues, the gender concern of boys and men in crisis, poverty, race and gender, and women’s environmental knowledge and activism

be consulted? Measures are needed now to ensure women’s representation on all public bodies making recommendations and deci-sions about the use of private and public relief monies. Those women most hard-hit by Katrina must take the lead and men—and other women—must learn to listen.

Women must be heard speaking out (and disagree-ing) as elected officials, technical experts, commu-nity advocates, health and human service profession-als, faith-based leaders, tenant association mem-bers, workers and employ-ers, environmental justice advocates, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers.

The losses of grassroots organizations knowledgeable about women at risk must be made good and their capacities devel-oped and supported. Following hurricane Andrew, the broad-based women’s coali-tion, Women Will Rebuild Miami (born the day funds were directed toward the Cham-ber of Commerce and away from child care), struggled for months, and unsuccess-fully, to earmark just 10 percent of relief funds for girls and women. The second dis-aster can be averted along the Gulf Coast. The hurricane so gratuitously described as “flirtatious” in a recent news weekly is, in fact, a highly gendered social event. Katrina did not disrupt a social order in which women and men were equally vul-nerable any more than it hit suburbanites with cars and the central city poor the same. To advocate for gender equality in recon-struction is not to press a political agenda (though there is one to advance) or deny our common humanity in crisis but to serve both the women and the men of the Gulf Coast. This is what the future must look like or all the talk about “building back bet-ter” to increase resilience to future disasters is just talk and the next hurricane will find the poor poorer and women less able than today to anticipate, prepare for, survive, cope with and recover from the storm. This is not the hallmark of a great city or a great nation. ******************

“…we have learned that the most urgent need of all is for

those most affected to reclaim their sense of place...and the certain knowledge that their

views count too in the re-imagining of the future.”

The Seed Page 7

I am a building by Jennifer Williams Edinburgh, Scotland

I am a building. My ribs are steel.

I sway with the blows of the wind.

Like a boxer

I embrace its vehemence to protect myself.

If my own breath—

the essence of my capacity — betrays me,

the pressure of it

will cause me to implode.

For once, I will be as strong as the weather

and then a steel carcass stiller than the sky.

[email protected]

Dr. Enarson is an independent scholar whose research emphasizes women’s ex-perience in disaster situations. She has done extensive research and published nu-merous publications that have not only af-fected how practitioners respond to these events but also how scholars conduct gen-der research. She has consulted with UN agencies and private relief organizations on the need for gender equality and disaster risk reduc-tion .

Page 8

On occasion something egregiously er-rant will arise that captures my attention that isn’t exploding on the 24 hour televi-sion news feed. As I was flipping through the “outdoors” section of the local Sunday paper recently I caught an image of a six- year old child brandishing a loaded hunting rifle. He was handling the weapon, that appeared to be longer in length then he was in height, peering into the scope as though he had a buck in sight which was about to take its last breath. My initial thought was, should someone contact child welfare?! This isn’t the first time this thought has occurred to me in regard to young children and their parents’ abhorrent rearing skills. Most of the time it’s the little things I see, such as indoctrinating a child into a relig-ion before their able to make a rational decision about the existence of an invisible puppet master in the sky. Sure this sounds like the stereotypical liberal anti-values rant. When I say “values”, I mean Ameri-can values. One right and vise many American’s value is guns. Contrary to alcohol, which is another vice, but with a sundry of arbitrary restrictions, guns are treated with a reck-lessly relaxed attitude. Some dangers are utilized to teach responsibility and the NRA has decided that guns are ideal for this. It has always astounded me how many people in this country buy into stupid shit, even if it endangers children. It’s all about marketing and it doesn’t matter if it’s bad or people don’t need it. If someone stands to gain politically or financially by it, it will find itself into small hands. If you’re going to market something you want to target the most impressionable among us. R.J. Reynolds did it with cigarettes for decades although not as blatantly as the gun lobby markets to our youth. Their ally in this is the notion of heritage. If it’s a part of our heritage, it will supersede any real danger presented and put a loaded weapon into a small child’s hands. Hunting, once a necessity, has now evolved into a sport. While the means of hunting became more sophisticated, judg-ment about what age it’s appropriate to introduce one to hunting hasn’t really changed at all. It is a tradition in some families that a father take his son out hunt-ing as a bonding experience (However strange it might seem to bond over killing a living creature). This isn’t frowned on a

bit, certainly not as much as if it were the case that a father introduce his son to marijuana in order to really appreciate his old Pink Floyd records. That sounds like a preposterous thing to introduce a child to ghanga, but can’t you teach responsibility this way as well? Marijuana with it’s inherit dangers can be used responsi-bly. I would certainly feel safer with a packed bong in the house then a loaded gun lying around. The first time I was introduced to marijuana was when I was 15 years old, and I don’t feel that anyone that age should be smoking pot dur-ing those turbulent adolescent years. It’s not smack, but it does affect one quite a bit and should only be used by someone with maturity, if only to give one the restraint necessary to use it on occasion. “Restraint” is the operative term here, something many people seem to be lacking in when it comes to the appropriate use of their lethal little toy when defending themselves. So when is it appropriate to bag your first human kill? If someone is coming at you with a gun, endangering your life or someone else’s with clear intent to kill, then no jury would con-vict you of murder in that situation. If you have an inkling that someone is a threat you’re pretty much justified in putting a cap in their ass and making up about what happened later to the au-thorities: “He was coming right at me!” or, “it looked like he had gun.” In the particularly gun friendly southern re-gion of the United States you’re even more of a target if your not packing. Recently people com-ing into Florida airports were handed pamphlets warning that they may be shot by the kindly Floridians (among them are O.J. Simpson, the Tyco executives, Jeb Bush) because they only need to be suspect of you to take it upon them-selves to end your very existence. Is there a strategy within certain states to turn one another against each other through para-noia? Guns are a pretty easy way to do it since they’re already legal. The powers that be only need a call to action, the other ingredients of bigotry and ignorance already exists in our country. The NRA wants these frightened angry white people to have guns because their fear lends itself to higher gun and ammunition sales. It hardly matters if one of these guns lands in the hands of a six year old. Such an early introduction into the use of firearms raises many queries, some that wander a little into conspiracy land. The most obvious is the military, which would certainly relish a generation of youth that is comfortable handling a firearm. If you teach a small child how to use a hunting rifle they’ll be more then comfortable with an M-16 by the time their 18. Just like

marijuana is a gateway drug to harder drugs, a hunting rifle is an introductory weapon that leads our little human minds’ to want to see what damage a bazooka can do. What young kid doesn’t want to fire a bazooka after doing it in the virtual world of video games or seeing a van full of Mid-dle Easterner’s get it in one of the Governor of California’s old movies. This leads to my final analysis about vio-lence not just among our youth, but with adults as well. Children playing violent video games that allow them to do anything from stealing a car to shooting and setting other people on fire with a flamethrower might not necessarily lead them to act this out in the real world. However, when these children turn 18, the Pentagon will want them to carry out such acts, luring them with shiny medals and ribbons. Over 2000 soldiers have fallen victim to this govern-ment backed ruse and not nearly enough people in this country seem to mind. Cindy Sheehan is a dangerous leftist now and she should really keep her trap shut about her son getting killed. That’s what Fox news or any rightwing talk radio shill for the Bush administration would have you believe. They’re all just promoting their books and endorsing a colonial style occupation of Iraq. The one thing for certain is, we clearly didn’t learn a lesson from the terror-ist attacks and when we’re done training the Iraqi security forces to use our rifles this war will be far from over.

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Page 8 The Seed

Say Whhaaat?!

Johnny’s got his gun by D.S. Yoxtheimer

war, as a concept, has been a great change

agent for humanity. War has helped us to rid the planet of such ills as slavery, the Nazi threat, the communist threat, and I suppose we can give war-fare credit for medical breakthroughs like antibi-otics developed during war. Napoleon can be given credit for the method of canning food for preservation as he commissioned the initial re-search enabling the canning of food for his mas-sive armies. War has been a change agent for mankind but not without an enduring human cost. The millions that died during the 20th Century, the bloodiest of all, might want to differ with those that see a bright and cheery side to wars. The last century provides proof that war really does breed war and is not a curative but a curse for winners and losers. The dangerous argument for the positive side of war is that it is to “end disputes” or to rid us of the threat of the moment. The addictive nature of war gives the illusion to the practitioners on both sides that they are giving an effective remedy to the prob-lem at hand, while war is simultaneously brewing up enemies for the next conflict. World War Two allies Soviet Russia became an enemy for fifty years that sparked proxy wars across the globe. Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salva-dor became battlefields as millions died in con-flicts over ideology. Our Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked to overthrow elected gov-ernments in Iran and Chile and we wonder why others might hate us enough to attack us. There is no excuse for the suffering inflicted upon us on 9/11 but we must understand that nothing happens without sufficient reason. That is why rhetorical arguments for the positive side of war bodes ill for the future of us all. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 attracted a young Bin Laden to fight the Russians, as our CIA trained the forefathers of the Taliban in those years. The training of the Taliban em-powered them to take over the government of the Afghan nation and serve up their own flavor of religious oppression that bred terrorism. Saddam Hussein fought against Iran for eight years with our aid and blessing until he used gas against the Kurds. After the Gulf War win under Bush One, Bush Two has now defeated Iraq with a truly first-class military and the technology behind 15,000 smart bombs. Are we ready for the role of world policeman? Are we getting to enjoy the role a bit too much? Are we acclimating ourselves to understand war as an effective tool of choice? There are many signs that this may be true. Tom Friedman of the New York Times thinks

that congratulations over the Iraqi win should be postponed for the moment. Whether we like it or not those 15,000 bombs paid for by American taxpayers exploded on the overstressed people of Iraq suffering under severe economic sanctions for over ten years. As Fried-man states, “Since we finally broke Iraq, we essentially own the primary responsi-bility to fix and normalize the country.” We must get this done correctly or all

faults from the lack of medicine and food and water to bomb damage will be ours. Friedman also be-lieves that we best get all the help we can to do this from

the UN “since the political and economic costs of occupation will be enormous.” Friedman sees this as a “scene of hu-miliation not liberation” to the Iraqi peo-ple since humanitarian aid is slow in coming and the death toll from rioting is rising. Our military are not trained as policemen. Looting and revenge killings are now becoming common among the Iraqi population, after years of pent up frustrations. Victor Hanson’s book “An Autumn of War” states that, “war can be good and that sometimes nations are better off us-ing devastation than persuasion”. Han-son’s warm embrace of war may be working on the American public. “As Fox News revels in its coverage of the conflict, polls are showing a stoic attitude toward the dead and wounded so far,” according to Maureen Dowd’s column. “Ex-CIA chief, James Woolsey predicts that this conflict will go on for years as we restructure the Middle East.” Wool-sey listed the next list of enemies in the Middle East struggle, Iranian Shia, Hez-bollah, Syrian Baathists, and Islamist Sunni of Al Qaeda .and affiliated terrorist groups.” The next enemy is ready to be cast and given an appropriately “evil” persona or representative face. We are trapped in a cage with a lion held by the ears if we continue to em-brace war over diplomacy, however slow and cumbersome it is in practice. As you can see even the experts are beginning to advocate for perpetual warfare as an hon-orable solution to waging peace. If war is part of the permanent human condition we better get it under control quickly

before the technology gets any more effi-cient. We have the next enemy in our sights and Fox News and Al-Jazeera stand ready as reality TV gets more real. As the American public sits down to watch the next TV war and our comfort with war grows. ******

“We are trapped in a cage with a lion held by the ears if we continue to embrace war over diplomacy, however slow and cumbersome it is in practice.”

• Comport: (v) to behave in a manner conformable to what is right , proper, or ex-pected.

• Herky-Jerky: (adj) charac-terized by sudden, irregular, or unpredictable movements or style.

• Gink: (n) slang, person or guy.

• Plangent: (adj) expressing or suggesting sadness.

• Surfeit: (n) an overabun-dant supply: excess.

• Vaticination: (n) Predic-tion, the act of prophesying.

• Netiquette: (n) etiquette governing communication on the internet.

Word UP !

The Warm Embrace of Warfare by Michael Niebauer

Page 9 The Seed

What exactly is the nature of the relation-ship between capitalism and democracy? It is, if not an age old question, one that has puzzled and motivated scholars at least since Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations. Interestingly, in those days, the field in which Smith wrote was known as Political Economy – the two disciplines had not yet split apart and developed their own special-ties and areas of expertise. Until the 20th century, politics and economics were inexo-rably linked in the minds of intellectuals who sought to explain the nature of power, gov-ernance, and social relationships. Still, the idea that politics and economics influence each other – that the one may support or sub-vert the other, has by no means disappeared.

Marx, of course, famously found owner-ship of the means of production to be the primary determinant of political regime type. But even as Marxism, after a long and bloody history, has finally been discredited, the idea that economic relationships deter-mine regime types has not. Instead, in an inversion that would have Marx rolling in his grave, the idea has been adapted to acknowl-edge the success and dynamism of market economies. For modernization theorists, bourgeois capitalism is now widely de-claimed as an essential, if not necessarily sufficient, precondition of democracy.

The logic of this position is relatively simple: political freedoms are largely irrele-vant, or at least a low priority, if one does not have enough food to eat. Dire poverty precludes meaningful political participation by forcing individuals to focus on the basic necessities for survival. Only once a certain threshold of material wealth has been reached can democracy (and the civil liber-ties and rule of law that support it) flourish. Empirically, there is a lot of evidence to back up this assertion, as capitalism and democ-racy have largely grown up together in the modern world.

This is, unfortunately, a controversial po-sition, and modernization theory is not with-out its detractors. Partly, this is the fault of the modernization theorists themselves. The causal mechanisms by which economic de-velopment is supposed to determine regime type have been left vague at best.

In particular, the assertion that economic development causes democracy is problem-atic. There are at least several examples of democratic transitions that have begun in underdeveloped countries. But consolidated democracies only survive in relatively rich market economies. This is the case because

the supporting infrastructure of institutions, laws, cultural norms and capitalism combine to create an overall structure of incentives that encourage individuals to cooperate in the political sphere.

But proponents of democracy find it distasteful, on a normative level, to condemn the vast majority of the world’s population that still lives in poverty to continued rule by authoritarian (or worse) regimes. They can point to India as an example of an impover-ished country that has nonetheless managed to sustain democratic institutions in the more than 50 years since its independence. And while many have been forced to abandon their defenses of socialism, the counterpoint that unregulated capitalism may subvert or otherwise produce a defective and biased form of democracy is an intuitively convinc-ing argument.

Still, many of the scholars who write on the relationship of capitalism and democracy have lost sight of the fact that what really makes democracy possible, and, for that mat-ter, capitalism, are fundamental rights and liberties and the rule of law. Too often these basic civil rights get lost in the proxies that stand in for democracy in scholarly articles and books. Ensconced in the tenured comfort of the ivory tower, many scholars are skepti-cal and even hostile to the idea that market forces may influence the type and nature of political systems, or that capitalism and de-mocracy are complimentary, mutually rein-forcing phenomena. Dependency theories are perhaps the most egregious examples of de-mocratization theories that are hostile to capitalism. But in fact, capitalism and de-mocracy are two sides of the same coin, op-erate according to similar principles and are dependent on the same prerequisites. The key to achieving both economic growth and political freedom lies in creating incentives for individuals to act in mutually beneficial and productive ways. The funda-mental mechanism for producing the incen-tives that lead to economic and political de-velopment is competition. But in order to create these incentives, it is necessary for states to develop strong, autonomous institu-tions staffed by qualified technocrats that can create and uphold the rule of law. A legal and institutional structure that protects investments, private property and the en-forcement of contracts and intellectual prop-erty rights is essential for attracting and en-couraging industry and investment. Like-wise, the rule of law must enshrine basic civil liberties like freedoms of speech and association, protect minorities from the

Some Thoughts on Capitalism and Democracy By Ben Carliner, Director of Research, Economic Strategy Institute, Washington D.C.

Page 10 The Seed

“tyranny of the majority,” and provide at least some means for interest articulation and politi-cal accountability. It is true that many authoritarian regimes rule simply through the threat or use of force. Fear can be, of course, a powerful incentive and one that makes peaceful democratic transi-tions difficult. It is also true that capitalism, or at least the initial stages of capitalist develop-ment, can be sustained under authoritarian re-gimes. But the legitimacy of modernizing re-gimes cannot be solely based on coercive force. Individuals must be able to pursue at least some of their interests (though guided and modified by the incentive structure put in place by the modernizing regime) and believe that moderni-zation and economic development is a good thing. Even in authoritarian regimes like Singa-pore or Hong Kong, the greater part of the population has acknowledged the legitimacy of their governments and the benefits of economic growth. As time goes by and social, political and economic development progresses, de-mands for democratic norms and standards will increase – as present day Hong Kong attests. An advanced service economy, unlike, say, one based on raw materials production or low-skilled, labor intensive manufacturing, needs the sophisticated measures of interest articula-tion and accountability that democratic proce-dures allow for. Capitalism does not cause de-mocracy. Rather, the two “systems” are mutu-ally complementary and enforcing because they are based on the same principles of individual rights and freedoms. Over the long term, you cannot have one without the other, and any liberalizing reforms must, sooner or later, em-brace both economic and political freedoms to be successful. Modernization theory is not meant to con-demn the developing world to continued au-thoritarian rule. Rather, it is (or should be) meant as a sort of road map with which under-developed countries can pull themselves out of the poverty and instability that characterizes so much of their current existence, and join the modern world. Short-circuiting this path by instituting democracy too early or condoning state interference in the economy will only open the door to populism and economic crisis. The sustainability of democracy and its con-solidation can only be achieved if the underly-ing structure of incentives is conducive to and supportive of individual rights and freedoms. The right kinds of incentives, moreover, can only be built and maintained within the con-fines of strong and autonomous institutions.

*****

How do you put a stop to an ever-increasing Ameri-can imperialism? According to Cornel West, it’s by de-feating three major antidemocratic dogmas that are plaguing American culture: free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and an escalating authoritarian-ism. In a follow-up to his book Race Matters, West out-lines the forces which he contends are putting a strangle-hold on meaningful dialogue; a pertinent ingredient for a working democracy. Free-market fundamentalism under-mines the moral fabric of our society by putting a pre-mium on material wealth, profit, and consuming rather than on a concern for the overall quality of life experi-enced by individuals. West asserts, “How ironic that in America we’ve moved so quickly from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Let Freedom Ring to “Bling! Bling!…” He goes on to assert that another phenomenon that is posing a threat to our democracy is the shift from preventative war to aggressive militarism. The affect of this shift on the domestic front is a political dialogue that legitimizes a police state. Throughout the book, West makes historical and liter-ary parallels, drawing from an eclectic pool of sources such as Melville, Emerson, and Morrison. He suggests that radical change only comes when citizens listen to the intellectuals who engage in a “Socratic questioning” of the culture. What will surface from this method of questioning, West asserts, is the lack of justice and love that has been drained from American society. This book offers charismatic dialogue and thoughtful reflections regarding some of the dynamics affecting democracy in American culture. However, the analysis offers no viable solutions and is often disjointed. He somehow brings hip-hop music, a disagreement with a Harvard associate, and Middle Eastern affairs into a whirl-wind analysis about why democracy matters. Quite frankly, I don’t think West himself is ready for any radical change in the American political or social system; with a salary from Princeton (“Bling!Bling!”), who could blame him. The system that he is fighting, he is an active stakeholder in, and it’s obviously working for him. As a result West limits himself to being an “armchair” radical, trapped by his conscience, yet too comfortable to take any real stand. This is precisely why West’s suggestion that citizens look to intellectuals for guidance on issues seems ineffectual as well as a bit pre-tentious. Mary E. Kohler

BOOK REVIEW

Cornel West. Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. 229p. $24.95

Democracy:

The Modern-Day Trojan Horse By Milton McGriff

(previously published in Metro, Philadelphia) Iraq should be weary of strangers bearing gifts called “democracy” and “full sovereignty.” Especially with troops staying indefinitely to make sure they handle “full sovereignty” right. President Bush means what his prede-cessors did regarding democracy in client-states. Historically, U.S. foreign policy defines “democracy” for smaller nations thus: Your elections have merit if someone friendly to us is elected. Other-wise, we overthrow your choice and install a dictator friendly to our inter-ests. When the people rebel against our dictators, we make life difficult. In 1951, Iranians elected Mohammed Mossadegh as premier. His govern-ment nationalized the oil industry. Two years later, the U.S. supported his overthrow and allowed a despotic Shah to rule for 25 years. In 1954, Guatemalans elected socialist Jacob Guzman Arbenz. Guzman’s land reform law nationalized United Fruit. U.S. foreign policy said the hell with democracy, forced Guzman out and installed Col. Carlos Castillo Armas, who ruled undemocratically and viciously for 31 years. Incidentally, the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster, then CIA director and Secretary of State respectively, held considerable financial interests in United Fruit. In 1957, military support “elected” Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who declared himself Haiti’s President for Life in 1964. He and his brutal para-military Ton Ton Macoutes ruled until 1971. Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duva-lier, his son, succeeded him until a popular uprising unseated him in 1986. In 1970, the Chilean people elected socialist Salvador Allende Gossens. Allende’s government nationalized several industries, including copper firms owned by two American companies, Kennecott and Anaconda. On Septem-ber 11, 1973, the U.S. supported Allende’s overthrow, assassination, and replacement by dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet who brutalized, murdered, and “disappeared” thousands over nearly two decades while remaining friendly with the U.S. In Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, a US-friendly despot, stayed in power for 16 years with the blessings of Washington. Fidel Castro overthrew him in 1959. The U.S. has opposed Castro with economic sanctions and assassination at-tempts for more than four decades. (His sin seems to be wiping out illiteracy and bringing universal free health care to the Cuban people, two problematic issues in this country.) In Nicaragua, U.S. policy supported the tyrannical Somoza dynasty for 46 years. After the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) toppled Anas-tasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, President Reagan worked to destabilize them by creating the Contras. In Venezuela today, it took a million people pouring into the streets to restore Hugo Chavez’s presidency after a U.S.-engineered coup. Chavez favors nationalizing the oil industry. Do we sense a pattern here? Those overthrown, plus Castro and Chavez, wanted the redistribution of wealth so their poor can benefit. Bush’s pronouncements about Iraqi democracy must be taken with a grain, maybe a bushel, of salt. The Bush cabal supports democracy if Iraqis elect someone they rubber stamp. President Franklin Roosevelt reportedly said of Anastasio Somoza, “He may be a son of a bitch but he’s our son of a bitch!” Saddam Hussein stopped being Bush’s daddy’s SOB; American and Iraqi lives are being lost while little Bush searches for a new one.

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Page 11 The Seed

High-Pew A Short Story by Paul Dorris

I felt comforted to have my best friend from high school living in the same dormitory as me for our freshman year. After we got situated and un-packed, we said goodbye to my mom and dad. Then it was time to explore. “Let’s go check out the campus to see if we can’t find some chicks or a party.” I never quite achieved social fulfillment in high school and was nervous abut this whole new world of collegiate prospects. Too Cool-Jeff was dressed in his black leather jacket and Harley T-shirt. In front of the 4th floor elevator he held his pose, weighted to one foot with both thumbs hooked in his torn blue jean pockets. With his blond beard perfectly trimmed, he pushed the red button, again. I sported my tangled attempt at a Mohawk with the front cowlick curving over my forehead. I wore my black denim jacket overtop of my Pink Floyd t-shirt--We Don’t Need No Education. I watched the world through 70’s glasses, tinted brown. Nervous, anxious and self-conscious, a small fart leaked through. Just then the elevator door opened, revealing a tall, thin woman with a pure face and pronounced cheekbones. She dressed in a knee-high skirt and blue blouse. Her legs were perfect. She smiled as we entered. The door closed and the elevator started down in silence. On my first inhale I noticed the odor. The fart had followed me...and it was nasty. My anxiety further weighted down on me from all directions until I combusted into absurdity. My body tightened to restrain the shaking giggles. I watched as Jeff’s face suddenly cringed. His eyes stared and scorched me with their glare. He then shook his head in disgust. It took every ounce of my restrain to keep from bursting out in howling laughter. I also noticed the pretty upper-class woman, standing composed throughout the journey. The elevator has yet to reach its destination. ******************************************

Music Review

When a friend and mutual Fall-Outs fan handed me a brand new album to review, it was like running into a long lost buddy or girlfriend. I was as ecstatic as I was curious to sample the wares of one of my all-time favor-ite bands. Not to mention, it’s their first album in about ten years. The Fall-Outs are a garage rockin’ trio from Washington, led by singer/guitar player and primary song writer, David Holmes. In the 1990’s they released three amazing albums that were fresh, modern, com-pletely original, and yet, true to their retro roots. This album is no exception. These old dogs may not have learned any new tricks, but fortunately, their Class A formula of catchy garage anthems about relationships gone awry are extremely palatable, yet not saccharine sweet. O hell, I’ll put it to you this way. As a high school misfit rocker, the Fall-Outs made it a little easier to be a no-girlfriend-havin’ malcontent and still feel cool. In my humble opinion, the Fall-Outs are one of the most musi-cally important bands of my generation. Buy this record and then go buy all their other records. Nate Saar

Group: The Fall-Outs LP: Summertime Estrus Records

Page 12 The Seed

THE Seed's Recommended Reading List

1. Cruddy by Lynda Barry (1999) 2. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2005) 3. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of

the Human Animal by Jared Diamond (1993) 4. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1994) 5. Promethean Fire: Reflections on the Origin of the Mind by Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson (1983) 6. Human Culture: A Moment in Evolution by Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernest Boesiger (1983). 7. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher (1973) 8. Night by Elie Wiesel (1960) 9. The Master Butcher’s Singing Club by Louise Erdrich (2003) 10. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1963)

Today the world faces a myriad of prob-lems, some of which are old, such as poverty, wars, and disease and some of which are new, such as overpopulation, pollution, and exces-sive environmental degradation. There are organizational difficulties in trying to solve these predicaments. This becomes com-pounded when one particular model of organi-zation is blanketed across every problem, without taking into consideration the unique and dynamic nature of the problem itself.

The market is a specialized system meant for gauging capital; however, it is not an ap-propriate standard for a wide variety of other conditions. Yet, it is this model that is pre-dominately used as a remedy for the ailing world. Ironically, because it is relied upon so heavily, certain problems escalate or are never addressed at all. There seems to be a model bias in understanding how the world works as we limit ourselves in possible solutions be-cause our perspective is bound to this singular view. This limited view of the world is what Mitchel Resnick calls “the centralized mind-set”; he contends it is an aspect of egocen-trism that is too often applied without taking other things into consideration (1992).

Whether or not you call it a model bias or “centralized mindset”, one thing is for certain; a stagnant model cannot be applied to all or-ganizational problems. There must be alterna-tive models in order to resolve some of the issues confronting humanity and the environ-ment today. E.F. Schumacher mirrors these visions of alternative models when he asserts, “The market represents only the surface of society…there is no probing into the depths of things, into the natural or social facts that lie behind them. In a sense, the market is the in-stitution of individualism…(1973)”. Individu-alism, the pursuit of individual thought, ac-tion, and interests, is one reason why a market model cannot be applied indiscriminately.

Markets follow simple rules that coordi-nate certain behaviors. However, through this, more complicated behaviors can emerge. These emerged behaviors are the decentral-ized aspect of the market. This aspect is most problematic because it contains the unpredict-able behaviors and consequences caused by individuals acting independently while being guided by profit. Thomas C. Schelling in his analysis, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, expounds on this when he states, “How well each does for himself in adapting to his social environment is not the same thing as how sat-isfactory a social environment they collec-

tively create for themselves (1978).” He is referring to the often non-optimal market solutions that arise from individuals mak-ing decisions in their own self-interests. This is contrary to how many economists view the notion of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” guiding people to natu-rally produce efficient solutions. In fact, it’s not the “invisible hand” that guides people, for as Schelling asserts, “It is that people are impinging on other people and adapting to other people. What people do affects what other people do (1978).”

For example, the United States occu-pied Iraq with the intentions of promoting “democracy”. The United States’ leader-ship views the market as a symbol for pro-gress and freedom, therefore, liberal mar-ket reform was their answer to Iraq’s prob-lems. When implementing this solution, these leaders did not foresee the collapse of important societal and cultural struc-tures, causing more upheaval and suffer-ing for many innocent civilians. Or per-haps they did foresee the demise of these structures, yet acted in their own self-interest in the pursuit of economic power which is fortified by natural resources, one in particular, oil.

Market behaviors have and continue to exploit natural resources and other as-pects of the environment. Resnick states, “People often think of the environment as something to be acted upon, not something to be interacted with (1992).” It is a con-dition for our continued survival and yet its value in the market is abstract and minimal. When looking at the environ-ment through a market lens, one sees na-ture as a commodity; its value is deter-mined by the current values of society. Traditional economic analysis is not ade-quate in determining nature’s price and one must question whether or not it would be beneficial to do this in the first place. After all, if we begin putting more price tags on nature as resources become in-creasingly scarce, it will only be the rich who will be able to afford water or to en-joy and own the little bit of natural reserve left.

In conclusion, economics, the environ-ment, and problems facing humanity today, are not isolated units existing independently from one another. They are in a constant state of flux, being changed by the independent actions surrounded by each. As illustrated, a market organizational model may work for some aspects in the economic realm, how-ever; when this model is applied to every sphere, it does not take into account the spe-cial dynamics of each. E.F. Schumacher elo-quently sums up this notion by stating: “If [economic] thinking cannot get beyond its

vast abstractions, the national income, the rate of growth, capital/output ratio, input-output analysis, labor mobility, capital accu-mulation; if it cannot get beyond all this and make contact with the human realities of pov-erty, frustration, alienation, despair, crime, and congestion…then let us scrap economics and start afresh (1973).”

I’m not so sure human societies can ever “scrap” economics, because econom-ics, whether in the form of Capitalism or other past methods of acquiring resources, is a method by which humans extract from nature or trade their means for survival. However, what has become necessary is a conscious evaluation on whether the cur-rent dominant model, capitalism, is sustain-able for all communities both on a human and environmental level.

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*Resnick, M. Beyond the Centralized Mindset . Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, 1992. *Schelling, T. C. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978. *Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1973.

When the Market Model Sells Short By Mary E. Kohler

Page 13 The Seed

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virus history flickers incurably inside my heart & you are with me Walt Whitman in every blade of grass you are with me on Brooklyn Bridge crossing over & you are here now Woody Guthrie as your sun comes shining in redwood forest & I too wonder if this land is still made for you & me Harriett Tubbman Margaret Sanger St. Caesar Chavez Malik El-Shabazz Dr. King Blake’s mystic vision Baudelaire’s flowers of evil all here & we are with you Leonard Peltier locked down in your wounded theatre built upon the blood of the native dead brick upon brick of law stars & stripes forever you are here now Abbie Hoffman & Mother Ginsberg Rosa Parks there is a seat for you at the front of the freedom train show us the way & what New Deal have we now?

what Great Society conspires to steal the vote & pimp our country to the lowest bidder? I was always schooled that America was a refuge for genius I cannot tell a lie a sanctuary for the arts above all a champion of science &

reason good time god for everyone w/in or w/out the genius of the crippled mind the god of the bird that dreams of flight the insane worship the predator dawn & the peeling knell of sunset as any reason flies away

whistling in the dark America five foot tall in your six foot dreams invisible inside your ghetto conformity & who will save you from yourself America? where is your heaven (you cannot shrug your shoulders you have your hell in Iraq & aborting democracy isn’t that murder?) as you lamely lament your lost children the avenging angel of childhood all grown up hammer high “VENGEANCE IS MINE” tattooed upon his Philistine forehead your patriot child erect before you now armed with the Promethean rage of atomic fire & the binary thunder of Zeus your progeny unmoved by the crush of corporate lions & the giddy citizens who give themselves gladly to the blood sport democracy pulsing thru their arterial cable net-works (let freedom ring America slobbers

feed the nonconformists to the hungry fat cats)

revolution once

The Apes of Wrath By S.A. Griffin Los Angeles, California

Photo: “US Flag” Courtesy of R. Gardiner , London

www.nyclondon.com

The Seed

Page 15 The Seed

MARCH 20TH 2003 WILL BE A DAY I NEVER FORGET By c. allen rearick Cleveland, Ohio

There’s a war in the middle east have you seen it the poor are defending what they’ve never had and never will innocent men women and little children are all being laid to waste blown to bits with weapons of mass deception gas is costing u.s. more than just an arm and a leg.

a flower in the barrel of a gun a closed fist an open mind & we shall overcome give peace a chance

the revolution is being televised the revolution is being televised the revolution is being televised what you see & what you don’t the ghosts of war rising from the killing fields of Wall Street of Gettysburg (the ghost dancers of Wounded Knee) Oklahoma & Columbine all rising like the phoenix of a bad acid nightmare with the broke & broken babble of blind young soldiers oiled by God the Destroyer & the vengeful bark of hungry gun song dipped in gold somewhere between the malignancy of thought we call madness & the retarded universe of the innocent & the sane we exist angels weep fools parade the universe is weary & in the suicide swamp of eager apocalypse I look out (born again as gravity I cannot help but fall head over heel eternity’s infinite kisses to save me) ah sweet revolution catch me I am yours

the revolution is being televised the revolution is being televised the revolution is being televised the gathering red clouds of revolt descend like a ravenous locust upon the landscape devouring waving wheat & purple majesty in its divine disclosure history screams back from inside the gulag of hope & speaks to the virgin suicides like time unlived in the wake of too much is never enough & the pyrite promise of heaven spent beneath the shock & awe of empire America you drank & became empty

the revolution is being televised the revolution is being televised the revolution is being televised apocalypse rose blooms in the thousand centuries it takes to make a moment there is no sweeter victory 2004 S.A. Griffin

Photo: “Family” Courtesy of R. Gardiner , London

www.nyclondon.com

Don’t Blame Cosmo, Blame the Furniture A short story by Jessica Mahlstedt She woke from a dream of old men play-ing drums by a gravel roadside, their cracked hands colliding with the skins like a chant. Her eyes opened to some-thing closer - his knuckles tapping out a tune on the ridges in her chest, fingers counting her upper ribs. His smile at discovering these new hollows shone seven suns. Miles was a collector of contemporary art, furniture - a lover of fine lines and angles. His apartment was modern, the couches and chairs Scandinavian and expensive, the floors bare. When he'd first brought Jules home with him, she was certain she wouldn't be hearing from him again. She had just moved to the city, hadn't even come close to dropping her freshman fifteen, and a man like Miles didn't seem the type to dally with frumpy little girls. But he had called her again. They went to museums and haunted the aisles of Ikeas all over the city. He found all of her best sides and photographed her, always catching her as her chin jutted out, the jaw line showing crisply in the black and whites he loved. Under his tutelage, Jules began flipping through design magazines and home furnishing catalogs greedily. She sat for hours staring at pictures of lamps, tables and oh - the chairs. They were sideless and backless and deli-cate. She found herself chiseling her body as one would a soft piece of chestnut. Miles didn't encourage much in the way of eating, at least he never took her anywhere food was served. When a new edge appeared where a curve used to rest, he caressed it with some-thing nearing awe, comparing her to his most recent favorite sculpture. Jules felt her chest growing large with every word of praise, just above the growl of her deserted stomach. Now she got up to use the bathroom, and caught herself in one of the many mirrors along the way. Her cheeks stood out like soldiers, the bones in her chest unshrouded themselves like stone steps to a temple. Jules hugged her shoulders for comfort, but found steel armrests where she used to find solace. She ex-amined the blades of her elbows, the carved planks of her thighs, the rough-hewn rosewood of her hips. She lay down next to Miles, who'd fallen back to sleep. She lay still, a piece of whittled timber, hungry and waiting for the sun-rise. To read more of Jessica’s work, refer to: http://www.myspace.com/sleekspeech .

Page 16 The Seed

Thief of Hearts by Luna Jena www.lunajena.net “Beware the Thief of Hearts,” Archangel Gabriel said to me I said, “I choose who I give my heart to” He replied, “Exactly.” “There are some who’ll take all you have And give nothing in return It is this sort you must be wary of With this kind you’ll always get burned “A thief of hearts is not easy to recognize From the dawn he’ll profess in disguise A snake in fawn’s skin, grin masquerading glee Yet his venom seeps like sap from a wounded tree He talks well the path of spirit But watch and see he walks not near it He says one thing then does another Listen to his actions They bellow louder than a clap of thunder He’ll chant verses that glisten As fresh fallen snow in the moon’s light But to you he’ll never listen You’re just for a show ’round midnight “He’ll captivate your mind Dazzle you with his arte refined He’ll weave with palm the language of the world Enrapture you with his tongue unfurled “Your body with his he’ll tantalize Taken by rapacious hunger he’ll gluttonize Words from his jaws - an attempt to caramelize Any doubt of him you carry in your eyes “Don’t be fooled by his arousal It’s lust and greed that fuel his carousal He’ll rush to find the next taste of the week Leaving you wrecked, empty, and weak “Enjoyments of the flesh are fleeting What matters is to keep your heart beating You were blessed with love to give And this will draw others to you as long as you live “But don’t cast your pearls before swine Pigs only want on you to dine They care not the treasure you are worth Bestow these animals a wide girth “My daughter, heed these words Prostate yourself only before a man who deserves One who knows why your name derives From the palace beyond the morning star Where Allah’s angels fly.”

traffic closed around them as a calendar; the light was ignored, broken up and seeded across the dash. resembling the map, open in her lap, the fold, the crease of road and shadow, ignored. their circles are evident, his jaw set against the day. she said they are lost, in his sureness he hasn’t heard, just around this next turn he thinks, but she has said they are lost, and it was waved away, thrown from his choices with a hand. it's open and shut, the idea, she recognizes that yes this is a road, there are these choices, she also remembers saying the word lost. * turning. knowing that home is something breathing, she's feeding it again. the dry wind of fleeing, her tongue bitten and counting down. slightly behind her husband, in shape, both daughters side by side. the light: full of fear as heaven inches toward what they are inching from. and she is turning. * just the word. with its painted face and dressed in perception she forced it into context, a castaway truth beneath the surface of this city. he knows the way is coming, he is sure. she is as well. staring at the moment, staring through the window, * was it for the turning you being rained down upon? disobedience? but the knowing of what that love is for, the things and places one shapes with worry, what you have kept so clean. ready and open for the everyday. ...what is gathering above your country, unwelcomed. haunting where you have welcomed the angels and sinners of these devoted times. footsteps slowing. stopping. * tears falling on this the blueprint of direction, patternless, impacting the grey with what exists only it its summary he’s driving slightly faster now, concerned, pulling the end that much closer, asking what is wrong, almost, we are so close. and she has said lost

have you forgotten, she knows the lies have gone underground to chose their own battles and no there is no hatred, no anger towards or from, you know when something will never try again. lost. he says just a little longer. she asks what are you talking about? * left heel, pivoting. her eyes on the backs of her family. begging for understanding. * he gestures at the way. she’s covered her mouth with the compass. * scanning the open gate, the walls, now there the window. she knows the coolness of evening just settling down. the spires and market becoming transparent. she has turned. * you see. i told you, we're here, this is done. yes she says. * please. where the heart is. * she has swallowed. it is over. * still. so still. still staring, i cannot believe it was your eyes that damned you. * lost. * and the book doesn't even give your name.

Interstate Genesis 19:1-26

The Seed Page 17

Petals of Blood By blissfulviolet

http://blog.myspace.com/blissfulviolet

This world is our throne and when you find me in slumber

remember our love mirror reflecting roses entwined

with serpents forever ours...

and when the stars scream murder hear my voice

Drink of me til I'm ill perch sounds

nectar creatures in vain

the scab of something sweet peel back its dead

devouring the sea as it swallows me whole By Mikl Paul

Atascadero, California

Vacant Sigh by Mike Chritton Roeland Park, Kansas vacant sigh all it took was a single soft sigh echoing through a cold, and heavy headset and they both remembered, nights that might not have been spent alone absence so simple how the distant thought of her breath hot against my neck can still turn my grey eyes blue. in secret how many women have I tried to seduce with tear stained poems secretly written about you

The World As I See It By Joey M. Longo-Williamsport, Pa.

The world as I see it Through my eyes

I see that it is violent and cruel I wish it was like a jewel

Shiny and bright The world as I see it

Through my eyes I see children bred

Without a mother or a father Who can show them the way

of life The world as I see it

Through my eyes I see families slowly falling a part

Because of drugs and alcohol The world as I see it

Through my eyes I see more than others.

Dedicated to those who sit around

...and wonder.

dream of the local TV reporter girl all dressed up for my benefit so conventional straight laced conservative with lovely recognition of brutal murders, drug related (not in her neighborhood tho: sexy) those buttoned up outfits hiding sex hinting curves never ever smiling/crying emotionless as corporate perfection barbie dolls not a misplaced hair upon her head immaculate make-up (no mascara runs ever) with great passivity informing of patriotism, government spending, with straight faced neutrality. or so it seems (sly wink nudge dreaming) neutrality the tin foil covering up college years of inebriation wild road roaring crossings city to city america her two hundred lovers (mostly men) though appearing virgin on television, in my dreams dog collar leather boots black dyed hair reading too liberal leaflets

in my dreams drunk angel dancing too high the wind shear knocks her down to Channel 4 in my dreams sometimes that glint in her eye not newsroom light trick but desire to scream "guess what? government screwed up again, won't apologize just raise taxes, blame dark foreigners, you won't vote anyway won't march, all the Senators say 'yr all still so poor' roar with laughter as some smooth skinned rookie reporter earns herself an exclusive kneeling beneath the podium: that was me once!" she all shameful in tears and wipes manicured finger across lips suggestive starts after the buttons when the network execs cut the feed. I dream of that really; the technical difficulties screen

Channel 4 by Jacob Johanson—Roeland Park, Kansas

Page 18

I mean, the newsgirl's well enough but the real fantasy for me? anything to shut the news down awhile five seconds freedom from unfeeling evil. I hate the news. her unmentionable curves are not for sex not revelation of breasts hips but distractions from the headlines that spoonful of sugar make the media go down graceful lips to forget blood and broken water mains but I don't buy it see beyond cosmetic cover up of unnamed addicts death and shed tears alone, for her her bought off humanity and prostitution of opinions.

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The Seed

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.... Of all things of thought, poetry is the closest to thought, and a poem is less a thing than any other work of art ... Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

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Don’t Blame Them By Dan Provost Worcester, MA Put the Bible down and listen to the criminals on TV. Escalating death with so many creative excuses that it has almost become comical. Bombings, suicide airplane crashes, shootings, mayhem—Even Jesus must be laughing at all the foolishness that is happening on this sickly blue rock we call earth. Reading the Koran is of no help either; Allah has washed his hands of the bloody mess that has taken place under his golden throne. He has gone on a permanent holiday with Buddha, John the Baptist, and Tony the Wonder Cat. I guess all the dismal silliness seen on CNN has taken all the fun of caring for the flock. So, if you still believe that a supreme being is watching over the masses, hoping that blind loyalty will lead us to a mirthful place after we check out from this mad existence— Don’t get too upset if your prayers are answered by a drunken God, or a tipsy Gandhi. They tried to lead us to the Sacred Garden—but Dan Rather confirmed to all of them that it was useless. Let the killing continue…

Oneiric by Jennifer Williams -Edinburgh, Scotland

When you awoke again he was gone. What was it he had been telling you about bombs…? "It is silence that they make when they explode.” The darkness blinded you. Your wet cheeks, your open mouth empty.

AN EXAMPLE OF HOW DARWIN’S SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST WORKS by c. allen rearick Cleveland, Ohio When huge corporations close the doors pack-up and move overseas in search of cheaper labor for higher profits it causes working-class families to lose their lively-hood as well as all their hopes and dreams many of which families turn to drugs and alcohol as a crutch for support and it’s times like these the drug dealer smiles knowing it’s gonna be a good Christmas.

Photo: “Pepper Spray Mace” Courtesy of R. Gardiner , London

www.nyclondon.com

DARE I SAY IT by John Dorsey

the mere thought of cultural revolution makes me giggle like a schoolgirl in some comic book nerd's anime version of the american dream whether it's televised or not or simply jacked off to i'm tired of flirting with a country that won't even get off the couch long enough to dangle the carrot

Republicrats and Democans

The elephant’s have forgotten they are jackasses too They’re marching to the same drummer They’re dancing to the same song. by Justin A. Gailit-Lutz Williamsport, Pennsylvania

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Documents

ISSUE 2, VOLUME I The Seed · 2010. 8. 16. · Photography: “Pepper Spray Mace” by R. Gardiner Poem: Oneiric by Jennifer Williams Poem: Don’t Blame Them by Dan Provost Poem: