Allocating for the Essentials

One of the most fascinating things to have emerged from the Coronavirus crisis is the distinction between "essential" and "non-essential" work. Distinguishing between the two has been a fascinating exercise that America as a society has not taken on since WWII, and it shows.

Americans have become somewhat used to coexisting with a dangerous virus, but the shutdowns that began with California and New York prompted some valuable insights: some elements of society can't be shut down. Everyone has to eat. Most Americans get their food from supermarkets. Those are clearly essential. Everyone is going to drink water and poop, so water utilities are essential.

After that it gets a little more complicated to parse out what really is essential and what isn't. Supermarkets get their food from farms (yes there are intermediate steps but no I don't care to list them out). Given the agricultural sector's reliance on undocumented migrant labor, this creates the jarring reality of labeling the same immigrants that are often scapegoated for America's ills as essential. Highly uncomfortable, if you ask me. Electric and gas utilities are essential as well - for now.

One can go on and on, but the point is that labels now exist. Some of us are essential and some of us are not.

I remember when I was a resident advisor in college, a boss had us complete an exercise where we were asked to list our top ten priorities in life and also the top ten activities we spent the most time on. If they didn't line up, he encouraged us to reevaluate how we were spending our time. I'm willing to overlook our other disagreements on what my particular responsibilities as an RA were for that gem of an exercise.

Because of the coronavirus, we have been reminded what is essential and what is not. But we have not yet re-allocated our resources to reflect this new awareness. The non-essential workers who tap their keyboards (myself included) frequently make more than the essential workers who feed and clean up for human society.

Now is the time to have discussions about how to direct resources back to the essential laborers that support our society. Those resources will include capital but also decision-making authority. Some of it will have to end up in undocumented laborers, as well. I don't know what this process will look like, but if we continue to funnel resources away from essential workers, I predict an unpleasant future. Removing the supports of a building always ends poorly for the building.

Intentional Cruelty with a Side of Ignorance

Another Fourth of July in a country that continues to take every chance to insult the ghosts that haunt it. President Trump decided to give his remarks on stolen land in the Black Hills. The federal government installed an enormous sound system at the site and regularly blares patriotic music to drown out the sounds of the hills. This year, someone in event planning chose to play the tune "Garryowen," an obscure Irish drinking song that has not recently cracked the top 40.

This song has been played before in the Black Hills. It was the battle song for Custer's 7th Cavalry. A favorite of Custer's, it was played many times, notably to signal the attack before he massacred women and children. There's plenty of information on the usage of the song here that I don't want to repeat, but one thing I will note is that the descendants of the 7th cavalry and the Cheyenne agreed to retire the song and never play it again.

This Trump administration is spiteful in its racism and informed by history. Pulling an obscure and retired song from the annals of history to play at a celebration of America is a malicious act. This is an America that hasn't given up on its dream of slaughtering Native American women and children (one that is mostly content to simply let them be slaughtered these days) and will unearth ancient symbols to reveal its intent to the initiated.

Spiteful and racist? Yes. Also stupid. I won't listen to this haunted song, but it's easy enough to pull up the song's history on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Who would have guessed the chorus:

Instead of spa, we'll drink brown ale
And pay the reckoning on the nail;
No man for debt shall go to jail
From Garryowen in glory.

We'll beat the bailiffs out of fun,
We'll make the mayor and sheriffs run
We are the boys no man dares dun*
If he regards a whole skin.
*v. to make repeated and insistent demands upon, especially for the payment of a debt.

Friends, you heard it here first. The Trump administration condones not paying debts, making mayors and sherriffs run, and never going to jail. Act accordingly.

Wiping Bad Graffiti Clean

If you have the owner's permission and cover a wall with high school representations of your junk, you can call it a mural. It stays there as long as the owner desires.

If you don't have the owner's permission and you paint something so great that zombie Michelangelo looks at it and calls it the Seventeenth Chapel*, it's graffiti. The owner can wipe that masterpiece off with paint thinner tomorrow.
*I know.

Sorry, I don't make the rules. When it comes to forming distinctions between public art and graffiti, as long as we hold private property dear, the only distinction between the two is whether or not the owner says it's allowed.

Which brings me to the biggest lump of sculptural-graffiti I know of: Mount Rushmore. In a spirit of full disclosure, I should add that I've been. I found it very unsettling, and the din of American flag music didn't drown out what I can only describe as the palpable energy of the place. I also took a picture shortly after the days when face-swap was what the cool kids were doing and left with this result:

Faces like this don't belong on these mountains. It's bad.

To be clear, my face doesn't belong on the mountain. But then again, none of the four faces up there do. They are graffiti art, and the land's owners are entitled to remove them. Those owners are the Sioux Nation of Indians.

I don't say this to be provocative: the land on which Mount Rushmore rests legally belongs to the Lakota people. This is not about whether or not the land is sacred, because that is not what I as a white person can talk about. This is strictly about whether or not this land belongs to White people, because I keep hearing how important the value of private property is to my White brothers and sisters. 

Land ownership requires contracts; as the United States of America expanded into North America, the Federal government entered into binding treaties with the people who lived here. Those are the legal contracts that govern land ownership in this country; trace a deed back long enough and it needs to come from a treaty in which the federal government "legally" took ownership of what is now known as the USA. Maybe we purchased the deed from another European power recovering from the Napoleonic wars, for example, but those deeds came with their own previous treaties that were transferred.

The land on which Mount Rushmore was carved are subject to the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, a treaty signed between the Sioux People and the US government. The US and tribal representatives agreed that this land was to be given to the Lakota. Of course, this treaty was signed before the word got out that there was gold in the hills, so gold prospectors quickly began violating the agreement and then demanding the protection of the US Army when they were met with resistance.

Imagine if a burglar were to come into your house and start going through your valuables. You can try to chase the burglar out or kill them, but if you do, the burglar will call the police, who will come fight you! That is exactly what happened, and while the Sioux managed to rid the earth of General Custer, they eventually lost the war and the US government annexed the land (unilaterally, no treaty) in 1877.

Now, suppose you see a man walk up to a car at a red light, smash the window, pull the driver out of the seat, get in, make a U-turn, roll down the window as he pulls up next to you and asks "Hey, wanna buy this car? $5 or a another gallon of PCP and it's yours!" Even though you and he may agree to the transaction, that car is not legally yours, no matter if the PCP (or $5) exchanged hands! That's my understanding of the law, and it comes with the disclaimer that I'm no lawyer but it makes sense to me.

In real life, if you steal land, it doesn't matter who you give permission to do what, that is not your permission to give. Sure, maybe whoever that weirdo guy who thought blowing up rocks to make them look like humans was connected to the klan, but that doesn't make a difference to me. I want to know if he had the owner's permission.

Also of note here, the fact that this is stolen land isn't even contested. In 1980, the supreme court ruled that yes, the land is Sioux, and they are entitled to compensation for it - but twist, they have refused the millions and just want the land back.

Expect to hear more of this - as the president highlights the tensions surrounding this land for the fourth of July, I expect to see this compared to the movement to tear down statues of confederate heros, but don't be fooled: these are separate issues. How America chooses to remember its own history on public land ceded to the US government is its own problem. The only resolution to this illegal graffiti is to give the original owners the rights to the land back.