Quote of the Day -- On Fair, Living Wages

Know This About Amazon and Jeff Bezos and Union Organization

Amazon: --World's 4th biggest company --$21 billion a year in profit --Owner Jeff Bezos is worth $184B, up $70B in a year

--Sends workers 5 anti-union messages a day --36,000+ employees are on food stamps and Medicaid --Cost to lift them from poverty? 2% of annual profit --Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle

One Week In

 One week into this new Joe Biden Presidential Administration. This is where we are. Already.

1. We can now ignore Twitter
2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies
3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism
4. We are not paying for golf trips
5. There are no presidential relatives in government
6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious
7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots
8. We have a first lady who engages with the public
9. We have not heard a word from presidential children
10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses
11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders
12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around
13. Manners are in, bullying is out
14. You feel calmer after hearing the president
15. Fact-checkers are not overworked
16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House
17. We have seen the president’s tax records
18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even
19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch
20. We have a White House staff that looks like America
21. We have a national covid-19 plan
22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks younger
23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and efficacy of vaccines
24. Masks and social distancing in the White House
25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to Congress
26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
27. The Muslim ban is gone
28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray
29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI
30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates
31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings
32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors
33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution
34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much
35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in
36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists
37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), not crowd size
38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization
39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will try running government competently
40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for “suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law enforcement
41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics
42. Amanda Gorman is a household name
43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House covid-19 approach.
44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters
45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.”
47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars LGBTQ students
48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously
49. The administration wants as many people as possible to vote
50. The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Not perfect, certainly. But it's good. It's very good. It's a huge, huge improvement.

Good on you, America. 

No, great on you.

So Proud of Our Kansas City Star

Wow.

What can you say but "Wow"?

Our own local paper, the Kansas City Star stunned me and I feel, probably lots of us this week. Their report, their reporting, their confession was just that, stunning. You likely know of what I'm writing. It's this.

The truth in Black and white: An apology from The Kansas City Star

Today we are telling the story of a powerful local business that has done wrong.

In it, rather famously now, the paper confessed and admitted to racism, horrible racism from them over the years when reporting on minorities in the area--specifically, Black Americans.

I'll only post the beginning of the editorial.

Today we are telling the story of a powerful local business that has done wrong.

For 140 years, it has been one of the most influential forces in shaping Kansas City and the region. And yet for much of its early history — through sins of both commission and omission — it disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians. It reinforced Jim Crow laws and redlining. Decade after early decade it robbed an entire community of opportunity, dignity, justice and recognition.

That business is The Kansas City Star.

To repeat, there's no word that describes this any better than stunning.

This took guts. This took courage. Just freaking wow.

They could have recognized their past faults internally and vowed to never repeat such things, sure. But this? Confessing to the supporting of Jim Crow laws and redlining and segregation and other obscenities, however legal?

Stunning. Nothing short of stunning.

It went national, too, it was that big a story. This was from the New York Times.

Kansas City Star Apologizes for Racism

NBC News.

Kansas City Star apologizes for decades of racist coverage

Daily Kos.

'We don’t need stories about these people': Kansas City newspaper confesses to tradition of racism

You get the idea. It was covered nationally from virtually every media outlet.

I think there are two huge things to take from this, too, besides the fact that, as I said above, they didn't have to do this cleansing so publicly like this. 

The first is that this was an important move for them, the Star, the newspaper, to own up to but it's much more than that. We all need to own up to what and how we've gotten to where we are. We all, as a people and as a nation, need to know how we got here, where we are today. We need to know our nation's history, our full national history. We need to really know all the details about slavery and our Civil War, sure. But that's for starters.

We all need to also know about our Reconstruction and the failure of it, our failure and how that impacted African-Americans then.

We all need to know, really know about Jim Crow laws, what they were, what they did, the fact that they were legal and the deep, deep damage that they did to those same Americans, African-Americans. That's a great deal to know there alone.

Then there's the "redlining" the Star's story mentions and its corresponding segregation, legalized, thank you very much.

If, as a people, you are kept away, legally, from the best housing and jobs, good education and so, consequently and understandably, also kept away from better paying jobs and careers?  Is it any wonder the wealth of Black Americans today is, still, to this moment, a fraction of white America?

And that's how we got now, here to where we are. It's why still, to this day, so many Black Americans do not and even, for a lot of them, cannot still live wherever they wish. It only makes sense. It's a natural outgrowth of all that then-legalized racism and hate and ugliness. It's why do many cities in the United States--including, of course, our own Kansas City on both sides of the state line--are still so very, very segregated even though that legal segregation was made illegal decades ago now.

So, again, wow. Kudos to the Star.

In their article, they made a great and important point of saying that their paper, over the years, highlighted white people's accomplishments but virtually never Black people's.

In the pages of The Star, when Black people were written about, they were cast primarily as the perpetrators or victims of crime, advancing a toxic narrative. Other violence, meantime, was tuned out. The Star and The Times wrote about military action in Europe but not about Black families whose homes were being bombed just down the street.

Even the Black cultural icons that Kansas City would one day claim with pride were largely overlooked. Native son Charlie “Bird” Parker didn’t get a significant headline in The Star until he died, and even then, his name was misspelled and his age was wrong.

It reminded me of a KCPT PBS broadcast on Kansas City's own Charlie "Bird" Parker. Lonnie McFadden made the very fair and important point that Winston Churchill, of all people, is on our Country Club Plaza.

But not Bird.

How else can we heal? How else can we repair centuries long wrongs and racism if we don't examine ourselves, see where we are, see what we did, see what those ramifications are and then apologize for them and look to rectify them? We must do this as a society. We're long, long overdue.

Anyone, any American who thinks we don't owe Black Americans reparations should, again, study our national history.

And read this article, too.

We Should Have This National Conversation For and About Women, Equality and Our Nation

I proposed/asked this earlier tonight out on Facebonkers:

Can you imagine how different, how likely radically different our country would be, our legislation, our laws, if 50 percent of our government legislators were women?

Honestly, we should have this conversation. A national conversation.

I'd love to hear it, first of all, and then I'd like to hear it at least locally and then go nationally.

On the issues of health care and child care and schools and, heck, war and our war machine?

And then there's equal pay for equal work, along with really an untold list of what would be different and changed.

Can you imagine how different even the legislative conversations would be, let alone the results of their legislation

I'm no fool on this. I don't for a minute think we'd hit some Nirvana.

I just think we would be a radically different society and nation. Our government would be radically different and so, our nation would, as well.

Scotland is ahead of us on this. They even have an organized group, pushing for 50% of their representatives to be female.

Women 50:50

There are more  people out there in the world, proposing this idea, this framework and working on and for and toward it than I knew, before today. Here's another example.

Can We Create Planet 50-50 by 2030? 

The UN is in on it, too.

Get involved: Step It Up for gender equality: 

About Step It Up

Think about it.

How insane is it that we're still so horribly unequal, that there is still so much gross inequality, not just in the world but here in the US in the 21st Century? We agreed the part about "All men...created equal" meant men and women long ago, I think most of us agree.

Imagine.

I'd love to hear at least one show, one full hour out on KCUR, maybe on Steve Kraske's show.

It would be perfect for that station, him and his program.

Kudos, At Long Last, To KCPT, "Ruckus" and Mike Shanin

At last.

At long last.

I've posted here, at least a few times, if not several, how our local PBS station has singularly, only white people, time after time and week after week, on the show to discuss and hopefully solve Kansas City's issues and problems. In spite of our considerable Black and HIspanic and others population, the program had just that, only white people. Alone.

So imagine how pleased I was this week when they included Jamekia Kendrix on the weekly panel to discuss and talk and be heard. She was and is eloquent and intelligent and well-spoken and more than held her own and gave different viewpoints.

Thank goodness.

Here's hoping it's the shape of things to come for them, for the program and for all of us.

Kudos and salutations, KCPT.

And thank you.

Their "Week in Review" was its same bleached whiteness but at least this "Ruckus" was inclusive.

Hoping they learn, at long last.

Links:

Ruckus | Watch Online | Kansas City PBS Video - KCPT

Ruckus - KCPT

Really, When Did This Happen?

And why did we let it happen?