Thinking about Wisconsin

Quite naturally, a great deal of fervent discussion is traveling the high winds on the recent events in Wisconsin, sad indeed from the perspective of many of us.

I haven't paid a great deal of intricate attention to the various explanations -- have been doing my own brooding.  But I would say that most of the analyses contain some very obviously valuable insights.

My own feeling is that a very basic explanation, maybe the most fundamental one  from an emotional standpoint, is that we are now, in this country, in a period of increasingly profound cynicism that's translating into "every man [person] for himself."  I think that may have played a key role in the surprisingly wide statistical victory of Walker et al.  Endless and pointless wars, a deteriorating economy, and a sense for many that the American Dream has come to the end of the trail -- seem to me among the pretty obvious causal factors.

A comparable situation, not well known nationally, existed here in Idaho a couple of years ago.  Despite a truly heroic effort by the teacher unions, parents, and students and others, a recall effort against the very problematic state superintendent of public instruction failed by a troubling margin.

I have always seen the most basic dichotomy in Humanity as being, on the one hand, the people who serve their communities and, on the other, those who serve themselves.  Sitting atop a high hill, it seems to me -- as it has throughout my life so far -- that we have in the long flow of human history, and at whatever glacial pace, more and more of the former and less and less of the latter.  Despite occasional setbacks of substance, I remain the perennial optimist.

And so, cliché it may be, we simply have to dig in, move forward, fight.  As an old Labor warrior friend of mine from long ago, Juan Chacon of southwestern New Mexico, used to tell me when I was really very young, "Success will be ours in the long run."

And it will.

In Solidarity,

Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)
 
See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded much in May/June 2012 -- and also some photos.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63.
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
 
And see - Elder Recognition Award
(Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Story Tellers:
http://hunterbear.org/elder_recognition_award_for_2005.htm