Deborah Belle – Page 2 – Engaging Peace

The new brunch

Posted on April 17, 2017 by kathiemm

By Deborah Belle

If rallies are the new brunch, then I partook twice on Tax Day. I had long planned to attend the afternoon Tax Day rally on the Cambridge Common to insist that Pres. Trump disclose his tax returns. Then a friend asked if I would like to go to a morning rally in resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline. The protest would urge people to divest from and close their accounts with TD Bank, one of four banks funding TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline.

I went to both.

The day could not have been more beautiful, with the forsythia in full bloom in front of the bank. After opening prayers and sharing the scent of sweetgrass burning in a jar, we stationed ourselves with signs near the TD bank at the Alewife Brook Parkway Shopping Center in Cambridge.

There, we took turns leading call and response chants and swayed to Native American music. Responses to our signs and our chanting were generally positive, often enthusiastically so. Joggers, bicyclists, and people driving cars often gave us a thumbs-up or a shout-out. We concluded the rally with further prayers for Mother Earth, for the water protectors, and for the ultimate success of climate activism.

After a quick lunch I was off to Cambridge Common, where thousands were assembled, including a sizable contingent of Veterans for Peace with their flags waving beautifully in the breeze.

The excellent master of ceremonies was Michael Connolly , the newly elected brilliant state representative for parts of Cambridge and Somerville. I had heard Michael a few years earlier when he was running for Cambridge City Council, and was very disappointed when he didn’t win. A short time later he ran for state representative with the support of Our Revolution , the Bernie Sanders spin-off group that provided funds and especially volunteers. Michael is now waking up the state legislature with his important insights, wit, and drive.

Speakers argued in favor of a People’s Budget, rather than the military-heavy budget we now have, support for those who have been incarcerated, and strengthening public education against the threat of privatization. A message from Martin Luther King’s speech of just over 50 years ago was invoked: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Wonderful signs abounded, including one with pictures of Putin and Trump reading “Married, filing jointly.”

Speakers pointed out that during Republican President Eisenhower’s administration, the top tax rate was 90%. What could we do today if we had that kind of money from billionaires and wealthy corporations? Instead, they do not pay taxes at all, trillions of dollars are stashed away in tax shelters, the poor and middle class are compelled to pay more, and essential services decline.

Babies, children on their parents’ shoulders, and adorable dogs added to the joy of the day. At one point a red-tailed hawk flew gracefully close to me, landing in a nearby tree, then took wing again and circled over the crowd. Perhaps it was curious at this remarkable gathering of humans.

I stayed a bit longer, sharing a wonderful time of solidarity with those around me. I left feeling strengthened for another week in the Era of Trump.

Protest here! Protest there!

Posted on January 26, 2017January 23, 2017 by kathiemm

Emiliano Zapata at Plaza de Armas Cuernavaca, Morelos. Author: Deborah Belle. Published with permission.

by Deborah Belle

During my recent visit to Cuernavaca, Mexico, I let go of my daily obsession with U.S. politics. Without newspapers, television, or much internet contact, I recovered from my need for a daily “Democracy Now” fix, and did not read emails detailing the latest Trump atrocities.

I did, however, pay some attention to Mexican politics and political history. Part of this was unavoidable, as Mexican cities bear the names and often the images of their great revolutionary leaders just about everywhere.

Cuernavaca, and Morelos Province in which it is located, were centers of Revolutionary fighting. The major street near to where I lived is now the Avenida Emiliano Zapata . At the nearest intersection is a large mural showing revolutionary heroes with Zapata highlighted, his strong arms breaking a chain. At the next major rotary is a more-than-lifesize statue of Zapata on his galloping horse, Zapata’s arm and machete extended. The major museum in town has a powerful Diego Rivera mural depicting the domination of the indigenous people beginning with the Spanish invaders, and, again, showing Emiliano Zapata as hero. In a small village nearby were posters with Zapata’s picture reading, “Zapata vive, la lucha sigue!” Zapata lives, the struggle continues.

In Cuernavaca I became aware that the New Year would bring a deeply unwelcome change to the country. The president had announced a significant hike in the price of gasoline, which would, in turn, raise the prices for most other things that people buy. The Mexican minimum wage was recently raised to 80 pesos (less than 4 dollars) a day, and price increases will cause real pain. I was told that protests were likely to follow this price hike. On New Year’s Eve I noticed long lines at the gas stations, as people filled their tanks for the last time with the lower priced gasoline.

Monday, January 2, was to be my last day in Cuernavaca and I had signed up for a day-long trip to the Teotihuacan ruins near Mexico City with a group from the Cemanahuac Spanish language school. We set off at 8:30 in the morning in a large bus, and our guide, Charlie Goff, told us that “if all goes well” we should be back 12 hours later at 8:30 in the evening. On our way Charlie pointed out squatter settlements outside Mexico City and explained the forces that push so many people off their land and into the city with no resources. The tour of the Teotihuacan ruins was fascinating: we climbed the third tallest pyramid in the world, learned about the stone carvings we saw, and left the archaeological site in good time.

A few minutes into our return trip it was clear that all would not go well and that we would not get home by 8:30. We encountered the first of many road blockades and were forced to turn around. Those blockading the roads were organized, polite, and willing to speak with our tour leader. They even offered help in getting our large bus turned around. But they did not allow us through the blockade.

After a time some of us on the bus began to need bathrooms and others got hungry. Charlie scouted out a very tiny bakery with an even tinier bathroom, whose proprietor agreed to let our large group use that small bathroom. This was a particularly generous act on her part because she had no running water and needed to bring buckets of water from elsewhere (and where, exactly, I never knew and did not think to ask) each time one of us flushed her toilet. At length our large group had filed in and out of her bathroom and many of us purchased some of her delicious pastries as well, satisfying all bodily needs. She was continuously gracious and kind.

We got back on the bus and, resigned to our fate, lined up at the back of the unmoving line waiting to get on the major highway back to Cuernavaca. We waited for hours, at rare intervals moving up a few car lengths but then reverting to a standstill. I began calculating the difficulties that would ensue if I did not get back to Cuernavaca that night in time to pack and leave town the next day, or if the road to the airport were blocked for days to come. I concluded, happily, that there would actually be very little lost if I could not get home as quickly as I had planned. The thought of a night on the bus was not terrible. It would be uncomfortable, but not dangerous.

And then we did begin to move. The blockaders opened the roads for us and did not close down any other roads on our way back to Cuernavaca. Instead of 8:30 in the evening, we got home at 1:30 that morning, but with no harm done.

Earlier in the day many of the students in the group had failed to throw away their own trash or conversed loudly during Charlie’s fascinating talks about the ruins and Mexican history, leading me to remember the evocative phrase “ugly American.” Yet during the hours of the road blockade they had been even tempered and uncomplaining. As some said, we were experiencing history being made.

The Mexican drivers and passengers who were trapped on the roads with us similarly did not become angry or abusive as far as I can tell. There was no horn-honking and there were no gestures of anger or threat that I witnessed. The road blockaders themselves seemed organized, committed, and polite. I was struck that I did not see any women blockaders, especially after what I had read about the heroic actions of women assisting the male soldiers during the Revolution. But perhaps the women were active behind the scenes and out of my view.

I am very aware that what I saw was a tiny part of a massive nationwide demonstration. I would be curious to know how the blockades were experienced by others and how they were organized and carried out elsewhere. I wonder to what extent Mexicans sympathize with and support these actions.

I do know that life for many Mexicans is difficult today. The aspirations of the Revolution, “Tierra y Libertad,” Land and Liberty, may be inscribed on government buildings, but they have not yet been fully achieved. Zapata vive. La Lucha sigue!

Deborah Belle is Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Boston University where she also directed the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program (2010-2014). In addition to courses on the Psychology of Women and on Gender & Sexuality she loves teaching “The Psychology of Poverty, Wealth, and Economic Inequality.”

Seize the day! Creatively maladjust!

Posted on January 19, 2015January 22, 2015 by kathiemm

Poster graffiti, Mary St, Newtown NSW, July 2007 (Photo: Duncan Kimball). In the public domain.

Today’s post is the first in a series of two by guest author Deborah Belle.

On September 1, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, saying how pleased he was to take “a brief break from the day-to-day demands of our struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss the issues involved in that struggle with concerned friends of good will…”

King credited psychology for the word “maladjusted,” noting that “destructive maladjustment should be destroyed and… all must seek the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.” But, King argued, “I am sure that we will recognize that there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.”

We have known for many years that in wealthy nations like ours, poor people experience more physical and emotional illness than non-impoverished people, and die at a younger age. This is hardly surprising, given the many risk factors associated with poverty—substandard housing and malnutrition, environmental toxins and pollutants, noise and crowding, violence and the threat of violence, and poor access to health care.

But the poverty—illness connection has other sources as well. Human beings respond to threat by mobilizing physiologically. Stress hormones course through our bodies. Our heart rate increases as our bodies prepare for fight or flight. When the threat has passed, our bodies return to their previous unstressed calm. However, when threat is chronic, as it often is for poor adults and children, levels of stress hormones remain chronically elevated, and there is no return to a healthy state of calmness.

Given the grim risks associated with poverty, it is distressing to realize that the child poverty rate in this country today is substantially higher than when Dr. King died. In 1969, 14% of children under 18 were poor. Today, 22% of all U.S. children live in poverty. And poverty remains racialized. More than one in three Black or Hispanic children now live in poverty, compared to one in eight White, non-Hispanic children.

Our country is alone among industrialized nations in having child poverty rates of this magnitude. We also have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country. The richest 1 percent of the U.S. population owns 40 percent of all wealth, and most of this wealth is concentrated among the top one tenth of one percent. As Rebecca Solnit observed in Harper’s magazine, “Society has been divided into a desperate majority and an obscene minority that hoards wealth so colossal it’s meaningless.”

Deborah Belle is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University. Her research focuses on the impact of poverty and inequality on individual mental health and family functioning, the ways adults and children make sense of poverty, wealth, and economic inequality, and the stresses that arise at the intersection of paid employment and family life. She is also interested in gender differences in social behavior and teaches courses on social psychology, the psychology of women, and the psychology of families. Her posts are excerpts from a speech given at Boston University January 19, 2015.