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Lift Every Voice and Sing

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A celebration of Black History Month

Our third grade class filed under the concrete breezeways that loosely connected the classrooms of Coral Reef Elementary, past the Seagrape tree at the end of the open courtyard, and into the big cafeteria.  It was the only space large enough to hold all the energy of so many kids, cooled only by tall jalousie windows that caught the breezes off Biscayne Bay.  The air inside was heavy and anxious, and just like nearly everything in Florida it could be oppressive if you let it get to you.  But we kids just took it in and made it exciting.  This was our music class, the time when we could bubble our energy in a new song taught to us on the tired piano by Mr. Michaels.

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

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The Struggle Continues

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Race is the one thing that has bedeviled America from the very beginning. The promise of a truly equitable and free people has always been an intellectual exercise, separated off in the mind of great thinkers like Thomas Jefferson from the obvious but emotionally difficult reality of slavery and separation by race. Equality under the law is somehow separate and not equal to equality in culture and the reality of everyday life.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday is as good a day as any to look back and see what progress we’ve made over the last year. It looks pretty bleak all around. Black America is still separate and in far too many ways not equal. Economic and social change has created a vocal backlash of whites, afraid and angry, who lash out at the very idea that progress towards a united and free society is even desirable.

But there is hope – because at least we are starting to talk about the problem.

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Humanity, Boiled Away

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How can we sum up 2015? In many ways, it’s the year when people everywhere exploded. On the right, the pent up frustration and anger felt by people losing their privilege in a rapidly changing world lit up, ultimately crystallizing in the campaign of a certain rich person whose name will not be used. On the left, anger that bled onto the streets from black bodies killed by authorities sometimes ignited, burning cities and flaring up the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

The numbers? Economic growth sputtered along just over 2% in real terms, and 5.2M jobs were added – good enough to finally raise the Fed Funds Rate. But these once critical figures waned in importance. This year, people demanded attention.

Yet as much as this was a year about people, not numbers, the explosions make it hard to be hopeful about “humanity” – which is to say decency and respect.

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Stop & Count Our Blessings

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The snow came overnight, the first real blanket of white this year. It arrived with the Winter Solstice as if some weather fairy took pity on us for the earthy brown we’ve sullenly marched past the last month. “Minnesotans need this to be in the mood,” the fairy must have said, and made the grey air clump up solid and sprinkle down.

It has been that kind of year. Normal people would be thankful for the warmth, but those who are used to magic expect more than a climate of easy survival. The cold is supposed to invigorate the northern world, bringing a stinging cheer which says, “Keep it moving, you have work to do!”

The rest of this season said to us, “It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s time for a nap. It’s time to stop.” And now, with the sprinkle of white melting around the edges, we will shortly.

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Starts With an Idea

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When Martin Shkreli was arrested the internet erupted with a dark sense of joy. Finally, the most hated pharmaceutical and finance guy in America was going to get justice – if not for raising the price of drugs 5,000% but for an unrelated ponzi scam.

This came up during People’s Economics, the discussion groups which represented a kind of “Barataria Live”. Our section on High Finance asserted that the complex and overlarge finance system inherently encourages this kind of bad behavior, which is to say that any regulation or law you might write is irrelevant compared to the kind of damage guys like Shkreli can do before they are caught.

Two interesting thoughts came out of this and subsequent discussions which provide logical ways for us to get past this problem and move to a better future. And there may be more.

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